Table of Contents: From Breakfast With Anita Diamant to Dessert With James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights From Today's Bestselling Authors
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Handful of (your choice) chives, parsley and /or fresh spinach, ripped or chopped in segments large enough to get caught in your teeth
Ground green peppercorns (optional)
1 Spread cheese on one slice of bread.
2 Sprinkle green matter thereupon. If to your taste, add a light ozdusting of ground green peppercorns.
3 Clamp second slice of bread firmly atop the spread.
4 Serve in the freshest wax paper … never mind, you're not that hungry.
MADAME MORRIBLE'S ADORABLE STORABLE SUGAR COOKIES
Makes about 30 2½-inch cookies (number varies with size of cookie cutter) and 1 cup of frosting
Sugar cookies and butter frosting are from Kids' Party Cook Book, edited by Mary Jo Plutt (Better Homes and Gardens, 1985)
Madame Morrible, notable figure around Shiz University though with Friends in High Places, likes to welcome the students at her seminars and poetry recitals with plates of her favorite treat. She calls them Madame Morrible's Adorable Storables, for with an extra flick and flourish of her wand she can not only whip up several dozen in an instant, she can store them in airtight cannikins where they keep for days and days.
For those less naturally gifted in the magical Arts of Baking, she supplies a traditional recipe below. An extra note: she herself enjoys using cookie cutters with this recipe, as the more regularized the shape, the easier to store — in a box or a sock or something. Her favorite cookie cutter is the one in the shape of a flying monkey. Should you not be able to locate one for your own use, either in an emporium of cookie cutters or borrowed from some better-heeled neighbor, she recommends you take a pair of secateurs, a length of industrial-strength tin, a small but strong hammer, and an image of the flying monkeys from the 1900 edition of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum with illustrations by W. W. Denslow. You can knock out your own homemade cookie cutter almost as easily as you can follow the recipe below. Assignments due on Thursday, no excuses.
Note: To make this a stiffer frosting, which is preferable for piped designs, add more confectioners' sugar. To thin the frosting, add a few drops of water.
To tint the frosting, use paste food color (available at party supply stores) rather than liquid food color as liquid will thin the frosting. Use the tip of a wooden toothpick to add small amounts of the paste, blend, and add more if necessary to achieve desired tint.
FOR THE COOKIES
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
FOR THE FROSTING
3 tablespoons butter, softened
2¼–2½ cups sifted confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons milk, plus additional if needed
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 To make the cookies: In a small bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt.
2 In an electric mixers' large bowl, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla extract, and beat well. Gradually add flour mixture and beat until well blended. Cover and chill dough for about 1 hour.
3 Preheat oven to 375°F. Divide dough in half. Roll out half of the dough on a lightly floured surface to about ¼-inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters or knife, rerolling dough as necessary. Transfer cookies to ungreased cookie sheets.
4 Bake for 8–10 minutes or until cookies are light brown around edges. Remove cookies to a wire rack and let cool completely.
5 To make the frosting: In a small mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually add about half of the confectioners' sugar, beating well.
6 Beat in milk and vanilla. Gradually beat in the remaining sugar, and then beat in additional milk, if necessary, to make frosting spreadable.
Note: This entry in its entirety is copyright © 2011 by Gregory Maguire.
Frances Mayes
John Gillooly
SELECTED WOEKS
Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life (2010)
A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller (2006)
In Tuscany (2000)
Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy (1999)
Under the Tuscan Sun (1996)
Inspiration Italy inspires my recent writing, but in my long life reading for me is the most immediate and joyous inspiration. Good books make me want to write and have done so since I was about eight. The two pleasures are completely intertwined.
On Writing I think of myself as an image-based writer. I love the tactile, visual, auditory world and find my ideas work best when I can recreate a sensuous image. I first learned this from Keats, then later from one of my all time favorite writers, Colette.
Readers Frequently Ask “How did you first start writing about Italy?” The answer? I just settled into a house that was at home in the landscape. I thought if I lived there I could be at home, too. Turns out, that was the right instinct. The place itself gave me the five books I have written there. I spontaneously changed from writing poetry to writing memoir. The new life seemed to demand it. I simply could not break off my lines and I soon had to buy a bigger notebook. There's a plenitude that I experience living in Tuscany and I think my genre had to accommodate that in a new way.
Influences on My Writing As mentioned, Keats and Colette for their profound grasp of image. Collectively, all the southern writers seeped into my psyche early on. Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, James Agee, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Conrad Aiken, Margaret Mitchell - they all knew that place is fate, that is, who you are is where you are.
FRANCES MAYES'S SUMMER SHRIMP SALAD
Makes 6–8 servings
This recipe travels happily between my kitchens in Tuscany and North Carolina. I think it's more Southern than Tuscan, but any summer table will definitely be graced by its presence. I prefer wild-caught shrimp. This can be a main course event, served with toothpicks as an hors d'oeuvre, or as a first course. Leftovers can reappear in a frittata or be stirred at the last minute into risotto.
Note: The shrimp must marinate for 24 hours.
FOR THE MARINADE
¼ cup tarragon wine vinegar or champagne vinegar
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon good quality mustard
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground paprika
Splash of hot sauce
A few sprigs of thyme
1 green pepper, seeded and chopped into postage stamp-sized pieces
3 shallots, minced
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
FOR THE SHRIMP
4 tablespoons butter
2–3 garlic cloves, smashed
1½ pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 cup chopped fresh parsley, to stir in before serving
FOR THE SALAD
1 large bunch arugula
2 avocados, peeled, pitted, and sliced
1 mango, peeled, pitted, and sliced
Lemon wedges
1 Mix all marinade ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.
2 To prepare the shrimp: In a medium skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add garlic cloves and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add shrimp and sauté until no longer gray — sunrise pink! — about 3 minutes.
3 Use a slotted spoon to transfer shrimp to marinade bowl, and combine well. Cover and marinate, chilled, for 24 hours.
4 Before serving, stir the parsley into the marinating shrimp. Spoon shrimp over a platter of arugula, reserving the marinade. Arrange avocado and mango slices around the sides of the platter, drizzle them with a little of the marinade, and add the lemon wedges. Pass the remaining marinade around on the side.
Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Victoria Will
SELECTED WORKS
Over You (2011)
Nanny Returns (2009)
The Real Real (2009)
Dedication (2007)
Citizen Girl (2004)
The Nanny Diaries (2002)
Inspiration We have lunch together every day before we start working and we chew over the topics of the day, paying special attention to angles of stories that aren't being addressed. For example, in 2000 we were obsessed that endless stories were running in New York City media about how hard it was for the newly rich to find decent household help, but the help was never interviewed for these reports. So if there's a side of the story that is being underserved, we'll puzzle over that. We often have “a-ha” moments, when one of us will crystallize one of the topics we've been mulling over into a story. Then Nicki gets teary and the hair on Emma's neck stands on end and we know we've found our next book.
The Joy of Working with Friends It's hard for us to believe, but this will be our tenth year of writing collaboratively and Nanny Returns is our fifth published novel. A few interesting facts about our partnership:
1. We have date night. When in the phase of generating a first draft we try to see each other once a week for a movie or the theater. We always get that delicious high school feeling like it's been FOREVER since we hung out, even though we've talked a minimum of five times on the phone that day. And we won't even count the e-mails.
2. We have codependent food fixations. When on tour, one of us will invariably say, “Ooo, do you think they'll have _____ here?” (Fill in the blank with some random local treat.) Invariably “they” will not, and neither will the local diner, bakery, or supermarket. Cut to us trying to construct key lime pie/peanut butter cupcake/baked Alaska from an assortment of over priced stale goods out of a mini bar fridge.
3. We believe in the Law of Attraction. Call it what you will — the power of intention, cognitive behavioral therapy, if you build it he will come - but after a decade of partnership we've learned that holding a positive vision is job criteria numero uno.
Readers Frequently Ask Describe the writing process you have developed.
We actually stumbled onto a process with our first novel (The Nanny Diaries) and, while we have gone on to hone and refine it over the past decade, it has essentially remained the same. Once we have the seed of an idea, we spend several weeks outlining the core elements of the story: primary and periphery characters, each of their arcs, A and B plots, and timeframe. We then break this outline into scenes, each take separate scenes, go off to our own homes and generate them, e-mail them to each other, edit them for each other, and then string them into one document. Once we have this first draft, we sit together and go over it line by line on the computer, on paper, and frequently out loud, until it is ready to go to print. And of course, our editor gets to weigh in at multiple junctures along the way.
How have your lives changed since The Nanny Diaries became a movie?
Our lives actually changed the most when the book came out, in that its unexpected success allowed us to leave our “day jobs” and begin to write full time. This is a huge blessing anywhere, but particularly when you live in New York City. Then the working from home thing allowed us to get dogs, who are spectacular. They keep us getting up from the computer and are our mostly companions, to quote Kay Thompson's Eloise. When the movie came out our lives changed in that we had the thrill of watching artists we had enormous respect for give life to this story we had written side by side on Nicki's Mac with a package of Oreos. It remains a completely surreal experience for which we are thoroughly grateful.
Influences on Our Writing David Sedaris's Santaland Diaries was a HUGE influence on us because it was a fresh way of talking about the workplace, with a blend of biting sardonic humor and pathos that resonated with us and helped to inform the voice of Nan, the heroine of The Nanny Diaries and Nanny Returns. We were also inspired by the naturalistic style of his voice, which made you feel like you were being told a crazy story by your favorite story-teller friend. It had an intimacy and immediacy. It gave us the courage to try writing in our own voices, to capture our story in the rhythms we would tell it to a friend over drinks. We played with stringing words together, italics and capitalization to capture the feeling of a moment — a technique that drove our copy editors crazy but has since been adopted by other writers in our genre.
GRANDMA'S PARK AVENUE PLUM TORTE
Makes 8 servings
From “an ancient New York Times recipe” (September 21, 2005)
We found each other at an ATM machine on East 86th Street, slurping the sort of triple caramel something-iattos that could put a girl in a sugar coma until she's retired. We promptly discovered that not only were we both students at NYU, but we were both nannies! And our mad passionate overnight friendship was off and running. Emma's “gig” required her to cook three different three-course dinners a night (macrobiotic for the wife, child-friendly for her charge, and comfort food for the soon-to-be divorced husband) in a galley kitchen with a four-burner stove and no microwave. She did not, however, know a thing about baking, as her employers miraculously didn't “believe” in dessert. Nicki, meanwhile, had managed to dodge elaborate chef responsibilities, but had developed the nasty habit of drowning her nannying sorrows in prodigious after hours baking, everything from Krispie treats to a dacquoise, depending on how harrowing the day. Joining forces, we discovered we could throw one heck of a dinner party. In college, boys' behavior is not so far from toddlers' when it comes to social gatherings, so this was a particularly good fit. It was the summer of '95, with record-breaking heat in Manhattan. We'd crack open the vodka, throw in a few ice cubes, and set the oven to preheat.
Five years later we sat down to imagine The Nanny Diaries. We were no longer nannies but not yet writers, and we had joined the working drones that ordered in pizza or met each other for cheap sushi. Emma had developed post-traumatic stress from her nanny/chef past and ignored her closet-sized kitchen. Nicki had taken on the gym and her glycemic index and stored shoes in her oven. Clutching mugs in various coffee shops, we imagined the character of Nan's Grandma to represent wealth done right. Grandma is someone who has all the resources that the villains, the X family, also have, at her disposal, and yet she chooses to live a passionate, engaged life. Grandma would support our thesis by showing that it isn't wealth that rotted the Xs, it's the values that informed what they did with it.
We recently wrote the novel's sequel, Nanny Returns, which fictionally kicks off twelve years later. Much like our heroine, we, too, are now married and starting families of our own. We have finally learned kitchen moderation. Nicki is still the baker and Emma still the chef and our ovens are getting regular use in the manner in which they were intended. Grandma has once again taken on her life with gusto and we imagine her hosting a reunion for Nan and her college friends, topping off the evening with an elegant and luscious plum tart — Emma's favorite from Nicki's repertoire. May it bring your book group a delicious discussion!
And P.S. If you must know, we still indulge in those triple carmel something-iattos when on tour. So if you see us slurping in O'Hare, don't judge; we've put in our time.
Note: The total time to prepare this recipe is 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Italian prune plums are small and egg-shaped, and their firm texture holds up well when baked. They're available for a few weeks each year, starting in early September. When Italian plums are not in season, you can use any pit fruit, including cherries, larger plums, and peaches. For larger plums and peaches, use about 5 pieces of ripe fruit, and cut each into 6 pieces. One 10-ounce bag of flash frozen berries placed on top of the batter works well, too. Whichever fruit you use, don't be shy; make sure to push the fruit gently into the batter so as to fit in as much as possible.
¾ cup sugar, plus about ½ teaspoon for sprinkling
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
; 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs
12 Italian prune plums, pitted and halved (see note)
About ½ teaspoon sugar, for topping
About ¾ teaspoon cinnamon, for sprinkling
1 Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease sides only of an 8″, 9″, or 10″ springform pan.
2 Cream sugar and butter in bowl of an electric mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 1 minute. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and eggs, and beat well.
3 Spoon the batter into prepared pan, and spread to evenly cover the bottom (a frosting spreader works well). Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter (see note). Combine ½ teaspoon sugar (or more, depending on the sweetness of the fruit) and cinnamon in a small dish. Sprinkle mixture over top of batter.
4 Bake for 40–50 minutes, until dough is golden brown. Remove to wire rack and cool for 10 minutes. Remove sides of pan, cool to lukewarm, and serve (the torte stays on the springform base through serving). Or, refrigerate or freeze if desired. To freeze, double wrap the torte in foil after cooling, place in a plastic bag, and seal. To serve a torte that has been frozen, defrost and reheat it briefly at 300°F.
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Liane R. Harrison
SELECTED WOEKS
The Girl Who Had No Face (2011)
No Time to Wave Goodbye (2009)
Still Summer (2007)
Cage of Stars (2006)
The Deep End of the Ocean (1996)
The Power of Stories The world is filled with stories, and these stories are the way we explain ourselves to ourselves, to others, to history. They're the way we tell our children: this is how you came to be born; or this is how your grandmother looked … you never met her but she loved to sing the song “Always” to me, just as I sing it to you. In our family, stories told around a table were the way to have power. If you could make someone laugh or cry with a story, that was power. Now, ever since I got hold of a few books when I was a very young girl, maybe twelve, I went nuts over the power of writing them down. These were books like Gone With the Wind, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Marjorie Morningstar, and (my mother didn't know I found this one) Another Country, by James Baldwin. I wanted to write for more than my family. I do this for my living because that response from people, the one I had as a twelve-year-old, is as much power as a human being can have. More than beauty or money or political clout.