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Homemade Short Rib Pastrami

Photos by Donna
It began with pickles. I'd bought a quart of small cukes to pickle with tarragon but I wasn't thinking as I made the brine.  I wanted some spice in there so I added black peppercorns.  Then, here is the not thinking part, I put in a load of coriander seed, then the tarragon, but as I smelled the brine coming up to heat, it was clear that pepper and coriander would completely overpower the tarragon, and simply don't belong together.  So I removed the tarragon.  Donna arrived just then and said, "Mmm, smells good in here. Like corned beef."

Having ruined the brine for the pickles (using the standard 5% brine ratio from Ratio, bien sur), I thought let's put it to use with what pepper and coriander were made for.  I'd bought some short ribs intending to cure them with a dry rub to see how that worked, but now that I had a brine with corned beef seasonings, it would be a pickle instead.  I'd bought them specifically to make corned beef/pastrami, normally made with brisket.  But briskets are big and expensive and I wanted small portions. Also the brisket nowadays is so lean it can become dry. I wanted to use a well marbled cut, and short rib seemed perfect. (I thought I was being particularly clever, here, making corned beef out of short ribs, but apparently Asianjewishdeli has been doing it for months! Rats!)

The fact is, you can corn any cut of beef if you want, doesn't have to be brisket. The key ingredient is the pink salt, sodium nitrite, which keeps the meat vivid red even after cooking, and gives the beef its distinctive corned-beef flavor. So I simply added a half teaspoon of that to the brine, chilled it and submerged several boneless beef shortribs in the brine and left them for a few days.

I love the smoky spicy flavor of pastrami (corned beef coated in black pepper and coriander and smoked). To get this effect at home, without relying on a smoker, I grilled them over a hot fire. After grilling, they needed to be tenderized which we do by slow cooking. Corned beef is typically cooked in court bouillon, but I wanted to keep all the flavor in the abundantly seasoned meat.  So I wrapped them in foil with a little water to make sure the environment was moist and cooked them for a few hours in a 200 degree oven.

The result: exquisitely juicy, flavorful pastrami that's easy to do at home.  Several steps, yes, but all of them easy.

How did I prepare the pastrami? Neo-Reubens.  Pastrami, sauerkraut, gruyere, with a mayo spiked with sriracha sauce, sandwiched between English muffin halves and cooked in a skillet.  English muffin makes the perfect portion size for such a rich sandwich, we had with chips and beer.  The hardest part of this preparation was waiting for Donna to finish taking the picture so we could eat.

There's a complete corned beef recipe in Charcuterie, which includes mustard seeds, allspice, mace, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, all of which are fantastic, but all I used for this brine was peppercorn, coriander, garlic, pinch of ground cinnamon, and chilli flakes, and importantly 1/2 teaspoon of pink salt for about two cups of water (if you don't know about pink salt, there's more info at the bottom of this post). Pickle your beef for a few days in the fridge, coat with a mixture of equal parts peppercorns and coriander seed roughly cracked or chopped, grill them, then slow cook in foil as described above.  After tasting these, I can't imagine ever using brisket again. Corned beef short ribs are fabulous.

Cherry Pie

Photos by Donna
I don't think I'd really ever had a cherry pie before. When I was young my parents sometimes bought frozen cherry pies. Most pies for sale at bakeries and grocery stores seem to be made with the artificially colored and flavored gelatinized goop, poured out of cans into a pre-baked shell. Nasty stuff.

So what amazing good fortune it is to have a neighbor who not only has a thriving cherry tree, but who also tells his neighbors when the cherries are ripe and even sets a ladder in the tree.  Thanks, Marty!

A few days ago, a sultry summer afternoon, my daughter and I went to pick cherries and make a cherry pie.

Because the 321 pie dough ratio is embedded in my soul, it's finished in a snap.  Twelve ounces of flour would give me just enough for a pie with a lattice crust; we chilled it while we pitted the cherries.  Ripe and juicy, the pits popped right out. Because cherries are so juicy I knew I'd need plenty of corn starch, 1/3 of a cup, which, with evaporation in the oven, results in the perfect consistency. The cherries are tart, like rhubarb, and so I used about the same amount as I do for a rhubarb pie, 1-1/4 cup of sugar for 4 to 5 cups of cherries.  If you like it definitively sweet, you can go up to 1-1/2 cups of sugar. But I like it a little on the tart side to be balanced with some vanilla ice cream.

And that was it. No other seasonings.  Nothing.  I want pure cherry flavor in buttery flakey crust.

The cherries are fantastically vivid and so the visual appeal of making a cherry pie is more pleasurable than that of just about any other pie. Also there is nothing like the flavor of this amazing fruit—cooked with sugar it's cherry to the power of ten. I can't remember every being so pleased by a pie, recognizing as we ate that I was having cherry pie for the very first time.

Cleveland Heights Cherry Pie

12 ounce flour
8 ounces butter
4 ounces ice water
5 cups sour cherries, pits removed
1-1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn starch

Cut the butter into the flour, mix in the water just till a dough forms (don't over work it).  Chill the dough. Roll out three quarters of the dough to fill a pie dish, save the rest for the lattice crust (see this post on rhubarb pie for more detailed instructions on making a lattice crust, important to interlace the strips).

Combine the cherries, sugar and cornstarch and toss.  Pour the mixture into your pie shell, lay your lattice over this and pinch the edges to form an appealing rim.  Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 350 and conintue baking for another hour or until the filling is thick and bubbling. Hands off until it's cooled a little!  Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Writer's Block: What I Believe

From my desk, photo by iphone
When I put up a recent tweet saying writer's block was nothing more than an attempt to justify your own laziness (and not recognizing this was simply lying to yourself), I got a number of angry RT's calling me (at best) smug.  To those whom I angered I would say, that's a common response when someone takes away a crutch.

If there is a problem with Twitter though, it’s an inability to express nuance (for most of us, anyway, who don’t have the poet’s genius for condensation).

But here I can say, re: writer’s block: This I Believe:

The phrase writer’s block is an excuse that should be used only by the weak and delusional (or as lighthearted slang for “It’s cocktail time somewhere!”).  If you must put a tag on your inability to produce, be my guest.  We all know what it means.

But!  This does not mean that I believe being unable to write well or to have something to say every hour of every day is a matter of laziness.  Sometimes the mind will and must lie fallow.  And, yes, these are hard days/weeks/years for any writer, whether you write to earn your daily bread or whether you write simply because you must.  But when the mind lies fallow, when the words simply aren’t coming, don’t call it writer’s block.  Call it being serious about your work, and recognizing that not writing is simply one part of the writing life, and that tomorrow, goddamit, it will be better.

As I’ve written before, learning to cook at the CIA changed my life.  When I returned home to write The Making of a Chef, Donna more or less looked at me, whilst bouncing our 18-month-old daughter on her knee, and explained that we would be broke in four months.  Because I had embraced the chef’s ethos, the recognition that saying, “Sorry chef, can’t do it” simply was not an option, I figured out how many words, writing five days a week, I’d need to generate in order to have a book-length manuscript in four months (1400 words should cover it, I figured); I literally would not let myself rise from the chair until my word count read 1400.

Some days my mind felt so numb by 4:30 pm (word count 980) that I would actually scream to jump start my brain. But basically it came down to the fact that I was the kid at the dinner table who was not allowed to go outside to play until he ate his spinach; so I ate my spinach.

Often though, what happened was, when I got to that awful I-can’t-write-another-word place, then screamed and moved forward, it was like unclogging a drain, not like pushing a rock uphill.  Once I cleared the way, the writing came easily once again.  And I would write beyond the quota (and thus have a head start for the following day).

I spent a half day Saturdays revising.

But there’s a danger to this ethos, too.  I believe I failed in the writing of Walk On Water by adhering too rigidly to a daily quota.  Because I was working so quickly, I failed to see the overall structure of a story set in the beautiful horrible world of pediatric heart surgery, and as a result, I put the proper end of the book in the middle.  The Making of a Chef had a built in narrative structure, it’s basically a school story.  The world of pediatric surgery is never-ending, and it was the writer’s job to impose a structure on it.  I did and, in my opinion, failed.  Which is why there is a new edition of Making a dozen years after it was first published and no new edition or even new sales of Walk on Water (the publisher's new miserable phony subtitle notwithstanding).

So, I reiterate. I believe “writer’s block” is a harmful term that justifies laziness and encourages self-deception.  But to be unable to write the next scene in your story, your screenplay, or even a new menu item to make something new out of all that arugula and eggplant in your walk in, this is an important part of your ongoing commitment to one of the greatest, and most difficult, human compulsions, to create something where there was nothing.

Cherries Are Here!

 
One of my favorite times of year, sour cherries are here!  Thanks for gorgeous shots Donna.  Time to make pie!

Or a cocktail:

Sour Cherry with Rum and Mint

Not quite a sour cherry mojito (though that would work).  Keep it pure with two ounces muddled sour cherries, 2 ounces rum, 1 ounce of simple syrup. Garnish with mint.

Really refreshing.  This will work with gin or vodka — I think gin best though.

Guest Post: Peter Kaminsky, Seven Fires,and Pork Tenderloin with Orange Confit

Peter Kaminsky is a friend and colleague who has co-written another excellent cookbook, Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way with Argentinian chef Francis Mallman.  It's all about cooking with fire—a great book for the boys, who as we know are predisposed to playing with fire, and another beautiful production from Artisan; here's a feature in the NYTimes on it.  Peter wrote the excellent Happy in the Kitchen with Michel Richard as well as his excellent Pig Perfect and several books on fly fishing.  I'm pleased to have him here today, talking about grilled steak and a fantastic grilled pork tenderloin with orange confit (my favorite part of the whole preparation).

Skillet Roasted Pork and Thirty Grilled Steaks

by Peter Kaminsky

Having grilled most summer nights since the late 1960's I felt that my skills were pretty decent. Then I met Francis Mallmann, a refugee from the world of haute cuisine (apprenticing with Verge, Trocellier, Oliver and at il Pinchiori in Florence). Francis decided to get back to basic Neanderthal cooking (although served in the elegant and rustic style of Patagonia). I've watched him prepare whole cows, roast salmon for 300, and legs of lamb for 300 ... all done perfectly. The recipes that he shared with me in writing our new book taught me that simple food can be as elegant as the most froufrou foie gras and caviar concoctions.

I personally tested our recipe for steak about a gazillion (make that thirty) times.  The steak thing is interesting. I wanted one foolproof thing. Francis and I made them a few times. I went to the Mercado del Puerto in Montevideo, which has fifteen or twenty steak joints. To every one of them I said, "Make me a ribeye." I watched how they salted, felt the heat, and timed them. Then in the states I made them over wood, charcoal, charcoal briquettes, gas-fired barbecue, stove top barbecue, and grill pan. On hot days and cold.

What i found was, that if you follow the one mississippi, two mississippi , three rule (depending on your own nerve endings) it always works. You may need to shave a minute off depending on the wind and weather, but it always works. Good salt crust and uniform color wall to wall.

The pork tenderloin is one to try outside (it's smoky) on a cast iron griddle. I love it because it is so striking and delicious. For so few ingredients it is deeply complex. First the burnt-ness of the sugar (not incinerated just burnt) really punctuates the other flavors. There is a bitter, fruity floral aspect to the orange peel (and its olive oil), and that floral herbal aspect is heigtened by thyme. Then there's that funky thing you get when you bite down on pork, and as you naturally breathe out through your nose, it's a wonderful mix of herbal, floral, meaty.

Pork Tenderloin with Burnt Brown Sugar, Orange Confit, and Thyme
Serves 6

2 boneless pork tenderloins, about 1 pound each
6 pieces orange confit, about 2 inches each (see Basics)
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon coarse salt (or to taste)
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 tablespoons oil from the orange confit

Lay the pork tenderloins on a work surface. Flatten with the palm of your hand. Tear the orange confit into 1/2 inch pieces and distribute over the top surface of the meat. Sprinkle with the fresh thyme and half the salt. Sprinkle the brown sugar on top and pat it down firmly with your hand. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil from the orange confit.

Preheat the chapa or a large square cast iron griddle over medium heat until a drop of water sizzles.

Using a wide spatula, lift the pork tenderloins one by one and invert them sugar side down onto the griddle. Do not move them for 5 minutes. If the sugar begins to smell unpleasantly burned, adjust the heat by moving the griddle and lowering the flame. When the sugar side is well browned, turn the tenderloins. Cook on all sides for 10 to 15 minutes more, or until done to taste. The internal temperature should be 135 degrees for a rosy pink. Remove the meat to a carving board and allow to rest, tented with foil, for 10 minutes before slicing.

Orange Confit

4 oranges
3 bay leaves
12 whole black peppercorns
2 cups plus 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
¾ cup white wine
2 teaspoons coarse salt

Cut the oranges in half. Squeeze the juice and reserve for another use.

Place the squeezed orange halves in a 3 quart saucepan. Add the bay leaves, peppercorns, 3 tablespoons olive oil, white wine and water to cover. Add salt and bring to the boil.  Reduce heat to medium and cook until the orange peel is tender, about 25 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool in the liquid.

When cool enough to handle, drain the oranges. Tear the peel into rough strips about 1 inch wide. Place a strip of orange peel skin side down on a work surface and, using a very sharp paring knife, scrape away every bit of the white pith.

Place the strips of orange zest in a bowl and cover completely with extra virgin olive oil. This will keep, covered tightly in the refrigerator, for at least a week.

Banana-Strawberry Granola

Photos by Donna
I used to eat the best granola when as a feckless student at the University of Sussex outside Brighton.  For years I tried to find something similar but never could. A few years ago I started making it myself in big batches.  But I was sort of, well, feckless about it.  I'd throw some oats in a roasting pan, some chopped nuts (almonds and walnuts usually), some sugar or honey and bake it and however it came out, it came out.

Then I thought I should do a recipe (I don't hate recipes!), just to have a record of one. So I looked up a half dozen recipes to see variations and how others made granola, and they all hued to the basic formula above. Then I looked at several on allrecipes.com and came across one that was either a eureka moment or an I'm-an-idiot moment (more of the latter than the former, surely). Someone, a former cook at a B&B as I recall, made a liquid mixture of sugar, a banana and water.  Water? I thought.  Then I thought, of course, water would be a fantastic way to distribute spices and flavors and then the oven would get rid of the water.  It works great and is now the standard method in this old house.  Here's the most recent version.

Strawberry-Banana Granola
1 or 2 bananas
1 cup strawberries
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
¼ cup canola oil
¼ cup water
½ teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
several gratings of nutmeg (optional)
2½ pounds rolled oats
½ cup wheat bran
½  cup flax seed
1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1 cup almonds, sliced, slivered, or roughly chopped
1-1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries

Combine the bananas, strawberries, sugar, honey, oil, water, cinnamon and nutmeg in a blender and blend till thoroughly pureed.

Combine the remaining ingredients except for the dried fruit and mix with your hands till the ingredients are evenly distributed. Pour the fruit sauce over the oat mixture and stir till it's all evenly mixed.  Bake for 45-60 minutes at 300 F., stirring every 15 minutes or so.

When the mixture has cooled, add the dried fruit and store in an airtight container.  Excellent with homemade yogurt.  Yield: Plenty! Can be halved.

Father's Day Deep Bluesand Sweet Spice Cookies

(circa 1968)

Adapted from

"Shifting the Sun" by Diana Der Hovanessian

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.

When your father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.

And you walk in his light.

I love the what the English say, but for me it's what the Irish and the Russians say that rings most true.

You who are celebrating your breathing fathers, cherish it and share good food and drink.  Those with difficult relationships, consider the fact that while your fathers will not always be here, the difficulty will be unless you change it (I'm just saying!). And those who can only celebrate gifts left behind, well celebrate. And remember the happiest story of all:

The grandfather dies, the father dies, the son dies. 

(Just heard that on the awesome Losing Mum and Pup, by Chris Buckley, highly recommend listening to author's audio version. Buckley would put it this way, and I can relate: Best case scenario: I'm next!

These were my dad's favorite cookies, formerly called spice cookies, now called

Rip's Spice Cookies

10 ounces vegetable shortening (1-1/2 cups)
8 ounces sugar (about 1 cup)
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
12 ounces flour (about 2 cups)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the shortening and sugar and egg and mix thoroughly in a standing mixer or by hand (measuring out shortening using a scale is sooo much easier than trying to do it by volume).  Add the molasses and continue mixing.  Combine the remaining ingredients and fold them into the dough.

Roll into small balls or spoon out tablespoons of dough onto a baking sheet.  Give them some room because they’ll spread.  Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges begin to darken.

Yield: about 24 cookies

Rip Ruhlman 9/24/38 - 8/09/08
 

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl Sundae

Photos by Donna
Last Sunday morning, my son James said, "Dad, what if you made a bowl out of cookie dough?"

I'm the first to admit that there are almost no truly new culinary innovations or ideas, only variations on what's come before us, and I also know that making a cookie to serve ice cream on, such as an ice cream sandwich, is a common one (some great recipes will be in Ad Hoc At Home, now at the printers). But when James said it, I said, "Very cool idea, James.  Let's give it a shot." And so we did.  We posted a Twitpic and fellow Twitters were likewise enthusiastic.

It's taken a few different methods to figure out the best way to bake them and how much to put in our bowl-in-a-bowl makeshift mold.  But not too long.  Very easy to bake, a little tricky to get out of the mold. But James's final verdict was emphatic: "Awesome!"

The following is the chocolate chip cookie dough from Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.  It's an interesting recipe to me because I've basically taken the 123 cookie dough (1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, 3 parts flour) and made a 111 cookie dough, plus an egg, and chocolate chips of course.  The result is a very light clean chocolate chip cookie, crisp but tender.  And it works great when transformed into a bowl that holds ice cream.  My mom would use electric beaters, or this dough can be mixed by hand but, but it's easiest and cleanest made in a standing mixer. The following quantities will make at least four to six bowls (depending on the size of your mold).

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl

Put 8 ounces of butter, 4 ounces each of brown sugar and white sugar, an egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract into the bowl of a standing mixer.  Beat using the paddle attachment until all ingredients are incorporated. 

Remove the bowl from the stand, put it on a scale and pour in 8 ounces of flour (about a cup and a half), 1/2 teaspoon salt and a teaspoon of baking powder.  Return the bowl to the machine and paddle until the dough is formed.  Add at least a cup of chocolate chips or roughly chopped chocolate and mix until the chocolate is evenly distributed.

This dough will make about two dozen delicious chocolate chip cookies, but if you want to make bowls, you'll need two oven-proof dishes, one that fits inside another, for each chocolate chip cookie bowl (see the Twitpic link above).  Spray the inside of the larger one and the outside of the smaller one with vegetable oil (or butter them).  Press about 1/3 of a cup of the dough into each large bowl.  Press the smaller bowl on top of the dough firmly so that the dough begins to push up around its sides (expansion will take care of the rest).

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Remove the bowls from the oven and carefully twist the small bowls to free them from the dough (I used sturdy tongs), then remove it, and continue to bake the cookie bowls for 5 minutes of so until the inner bottom of the cookie bowl finishes cooking.

When the bowls are cool enough to handle, cut off any dough that's over flowed the edge and, very carefully, run a pairing knife along the sides, gently lifting up to delicately free the bottom of the cookie bowl.  Chill completely.

Fill with ice cream and serve to anyone who adores cookies and ice cream. I reiterate James's verdict: "Awesome."  Thanks, James!

Barbecued Ham with Chipotle Honey Glaze

Photo by Donna
What to do with a ham?! I never know. I don't really like ham. Ham is a bore. There's too much of it.  And it tastes like ham!  But I had a big one from an extraordinary pig, I'd brined it using a standard ham brine but did not smoke it as would be traditional. I don't have a proper drying facility for a big cut like this to make a prosciutto. So I froze the thing and ultimately got tired of all the space it took up in the freezer. It was time to cook the beast. An urgent email was dispatched to the friends and family who'd helped to break down the pig, all enthusiastic takers.

Now, in order to get excited about it, i decided to try something I hadn't done before.  Slow roasting it in foil in a very low oven to tenderize the thing, than to cook it over low coals on the grill and bathe it in some lovingly tended sweet-sour-spicy sauce.

The result was Sunday's dinner last week, slow-roasted barbecued ham with a chipotle-honey glaze—a reason to be excited about ham.

Basic Ham Brine, from Charcuterie:
1 gallon water
12 ounces/350 grams kosher salt (1-1/2 cups Morton's kosher)
2 cups packed brown sugar
1-1/2 onces/42 grams pink salt (4-1/2 teaspoons)

Combine all ingredients, heat till salts and sugar is dissolved, cool completely. You might also throw in plenty of garlic, onion, sage, lemons or any other aromats that excite you (highly recommended). Submerge the ham in the brine, weighting it down to keep it submerged, and refrigerate for a week.

Basic Barbecue Sauce Technique and guidelines for Chipotle Honey Glaze:
Sweat chopped onion and garlic till translucent (you can't over sweat), salting them as you do.  Add plenty of ground cumin and coriander, chilli powder of your own choosing.  Cook the spices then finish the sauce.  You might deglaze the pan with some rot gut bourbon.  You might then add a quarter cup of brown sugar and half as much cider vinegar.  If you like the idea of chipotles and honey, add 2 to 4 minced chipotles in adobo sauce and a 1/4 cup of honey rather than the aforementioned brown sugar. Then add a can of whole peeled tomatoes (what are they, 28 ounces?), and cook this down for an hour over low heat, blend/puree thoroughly, and taste for seasoning. Meaning: Ask yourself is it the right balance of sweet and sour? does it have enough salt? is it spicy enough? If the answer is no to any of these questions, adjust accordingly until it is lip-smackingly exquisite.

Barbecued Ham Technique:
I wrapped the ham in foil and cooked it at 190 degrees overnight.  When I could handle it, I removed the skin (which I would press between silpats and bake until crispy to serve as a snack with drinks while I tended the ham and finished the potatoes and beans).

I rewarmed the ham over low coals, smoke roasting it in a covered grill, basting with the sauce till it looked gorgeous. 

Slice and serve with plenty of additional sauce.  Lime never hurt anything that I know of.  Donna just liked the look of those olives in the photo above, but eat them with the pig skin, not the ham.

Literary Interlude: Frank Huyler, Reynolds Price

Some books enter your life and just kind of take up residence even after you've stopped rereading them.  Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker is one for me.  And so is The Blood of Strangers: Stories From Emergency Medicine (1999), by Frank Huyler, an emergency medicine doc in New Mexico, beautifully crafted, mesmerizing stories from his work in hospitals, creative non-fiction of the highest order. (See the below PDF's for an example, three pages of precise brisk prose, with a bacon theme, but not why it's one of my favorites.)

A month ago, I bought this book from Amazon to send to someone and decided to leave a review and also asked the author to write to me if he happened to read the review because I couldn't find contact info. He did, explaining that he was floating around on Amazon because soon he'd have his second novel out, Right of Thirst. I asked to read it. It turned out that we now share the same literary agency and they sent me an uncorrected proof. I've only just now gotten to it, am half through, but want to say that it's a riveting story about a newly widowed doctor who volunteers for relief work in one of the Stans, a cold mountainous otherworld. There's a brilliant passage about an amputation of a young girl's gangrenous leg and an ominous sense that things are about to go very wrong. As with Blood of Strangers the writing is spare and precise, a delight to read. Huyler has a perfect sense of exactly how much information we need and, critically, just how much he can leave out.

But most of all, I want people simply to know about this remarkable writer. I reread Blood of Strangers while I was writing my surgery book, Walk on Water. I used the book to teach non-fiction technique. I read the book to my then ten-year-old daughter who loved it (that's how accessible the writing is). Again, more people ought to know about this excellent physician-writer.

Download Secret p1

Download Secret pp 2-3 

Another book that's just out, is Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back, a memoir by Reynolds Price, a protean man of letters, one of the finest American authors working today, and the teacher who gave me the information I'd need to make my living as a writer.  The memoir covers the years Price spent at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and his subsequent return to his North Carolina home to begin his career as a writer and teacher. The book is a delight to read, a must for Anglophiles, an engrossing portrait not only of England in the late 1950s but of an apprentice writer and scholar.

The portrayal of WH Auden is worth the price of admission alone. As is the advice Price got from one of his teachers. When Price asked one of his teachers for advice, the teacher—was it David Cecil?—recalled his own dying mother. Her last words to him were these: "I only regret my economies."  Damn good advice, that.

I would go on to write about my teacher in The New York Times Sunday Magazine (link), not long after he published Kate Vaiden.  While it wasn't a major piece for the Times, it was my first major piece of published writing, and I wouldn't have been able to do it at all, had I not learned from my subject the fundamental skill of sitting down every day and simply getting the work done.

If you love great writing and fine story-telling, Frank Huyler and Reynolds Price are well worth finding.