In the Pink: braising awareness for breast cancer

When I heard that Emily had started a new food blog event to help raise awareness for the importance of early detection of breast cancer during the month of October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I felt it was vital for me to participate. Her event, called In the Pink, named after the color of the ribbons worn to show support for victims of this disease, encourages food bloggers to cook or bake something pink.

I felt inspired to go all out last night and attempted to create an entire meal of pink foods to help raise awareness for this cause. True, some of the dishes came out more purple than pink, but I like to think of magenta and fuchsia as shades of pink.

Here's my menu:

French breakfast radishes with butter, coarse sea salt and a baguette (ideally I would've used Hawaiian pink 'Alaea sea salt if I could have found it, and bright pink watermelon radishes would have been lovely too).

Salad of baby gem lettuces, pink Chioggia beets, Pt. Reyes blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts

Wine Harvester's Chicken: legs and thighs braised in red wine with Concord grapes and pink pickled onions served with polenta and spinach

Strawberry and rose gelato with chocolate cookies (I made the gelato from Marcella Hazan's simple recipe in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, reducing the sugar to my taste and adding a ¼ teaspoon of rose water, more or less, depending on the strength of the rose water and personal preferences).

What motivated me to go to such lengths was the story of my dear friend S.

S works with my wife, N, at a school in San Francisco. She is one of the school's unbelievably talented trio of music teachers.

A little over a year ago, S complained to deaf ears at Kaiser, the school's HMO, of all sorts of maladies. The doctors at Kaiser had come close to labeling poor S a hypochondriac, refused to run any tests, and told her to take several over-the-counter drugs.

Over the summer, S went home to Spain, where they have universal health care (you know, the kind of health care system the Bushies warn us won't work). Once in Madrid, S visited the doctor and discovered she had a fairly advanced case of breast cancer which had spread to other parts of her body, causing the various digestive and other pains she had experienced.

When we learned of her condition, I impulsively gave notice and then left my new job as sous chef of a recently opened restaurant of a prominent chef and travelled to Spain with N. We spent some time with S to comfort her during the beginning of her chemotherapy.

We also consider ourselves to have been blessed by discovering and falling in love with the beauty, joy and alegría of the Spanish people, culture and cuisine on our later travels to Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada and Barcelona.

After months of treatments, S is back in San Francisco doing what she loves best, sharing her passion for music through teaching children. Her cancer is under control for now and she returns over holidays to Spain for treatment. Her unbelievable strength and courage is an inspiration to us all.

Although I'm aware that S's frightening story sends a chill up the spine of every American who has been frustrated by our lousy health care bureaucracy, I still want to encourage everyone to visit your doctor regularly. Get your annual physical examination, including a mammogram.

As I see it, the lesson for us is twofold. First, vote the current administration of bastards out of office. Bye-bye Bush-Cheney-Schwarzenegger. Support candidates who will improve the quality and spiraling-out-of-control costs of our health care.

Second, confronted with doctors more concerned about cutting costs than curing cancer, yell a little louder. Be your own advocate. Don't take no for an answer.

Or, the third alternative is clear. Get out while you still can and move to a country, like Canada or Spain or just about any other sensibly enlightened industrialized nation in the free world, where there is better health care.

Until then, enjoy the recipe for the scrumptious chicken dish I made last night, sort of a Moorish coq au vin.

Wine Harvester's Chicken: Legs and Thighs Braised in Red Wine with Concord Grapes and Pickled Onions and Ginger

(Serves 4)

4 whole chicken legs (leg and thigh together)
2 T olive oil
1 red onion, cut into ½-inch pieces
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 c red wine, such as zinfandel or cabernet sauvignon
1½ c chicken stock
¼ c red wine vinegar
few sprigs thyme
2 broad strips orange peel
1 bay leaf
4 allspice berries
½ t black peppercorns
½ t coriander seeds
½ t Aleppo pepper (optional)
one small bunch Concord grapes
pickled red onions (recipe follows)
pickled ginger (recipe follows)
salt to taste

Season chicken legs generously with salt. Wrap and let sit in refrigerator overnight to cure, which will ensure a juicier and more flavorful final result.

The next day, preheat oven to 450˚F. Unwrap chicken legs and place skin-side down in a shallow casserole with 2-inch high sides that fits them snugly.

In a pan over medium-low heat, heat the olive oil in a pan and "sweat" the onions and garlic, meaning to cook the onions until translucent without adding color. Pour wine into pan, turn up heat and reduce down to 1½ cups of liquid. Add the chicken stock and vinegar and bring to a boil.

Pour hot stock over chicken legs to come up about half to three-quarters up the sides. Add the thyme, orange peel, bay leaf, allspice, peppercorns, coriander and Aleppo pepper to the casserole (I halved the recipe and my 2 chicken legs looked like this before going in the oven). Cover tightly with foil or lid and place in oven.

Cook in oven for 20 minutes, until liquid comes to a simmer. When bubbling like champagne, reduce heat to 325˚F and continue to cook for 40 minutes.

Remove lid or foil and turn legs skin-side up, at which point it will look like this. Cook uncovered for 15-20 more minutes until skin is crisp and golden brown.

Carefully remove legs from the braising juices. Pour the jus through a strainer into a small sauce pan (pot). Skim off the fat and reduce to a sauce consistency. Taste sauce for salt and acidity.

When ready to serve the chicken, add the grapes and the pickled red onions and ginger slices to the sauce and heat through. Taste sauce once again for acidity, adding more vinegar if necessary to balance the sweetness of the grapes.

Serve over polenta, cous-cous or rice with the sauce spooned over the chicken legs.

Pickled Red Cippolini Onions and Ginger

10-12 small cippolini red onions
½ c red wine vinegar
1½ c water
1-inch ginger, thinly sliced into rounds
5 allspice berries
10 black peppercorns
½ t coriander seeds
1 bay leaf
3 T sugar
1 T salt

Peel cippolini onions. Add to small pot with the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a simmer and simmer until crisp-tender, about 15 minutes. Allow to cool in the cooking liquid. When ready to serve, pull the small onions out of the liquid and quarter them. Pull the slices of ginger out, too.

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Cooking|Poultry

Comments

[k]

How is the president responsible for poor medical practice at an HMO? I don't get it. Please do move to Canada, where if you want the chemo, and you happen to be a little old, they put you on a waiting list so you will die before you qualify for it. And if you really need care, you get sent to the States. No one over the age of about 60 in Canada can qualify for dialysis. Someone still has to pay the bill, guy. Even if it's a discounted bill.

[cookiecrumb]

Oh, shut up, previous commenter.
Anyway, Brett, I was *just* getting chills when you wrote the chills remark...!
By the way, I think you can still get Hawaiian pink salt at the Pasta Shop in Berkeley on Fourth.
And I'm gonna go schedule a mammogram next week, thanks.
PS: Men can get breast cancer too. Please be aware.
Best to S, and -- for the record (and thanks to Barbara Ehrenreich) I'm not keen on the "pink" thing.

[Emily]

Hi Brett! The pink ingredients you chose for colour are all so inspired (radishes would never have crossed my mind, let alone pink salt) and I'm so impressed that you made an entire meal!

I'd like to thank you for sharing your inspiration to join in on this event - I'm happy to hear that S, after what must have a terrible ordeal, is better and able to return to the life she loves.

Congrats on the beautiful tribute, and thank you for participating.

[shuna]

Thank you for the story. My health insurance is very important to me, even if my industry likes to put on the really back burner.

My experience at kaiser was similar, but also different. Cancer runs in my family and my friend A. who has cancer in her history wrote down the name of three tests which she told me to demand from my primary. As A. said would happen my doctor tried to talk me out of them. But as A. suggested I said over and over that I wanted and thought that I needed them. Last year, while unemployed, I made dreadful tests at Kaiser my full time job. Now it's in my records how often I will receive them.

Pink food is nice but volunteering at a hospice care facility or knitting warm hats feels more proactive to me.

[David]

How is the President responsible?
He's the leader of the country. If he says, "I want to make sure that the richest country in the world provides health care for it's citizens. Health care costs are staggering out of control, insurance premiums are skyrocketing each year, and 45 million Americans are uninsured, let's fix the system."

Perhaps 1% of the next $400 billion dollars spent in Iraq could be used to achieve that goal?

It used to be just the poor that had limited access to health care, but now it's squeezing the middle and upper-classes, who are seeing dimished benefits and are finding themselves getting sub-standard care or victimized by their insurance companies who refuse to pay claims since they interpret the term 'reasonable care' to be whatever their administrators (not doctors) deem correct treatment.

When I lived in the US, three of my doctors went out of business, since they couldn't afford to provide reasonable care under the rules of the HMO's. When I did visit my doctor, he would have 4 people booked for the same time slot as me, since he was reimbursed not for quality of care, but the quantity people he could squeeze in. My premiums rose about 30% per year, and being self-employed, that was a sizable chunk of my income.

In spite of the Bush administration's claim that we don't want to be like those "commies" in Canada (who provide health care and reasonable prescriptions to Canadians...and Americans), if America is indeed the "Best Country in the World", it's a sorry state of affairs when a sizable chunk of it's citizens are ignored by an administration more concerned about 'helping' the people of Iraq than helping it's own people get proper medical care.

I now live abroad, and many of the Americans I know living here do so because they're starting families and they can't afford to live in the US anymore and raise children. Granted raising a family has become a priveledge, not a right...still to me, that's a very, very sad statement when Americans have to leave the US who wish raise a family or receive adequate health care.

[laura @ cucina testa rossa]

or move to france! great healthcare and great food! it is LESS expensive for me to buy prescriptions here in france WITHOUT insurance (yes I am now one of the 48 million americans without insurance) than it is to buy them in the states WITH health insurance, like 75% less! a doctors office visit costs 20 euros without insurance and....they make house calls! really! not bad, eh?!

[Brett]

k, thanks for sharing. However, as I'm sure you won't be surprised, I concur with David's passionate and well constructed response to your question.

cookiecrumb, thank you for the link to the Ehrenreich article. I too am a little ambivalent on the dubious benefits of cooking pink food to raise awareness for breast cancer, but I wanted to participate to share the story of S and her difficulties with the American medical system. I do think that Emily's intentions were clearly of a compassionate nature and deserve to be lauded for that reason, regardless of the effectiveness of the event.

Emily, I was happy to participate and dedicate the effort to my friend and her story. It seems to have sparked a lively debate, too! I think your heart was in the right place, too, in hosting this event. Besides, I had a lot of fun!

Shuna, your story underscores my point that you have to be your own advocate when dealing with HMOs like Kaiser. Unfortunately, my friend S is relatively quiet (and dignified) and, being from Spain, not used to the American reality of the squeaky wheel being the one that gets the grease. But really, what kind of system is that?

David, thank you, thank you, thank you. Your comment is especially welcome as this is Fleet Week in San Francisco and the fighter jets have been screaming overhead for days, reminding us all of where the current administration's priorities lie.

Laura, that's a good question. Why don't I move to Paris? Or Barcelona? If we Yanks could only get proper work visas in the EU....

[k]

All I am saying, guys, is that you can get crappy medical care anywhere. Remember last summer in France, when all the doctors and nurses went on their August vacations, and nearly 15,000 died (mostly elderly) from the heat? I think that's pretty crappy. I guess if you are a young expat, they will take care of you. But not if you an oldster whose time has come already, c'est dommage. And blaming a government for those kinds of lapses.. that's pitiful. We have ways to take care of ourselves. Including demanding better of the plans our employers use (and that means demanding better of Kaiser Permanente). And taking care of each other, which is exactly what Brett is doing. Do you not see the difference? And do you not see how much better that is than struggling with some damn governmental paperwork??

[Barbara]

The idea of Emily's Think Pink was to raise awareness of cancer and the importance of early detection. It is the early detection that can make you a cancer survivor. I don't think there is a country in the world that has unlimited funds to treat cancer patients. My own cancer was diagnosed in Portugal yet I live in NZ. Travel insurance covered the cost of my surgery and associated costs in Portugal. Back in NZ I had the choice of going on a waiting list for the free public health chemo or paying for it. To be effective you must start the chemo within so many weeks of surgery. I had no choice but to pay for my chemo and I'm fortunate we could afford it. When you understand how cancer grows you soon realise it is early detection that is so important.

[David]

At 47, I don't know if I fall into the category of "young" expat, but at my age, I'll take compliments where I can get 'em.

Speaking of 'old' folks, my partner's mother (she's 81 and French) had a blocked intestine last week. She was rushed to the hospital and operated on. She'll be there for a week and will not get a bill when she comes out; elderly people and disabled people get free health care in France.

Obviously if someone is old (like the citizens who died in the heatwave,) if the don't call for help, the government can't just start breaking down doors to see who's in each apartment. So yes, unlike the organized and effective effort the US government made to evacuate the people of New Orleans, the French government did fail.

[Brett]

k, you are right that there a weaknesses in all systems of health care. No system is perfect.

All of us will, at some point, be confronted with the inevitability of illness, old age and death. It is part of being human.

As you pointed out, "we have to take care of ourselves." Just as we should demand better care from our employers and HMOs, as you said, some of my intelligent and compassionate readers and I believe that we, as taxpaying Americans, should also demand better care from our government.

Being compassionate and intelligent people, we don't only want to take care of ourselves, but we want to take care of all those people who share the human condition with us, including those who don't have employers from whom they can demand better health care.

One way we can achieve this goal, as I suggested in my post, is to support a government that will guarantee or at least increase accessibility to quality health care to all its citizens. Since the current administration does not support these policies, I suggested we, how did I phrase it? ahh yes: vote the "bastards out of office."

Perhaps you can see the difference between "blaming the government" and encouraging change through our constitutional rights of freedom of speech and the vote.

We're all on this planet a relatively short time, and we might as well try to help each other out and be nice to one another. Supporting a government that allows millions of its citizens to live without the security of decent medical care is just heartless and, using your own word, pitiful.

Barbara, thank you so much for sharing your story! Thank you for reminding us that the sooner you detect cancer, the better your chances of survival are. I am glad that Emily's event has helped to remind all of us of that fact.

David, I'm sorry to hear that your partner's mother is ill. She certainly is lucky to be living in a country that makes it a priority to take care of all of its citizens. We should all be so fortunate. I sincerely hope that her health will improve.

[Jennifer]

Wow, what a thought-provoking dialogue. Thanks for stirring the pot, Brett! That salad with the pink beets looks positively yummy...

[Kireiina]

Great:-)