The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  2 Not his name.

  3 In addition to being an assistant research professor, I also wrote virtually full time (freelance) for the computer press and eventually started my own journal on scientific computation, as well as teaching international seminars on laboratory automation, data acquisition and analysis, and all the hot technology of the early eighties. Wrote tons of documentation, tutorials, and assorted guff.

  4 In retrospect, this was clearly insane. But you can’t let considerations of that sort stop you.

  5 I still do the bulk of my writing at night, usually between midnight and 4:00 a.m.

  6 Hate writing grant proposals.

  7 We don’t accept the notion that giving up before you start is a valid choice. Dismiss it from your mind.

  8 Then again, maybe they don’t…

  9 NPR always has the best interviewers. A real pleasure to talk books and writing with any one of them.

  10 Yes, there are hurricanes off the coast of Georgia in the spring. The U.S. government, for reasons best known to itself, collects and publishes all sorts of factual arcana, and among these is a sprightly volume that lists every hurricane recorded as having touched the coasts of the States since 1795 or so. Check out the U.S. Government Printing Office sometime; the results are either horrifying (if you’re a taxpayer) or fascinating (if you’re a researcher of any sort).

  11 Some astute readers have noticed the large number of orphans in the books: Claire, Roger, Fergus, Jane, and Fanny…In part, this is just a matter of emotional and logistic simplification. If you have people being moved around in time and/or space and subjected to physical and emotional upheaval, and they have parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, etc., all over the place, and you wish them to be normal people with feelings of empathy and attachment—then everything’s going to be much harder if you jerk them out of their setting, and they’re constantly having to worry about the effect of their disappearance on a parent or sibling or wonder what on earth Great-Aunt Maude will think when they don’t turn up for their usual once-a-month visit at the nursing home….

  12 It’s pronounced “FY-er-ee.” (As in “Fire.”) I was quite surprised, when this book was published, to find how many people had evidently never encountered the word, as readers constantly asked me if it was “The FEE-ry Cross…?”

  13 The Romans used large economy-sized caltrops to disable charging elephants, while modern day highway-patrol units use smaller ones to stop fleeing cars. It’s a versatile weapon.

  14 I told my various editors for a year before publication that I wanted an octopus on the cover of the book (I’m fond of octopuses, and there are eight major viewpoint characters—with attached story lines—in the book). The usual response to my cover suggestions is a polite silence, obviously in hopes that I will come to my senses before anything actually has to be done. As it was, I found a very beautiful octothorpe—and after frustrating several attempts on the parts of various art departments to hide it in a brooch or other piece of jewelry (as I pointed out to a new U.K. editor, “Male historical novelists get castles and swords; the female ones always get jewelry. You might as well stamp WOMEN ONLY on the cover, and I don’t write women’s fiction. We’re not doing that.” And to their credit, we didn’t. I got a castle, a sword, and a number of other interesting icons, only two of which look like brooches, but at least they look like they could be the sort you clasp a military cloak with. I just don’t do girly), we compromised on the wax seal with embedded octothorpe. It’s a less striking design than the simple black octothorpe-on-white-background I’d originally envisioned, but it has more story value.

  RECIPES

  ou know,” my husband observed over dinner the other night, “nobody’s going to have to write a biography of you, or do scholarly analysis of your books, or theorize about what you were like after you’re dead. You already wrote it all down for them.”

  He’s, um, not exactly wrong there. My favorite review (so far) of The Outlandish Companion, Volume One (Revised and Updated), describes my style as “endearingly garrulous….”

  Actually, it’s just what I call the “teacher gene.” I feel a great compulsion to explain things accurately—and as completely as possible. (Or, as my husband puts it, “You’re congenitally incapable of losing an argument.”) I can’t say that this book is a complete picture, either of the Outlander books or of me—but it does probably add to the corpus. And two of the questions that people often ask me—which aren’t specifically addressed in this book—are 1) what’s your daily routine like? and 2) what do you like to do when you’re not writing?

  The first question there will have to wait, because my daily routine is changing pretty much…well, daily, at this point, given that I’ve added “show consultant” and “scriptwriter” to my résumé, that I’m constantly invited to go do weird but interesting things (in March of this year, I was invited to speak at the Oxford Literary Festival—a great honor!—and the very next day, I was invited to come be “godmother” to a river cruise ship, christen it in France, and sail down the Seine for four days. Neither of which were things I’d ever thought of doing, but both great fun), and that I do have a lovely husband with whom I like to spend my time, and we often go places and do things that have nothing whatever to do with my work, thank God….

  But as to the second…Well, when I’m not writing, I read. Lots. All the time. (See “The Methadone List.”) I knit, as time and the necessity to sign billions of books, tip-in sheets, and book plates allows. I watch old science fiction/fantasy movies, Perry Mason and Twilight Zone reruns, and Alice in Wonderland on TV with my husband. I watch the daily footage from the Outlander show by myself. I dig in my garden (I grow salad vegetables, herbs, and flowers. I grow grapes, too, but mostly by accident. And the ants eat them). And I cook.

  Enchiladas

  My father was always one to recognize both merit and shortcomings. Consequently, while he was often generous with praise, all his compliments came with a “BUT…” attached. “This is wonderful, BUT…”

  In fact, I remember only three unqualified compliments from him. Thirty years ago, he told me that my swimming stroke was perfect. Twenty years ago, he told me that my children were beautiful. And on Christmas Day, two weeks before he died, he told me that my enchiladas were as good as his. (I have witnesses!)

  Christmas Day was the last time I saw him. But he’ll always be with me, in the pull of water past my arms, in the faces of my children—and in the smell of garlic and chili, floating gently through the air of my kitchen.

  For them as don’t know, an enchilada is an item of traditional Mexican food, composed of a tortilla (mostly corn tortillas) rolled into a cylinder around some type of filling (traditionally cheese but can be anything from chicken or beef to spinach, mushrooms, and seafood, particularly in nouveau Southwest or turista restaurants), covered with spicy sauce, and baked.

  The traditional (cheese) form requires:

  garlic

  olive oil

  flour (a few tablespoons)

  tomato sauce

  red chili (in any usable form: puree, frozen, powdered, or already mixed with the tomato sauce, which is my preferred variety; I use El Pato–brand tomato sauce, which has the chili already in it)

  canola oil (or other light cooking oil)

  cheddar cheese

  white or yellow onion

  corn tortillas

  I’m not giving quantities as such, because you can make enchiladas in any quantity—but if you’re going to the trouble, you might as well make a lot of them. (They freeze well, though the tortillas will degrade when frozen and give you enchilada casserole rather than discrete enchiladas.)

  As a rule of thumb, a pound of cheese will make about a dozen enchiladas; sauce takes about one to one-and-a-half cans of El Pato and about three to four tablespoons of olive oil. I almost always use three cans of El Pato and end up with two and a half to three dozen enchiladas.

  Procedure:

  All right. For
starters, mince four or five cloves of garlic finely. Cover the bottom of a heavy saucepan with olive oil (about ⅛-inch deep) and sauté the garlic in the oil (the bits of garlic should just about cover the bottom of the pan). Cook until the garlic turns BROWN, but be careful not to burn it.

  Turn heat down to low (or pull the pan off the burner temporarily) and add flour, a little at a time, to make a roux (about the consistency of library paste). Add the El Pato (or plain tomato sauce) and stir into the roux. Add water, in an amount equal to the tomato sauce (I just fill up the El Pato cans with water and dump them in). Stir over low heat to mix, squishing out any lumps that may occur. If you used plain tomato sauce, add chili to taste (or if you use El Pato and want it hotter, add extra chili).

  Leave on very low heat, stirring occasionally, WHILE:

  1) Heating oil (I use canola oil, but you can use any vegetable oil, including olive) in a small, heavy frying pan over medium heat, and watching it as it gets hot; if it starts to smoke, it’s too hot—turn it down.

  2) Grating cheese.

  3) Chopping onion coarsely.

  At this point, the sauce should have thickened slightly and will cling to a spoon, dripping slowly off. Turn off the heat under the sauce. (If at any time the sauce seems too thick, stir in a little more water.)

  Now put out a clean dinner plate for assembling the enchiladas and a baking dish to put the completed ones in.

  With a pair of tongs, dip a fresh corn tortilla briefly (just long enough for the oil to sputter—two to three seconds) into the hot oil. Let excess oil run off into the pan, then dip the now-flexible tortilla into the sauce, sort of laying it back and forth with the tongs to coat both sides.

  Lay the coated tortilla on the dinner plate (and put down the tongs). Take a good handful of cheese and spread a thick line of it across the center of the tortilla (you’re aiming for a cylinder about two fingers thick). If you like onions in your enchiladas (I don’t, but Doug does, so I make half and half), sprinkle chopped onions lightly over the cheese. Roll the tortilla into a cylinder—fold one side over the cheese, then roll up the rest of the way—and put the enchilada in the baking dish. (They won’t have a lot of sauce on them at this point.)

  When the baking dish is full, ladle additional sauce to cover the enchiladas thoroughly, and sprinkle additional cheese on top for decoration (I also sprinkle a few onions at one end of the baking dish, so I know which end is onion). Bake at 300 degrees for ten to fifteen minutes—until cheese is thoroughly melted—you can see clear liquid from the melted cheese bubbling at the edge of the dish, and the enchiladas will look as though they’ve “fallen in” slightly, rather than being firmly rounded. Serve (with a spatula).

  The method is the same for other kinds of enchiladas; you’d just make the filling (meat, seafood, etc.) as a separate step ahead of time, and use as you do cheese. For chicken enchiladas, brown diced chicken slowly in a little oil with minced garlic, onion, and cilantro (coriander leaf)—red and green bell pepper optional, and in very small quantity.

  It usually takes me a little more than an hour to do three dozen enchiladas, start to finish. Once the sauce is made, cheese grated, etc., though, the assembly is pretty fast.

  Hope y’all enjoy them!

  —Diana

  * * *

  Drunk Chicken Pasta Salad

  Warning: This is kind of addictive, so if you want leftovers, make a lot of it.

  Ingredients:

  garlic (lots)

  1 medium red onion

  extra-virgin olive oil

  3–4 large chicken breasts (1 breast per person, but you can’t usually fit more than 4 in a large sauté pan)

  tequila (any kind)

  bottled margarita mix

  1 lb. asparagus

  2–4 T. butter

  rosemary

  basil

  marjoram

  oregano

  6–7 large mushrooms (just the usual white or brown cèpe type, though if you really like other kinds, you can certainly substitute or use them in addition. Just be careful if you use portobello, as the gills will shed dark stuff all over the pasta)

  1 lb. farfalle (bow tie) pasta (I like Barilla, myself)

  artichoke hearts—2 small jars or 1 large one

  about 1 cup of olives (pitted, preferably, and strong-flavored, but any kind you like. Spanish queen olives are good; so are kalamata and the big green Greek olives. I don’t recommend the little Sicilian ones, just because they’re such a pain to cut up)

  1 pkg. Good Seasons Zesty Italian salad-dressing mix

  a good balsamic vinegar

  fresh Romano or Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded

  1 very large bowl

  Procedure:

  Okay. To start, you mince up four or five (or six or seven, depending on size and how much you like garlic) cloves of garlic, plus about a third of the red onion. Sauté two-thirds of the minced garlic and all the chopped onion in a deep frying pan with enough olive oil to cover, and add some rosemary.

  Trim the chicken breasts, then gash each one deeply several times on both sides. Put chicken in the sauté pan to brown, and pour a tablespoon or so of tequila over each breast. As the chicken cooks, alternate additional applications of tequila with equal applications of margarita mix. As the chicken browns, the liquid in the pan will cook slowly down into a thick blackish glaze; make sure the breasts are well coated on both sides with this. Continue until chicken is completely cooked through, then set aside on chopping board.

  While the chicken is browning, sauté the remaining third of the minced garlic and red onion in a couple of tablespoons of melted butter. Break cleaned asparagus into small pieces (one or two inches long) and add to sauté pan. Add herbs, finely minced. Add sliced mushrooms, stirring frequently. When asparagus is tender and mushrooms have absorbed all the butter, set aside.

  Cook the pasta in a large quantity of boiling water. While it’s cooking, quarter the olives, halve the artichoke hearts, and slice the remaining red onion into thin rings.

  Mix the Good Seasons salad-dressing package with balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil.

  Dice the cooked chicken breasts.

  In a very large bowl, combine a) the sliced olives, artichokes, and onions, b) the sautéed asparagus and mushrooms, c) the diced “drunk” chicken, and d) the cooked bow-tie pasta. Slosh about three-quarters of the salad dressing over the mixture and toss thoroughly.

  Serve warm, with fresh Romano or Parmesan cheese grated or shredded on top and additional dressing as desired. (If you do manage to have leftovers, it’s very good cold, though you can of course reheat it.)

  It’s not at all difficult, but it is time-consuming; it normally takes me about an hour and a half to do. Worth it, though!

  —Diana

  * * *

  New Year’s Green Chili

  What do you want to eat on New Year’s Day? Well, if you ask a Scot what the ideal breakfast is to follow a proper Hogmanay piss-up, it’s a sausage square or bacon butty,1 washed down with a can of Irn-Bru.2

  If you ask a New Mexican, though…it’s green chili, with eggs, beans, tortillas, or all three.

  This is my father’s green chili, which I watched him make hundreds of times. He never wrote down the recipe, but it’s a fairly easy dish—and it’s one that gets better with standing, so good to make it the day or night before.

  Ingredients:

  oil—I use olive oil, but my dad used corn oil (the only “vegetable oil” commonly available at that time), and canola, safflower, or any other oil you like will work fine

  6 or 7 cloves garlic, minced

  an equivalent amount of onion, minced

  1–2 lbs. diced/sliced lean beef—any kind will do, but try to get some without a lot of gristle or fat. The sort you’d use for stir-fry is good

  2 cans Ro-Tel tomatoes. I use the kind spiced with lime and cilantro, but there are several types; any that you like will work. This recipe specifically requires Ro-Tel c
anned tomatoes, though; I take no responsibility for how it turns out if you use something else

  a few spoonfuls of flour—regular wheat flour (unless you’re gluten free, in which case use quinoa or whatever works for you)

  2 cans hot green chilis (diced)

  2 cans mild green chilis (diced)

  You can adjust the proportions of hot and mild to suit your own palate. Using an equal amount of each produces a dish that’s spicy but not hot enough to burn your mouth.

  Procedure:

  Use a large cooking pot—four quarts or so. Put in enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Add the minced garlic and onions and sauté over medium heat, stirring now and then, until the alliums (the garlic and onions) just begin to brown.

  Add meat and brown, stirring frequently. When meat is completely browned, sprinkle it with flour. You want to coat the meat but not have big lumps of flour, so just stir it in a little at a time.

  Dump in the tomatoes and green chilis and stir.

  This is basically it. The rest is just cooking: you need to simmer this for at least an hour (more is better), stirring every ten minutes or so to prevent sticking or scorching, and adding a little water every so often as it cooks down (you’re aiming for a consistency rather like freshly cooked oatmeal, though tastes differ—some people prefer a thinner, more watery consistency, which is fine. Just add water to achieve the texture you like).

  Once the chili is made, you can turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let it stand overnight, heating it up to eat the next day. You can eat it fresh, but it’s really better if it stands; the acids from the tomatoes and chilis tenderize the meat and mingle to give the dish a deeper flavor.

  Serving:

  Green chili can be eaten alone, in a bowl with a spoon—or you can make burritos of it (my own personal favorite), spooning a line of green chili down the middle of a flour tortilla (any size), with or without beans added, then folding over one side of the tortilla, folding up the bottom, and folding over the other side. (Pinto beans are traditional, and the kind I always use for this. I don’t usually bother cooking the beans myself, though; Ranch Style pinto beans in a can work fine.)