Food Notes: 11/25
Utica Greens, Thanksgiving Pizza, Sausage Party, hot honey and more!
Thanksgiving is different this year. My father has cancer.
My mother has always hosted Thanksgiving. We might travel to my aunt’s house on Christmas Day, and we alternated Christmas Eve at my Godmother’s house, but Thanksgiving belonged to my mother.
In the 1980s, my parents hosted a crowd from both sides. Aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, my grandparents, my cousins. But then the older generations passed away. Our numbers ebbed and flowed. College girlfriends rotated through, stray friends with nowhere else to go, family friends. My parents were always happy with whoever came.
The menu remained the same: home-churned butter; homemade cranberry jelly in a mold; pumpkin bread; white pearl onions in cream sauce (except that one year they were forgotten on the kitchen counter); mashed potatoes and gray; white bread stuffing cooked inside the bird.
Vegetables were delegated to guests. My aunt had a preference for steamed carrots and cheddar broccoli casserole topped with Ritz crackers.
There have only been a few major changes to the menu. After college, since I don’t particularly like the white bread stuffing, I started making a version with cornbread and chorizo. This dish may have been inspired by Paula Deen, the southern cook-turned-celebrity-chef. I started doing this before it slipped out that she was a raging racist. Either way, the tradition stuck and then evolved from a full Pyrex tray into individual ramekins.
The next major changed occurred when I met my wife and my parents began inviting her parents for Thanksgiving. As a result, we added a Thanksgiving Lasagna, a common Italian American tradition in New Jersey.
The most recent addition began when my brother and his wife returned from the Netherlands, where they had been living for several years. While oversees, they hosted an American-style Thanksgiving for their European friends (Hello, Maastricht friends!). However, since Dutch ovens are too small for whole turkeys, my brother learned how to deep fry the big birds.
With their return from the Continent, my we suddenly had a big crowd of people: my in-laws, his in-laws, our four-year-old. There was a chair emergency when my parents realized they didn’t have enough seats to fit everyone around the table. I solved this by ordering some folding chairs online.
We adjusted the menu once more. My brother offered to cook a second bird outside in a deep fryer. Now we were a deep-fried-turkey-family.
***
Celebrating Thanksgiving was always going to be different this year. My brother and his wife had their first child at the end of October. Since the newborn baby wouldn’t have had some essential vaccines, they were planning on skipping the holiday this year.
But then my father went to the hospital with a pain.
It wasn’t the first time he had experienced some pain, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the visit reveal gall stones while the doctors were poking and prodding him.
They also found an embolism, which had been the source of his pain. He was in the process of changing blood thinners, and the clot had formed in his lung. Restarting the medication should cause the embolism to be reabsorbed into his body.
Before they finished probing him, they found a spot on his liver.
The doctors ran a battery of tests. We waited for an answer. He began taking the blood thinners.
When the results came in, the doctor diagnosed him with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer.
That’s not a great diagnosis. The one year survival rate is typically under 10%. Symptoms rarely appear before the cancer has metastasized.
The proposed treatment included chemotherapy. It’s a grueling course, a heavy dose with plenty of side effects. It gets worse, but never gets better.
The only problem was they still hadn’t actually found the cancer. Although tests showed signs of gastro and pancreatic systems, they hadn’t actually found it.
He made a new appointment with doctors at Sloan Kettering. The difference between a cancer diagnosis from an average hospital in north Jersey and Sloan Kettering is the difference between playing ball for the Cape Cod Baseball League and starting in game 7 of the World Series. I have no idea why I thought a sports metaphor was necessary.
The new doctors tossed the diagnosis. They began a battery of tests: blood, genetics, scans. They found a new diagnosis: liver cancer.
That’s still cancer, but early stage liver cancer is far from the death sentence pancreatic cancer comes with. The new course of treatment involves a combination of chemo and immunotherapy, and then after several months, a small surgery. The prognosis is much better.
With a new treatment plan in hand, my father began his first chemo therapy session. As expected, it wore him out. As he went for his second round, my mother finally decided she couldn’t host Thanksgiving.
***
We’re headed to my mother-in-laws. The long-standing menu is out the window. My wife observed: we have the opportunity to introduce a new dish, but we better be sure we like it because we might just be stuck making it for the next thirty years.
There are big changes ahead. Since our gathering will be small, we’re having just a turkey breast and a spiral cut Virginia ham. The Thanksgiving Lasagna will become a Thanksgiving Stuff Shells. My wife wants to make a corn bread pudding.
I’m planning on making Utica greens, a regional Italian American dish known in upstate New York. The dish is relatively new, invented around 1988, at the Chesterfield Restaurant. The source recipe combines escarole, prosciutto, hot cherry peppers, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and bread crumbs.
From that one restaurant the dish spread to others in the area. Modifications were made—some recipes swap in pancetta or soppressata or capicola. Other variations use chard, broccoli rabe, spinach, or even mustard greens. Romano cheese is often used in place of the Parm.
Within Utica, greens cooked in this manner are typically named after the chef’s—Michael’s greens, Joseph’s Greens, Ian’s Greens. Outside of Utica, its more likely to find the variation referred to directly as Utica Greens.
I made the the Utica Greens for the first time a few weeks back—this is not a family heirloom of a recipe, so I practiced it.
Utica Greens You Will Have To Make Each Year for Three Decades On Thanksgiving Because You Accidentally Made It A Tradition
INGREDIENTS
1 bunch of broccoli rabe
1/2 cup of hot cherry peppers (pickled)
4 to 6 oz dice sopressata
Several Garlic Cloves
1 small onion
1 cup breadcrumbs
Grated Pecorino Romano cheese
Dash of apple cider vinegar
INSTRUCTIONS
Dice up the sopressata
Fry the sopressata in an oven proof pan
Reserve the meat
Add olive oil to the pan if there is not enough fat
Gently cook the onion and garlic until translucent
Add chopped greens and chopped cherry peppers
Salt to taste
Add dash of apple cider vinegar
In separate pan, gently roast the breadcrumbs and cheese
When greens are wilted, add back the sopressata and stir
Top with breadcrumbs
Sprinkle lightly with additional cheese
Gently warm in the oven for a minute or two toasting the breadcrumbs and bread
Top with a hot cherry pepper
Give Thanks By Giving To A Cause
If you’re looking for a good cause this holiday season, consider a donation to Seize The Days, a non-profit organization I’ve been working with that celebrates the stories of cancer patients, survivors, and their family who take a cancer diagnosis and turn it into an inspirational reason to celebrate life. Listen to their stories here.
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