SALMON SPREAD
Makes about 2½ cups
I first made this recipe when I was twenty-one and the final step called for making an actual ball and rolling it in slivered almonds and parsley. I never made that work and no one has ever complained.
1 14.75-ounce can of red salmon, drained, large bones removed
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
2 tablespoons grated onion
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley, plus parsley sprigs for garnish
½ teaspoon salt
Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix until very smooth (a wooden spoon works just fine). Chill thoroughly. Garnish with parsley sprigs, and serve with crackers or crudités.
AUNT EFFIE'S CHEESE STRAWS
Makes approximately 3 dozen (3-inch) crackers
Note: Commercial cheese straws tend to be cylindrical, but our family recipe yields more of a ridged, rectangular cracker, about 1 inch wide and 2–4 inches long. You will need a heavy-duty cookie press to make these crackers.
You can make the dough with a food processor or with your hands — literally. The hand method is for the truly intrepid. Personally, I find it's a decent workout.
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 8-ounce package sharp yellow cheddar, shredded (about 2½ cups), at room temperature
1½ cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 Preheat oven to 375°F.
2 Place butter, cheese, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper in the bowl of a food processor. Process until a thick, smooth dough forms, about 1 minute. Or, mash butter and cheese together using your hands. Sift flour, salt, and cayenne pepper together and blend, again using your hands, into cheese/butter mixture. Continue to work mixture with your hands for at least 15 minutes, until it becomes a rich, thick dough and has lost all crumbliness.
3 Fit the disk with the flat, ridged opening into the cookie press. Scoop a portion of the dough into the cookie press. Press dough into rectangles, 2–4 inches in length, on an ungreased baking sheet. (In an emergency, you can pinch off pieces of dough and flatten them with the bottom of a juice glass which has been greased and lightly floured. I've done this when my cookie press has broken midway through a batch.)
4 Bake for 20–28 minutes. Timing varies wildly. Look for light browning on the bottom, and no browning (or barely any) on the tops. Remove to wire rack and allow to cool.
THEO LIPPMAN JR.'S FAVORITE MARTINI
Makes 1 drink
Note: My father started making this drink in the 1960s, long before the explosion of specialty martinis and 12-ounce martini glasses to accommodate them. Choose a smaller cocktail glass for this classic drink.
½ ounce dry vermouth
2 ounces gin
Small wedge of lemon
1 In a shot glass that holds up to two ounces, pour ½ ounce of dry vermouth. Pour this into a martini glass and swirl to coat the inside of the glass. Pour half the vermouth back into the bottle, and half into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes.
2 Add 2 ounces of gin to the shaker. (Yes, that's an 8 to 1 ratio. Why not just start with an 8 to 1 ratio? I think the swirl of gin adds a little extra and, besides, my father believes that it's important to have an anal retentive martini ritual.) Shake, and strain into the glass. Rub the lemon wedge around the rim of the glass, squeezing gently, then drop it into the drink.
Margot Livesey
Rob Hann, Retna Ltd.
SELECTED WOEKS
The House on Fortune Street (2008)
Banishing Verona (2004)
Eva Moves the Furniture (2001)
The Missing World (2000)
Criminals (1996)
Homework (1990)
Inspiration The House on Fortune Street had several inspirations: my love of nineteenth century literature, my fascination with how people's lives change over time, a brief encounter with someone, like my character Cameron, whose desires have no place in this world.
What Keeps Me Writing? I have two very hard working sisters in Scotland; one runs a market research company, the other is the head teacher in a primary school. They are both ardent readers and when I write I'm always trying to keep them awake at night a little bit longer.
Readers Frequently Ask Was Eva, from my novel Eva Moves The Furniture, based on a real person? Yes, on my mother. I know very little about her, though, so my character is largely (and lovingly) imagined.
Books That Have Influenced My Writing Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is, as I hope The House on Fortune Street makes clear, a huge influence. My dear friend, the wonderful writer Andrea Barrett, guides both my reading and my writing. I grew up reading and watching Shakespeare, and he still remains my benchmark for character, plot, and, above all, language.
ABIGAIL'S PASTA
Makes 4 servings
Abigail's pasta is borrowed from my Edinburgh sister.
Abigail, the owner of the titular house on Fortune Street, learns to make this from her friend Dara's mother, Fiona. She whips this up the unfortunate evening when she drops in to visit Fiona and instead finds herself alone with Fiona's husband Alastair, Dara's stepfather.
I always put in more of my favorite ingredients — anchovies and pine nuts — but somehow it works out.
Note: Tagliatelle works well, but so would linguine or any not-too-chunky pasta. I'm allowing 2 ounces of pasta per person but for guests with hearty appetites, allow a little extra.
8 ounces pasta (see note)
4 tablespoons pine nuts
¼ cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound fresh spinach, roughly chopped
½ cup raisins
1 2-ounce tin anchovies (chopped if you prefer)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 Prepare pasta according to package directions.
2 While pasta is boiling, toast pine nuts in a small skillet over low heat (it's easy to burn them so don't get distracted). Remove from heat and set aside.
3 In a large skillet, heat olive oil over low heat and sauté garlic for 30 seconds. Add spinach and sauté, stirring frequently until spinach is soft and almost completely cooked. Add raisins and stir for a couple of minutes. Remove from heat.
4 Place cooked pasta in a serving dish. Add spinach to cooked pasta and toss. Stir in anchovies (they dissolve but leave a nice sharp taste). Sprinkle with pine nuts and add Parmesan cheese (I always go a little overboard on this). Serve with good bread and lively conversation.
DARA'S CARROT AND GINGER SOUP
Makes 6 servings
From The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (Workman, 1985)
Dara makes this soup for her father soon after she moves into the garden flat in The House on Fortune Street. She hopes this delicious soup will both make the flat seem more like home and impress her father with her adult competence.
6 tablespoons butter
1 large yellow onion, chopped
¼ cup finely chopped fresh gingerroot
3 garlic cloves, minced
7 cups vegetable stock
1 cup dry white wine
1½ pounds carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Pinch of curry powder
Salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste
Chopped chives or parsley, for garnish
1 Melt butter in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add onion, ginger, and garlic and sauté for fifteen minutes.
2 Add stock, wine, and carrots. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, uncovered, over medium heat until the carrots are very tender, about 45 minutes.
3 Purée the soup in a blender or food processor until smooth (Dara, in London, would
have used a mouli).
4 Return to pot, and season with lemon juice, curry powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chives or parsley. Serve hot or chilled to appreciative family members and friends.
Gregory Maguire
Andy Newman
SELECTED WOEKS
The Next Queen of Heaven (2009)
A Lion Among Men (2008)
Son of a Witch (2005)
Mirror Mirror (2003)
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995)
Where I Find Inspiration Two quotes bully themselves forward clamoring for attention: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” and “Still will I harvest Beauty where it grows,” from Robert Herrick and Edna St. Vincent Millay, respectively. Both quotes suggest the notions of scavenging, salvage, and even theft. I am inspired in writing by my heroes (Maurice Sendak, Tony Kushner, Penelope Fitzgerald, Lucy Boston, and Emily Dickinson to name the first of hundreds who come to mind). The tiniest accident of concurrence — a visual thing, a scrap of memory pasted against a new understanding of human character, a spiral of melody, a dream image only partly recalled — can serve as the sand in the oyster. And so often does; and so efficiently that usually I cannot recall what the original fleck of sand was. Still, I try to pay attention to as much as I possibly can, for my work as well as for my satisfaction in daily life.
Readers Should Know My critical monograph on Maurice Sendak, Making Mischief, codifies some of what I mention above in that I itemize his heroes, the sources of some of his images, and I admire what he makes of his particular sand. (Well, Blake is a very fancy bit of grit.) It also reminds me how to work and keep worthy heroes and muses in mind. I'm hard at work on the fourth, and I think final, volume of The Wicked Years, my series that began with Wicked. I have several quotes and bits of poetry as epigrams and a couple of CDs of Fauré set aside to listen to. I also have several years' worth of scraps of questions and conceits about the characters in Oz, scraps that have occurred to me at irregular intervals while I was working on other projects.
Readers Frequently Ask Readers seem endlessly fascinated about the relationship among the following creations: The Wizard of Oz, both the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 MGM film starring Judy Garland, and the 1995 novel I wrote called Wicked as well as the 2003 play based on my novel.
I cannot always answer the questions. What I do find amusing is that some readers (and some reviewers) claim my book is more directly derived from the film, and others insist I follow Baum's inventions rather slavishly. In fact, I tried hard to derive my work in about equal parts from both iterations of the famous story, while at the same time adding novelty and dash of my own (as well as I was able).
Influences on My Writing I admire, and constantly applaud the influence of, T. H. White's magnum opus about King Arthur, published in omnibus edition as The Once and Future King. I did not see initially that Wicked was inspired by his efforts, but I found his taking of a familiar legend — King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table — and retelling it as if it had never been told before, through his particular sympathetic intelligence and artistry, to be (when I reconsidered it) the book I had read that most prefigured what I hoped to do in Wicked.
Also, interesting, isn't it, that The Once and Future King inspired a musical (Camelot), and so did my novel.
I have never stopped admiring, for its poetry and its moral sensibility, a fine American novel called Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen. I had already written Wicked when I read Mariette in Ecstasy, but I went on to read Hansen's novel, Hitler's Niece, which did much of what I had wanted to do in Wicked in a hugely different vernacular. Hansen is a shockingly capable writer who should be known by everyone. I envy and would love to be able to emulate his capacity to render in storytelling the pettiness and weariness of evil as well as its dreadful cost.
Finally, the English novelist Jill Paton Walsh — a friend of mine as well as a hero — wrote a book for teenagers called Unleaving. It is now, I believe, out of print, but certainly worth searching for in libraries or on out-of-print websites. Her capacity for articulating a moral conundrum in the most sensuous prose makes her, in this novel especially, a worthy descendent or follower of Virginia Woolf at her best.
Of those denizens of Oz, we know a few things. They can sing. They can dance. Some of them can fly. But can they cook?
Dear reader, let us take a voyage deeper into the mysteries of the place. Let's spend a little time with the backstairs support, the scuttlebutts of scullery and buttery. Let's pay some attention to the help behind the curtain. Welcome to the kitchens of Oz.
OH SWEET OZCRUST GLINDA TART* (LUNCH AT SHIZ UNIVERSITY — PART 1)
Makes 6–8 servings
(*No disrespectation intended in the phrase, Glinda Tart)
Glinda — you used to know her as Galinda but times change and she moves on, we all move on — replies to our request for a peek in her larder with a little squeal of protest. Then she pushes through the door to see what is there. (She has rarely been behind that door, as frightening things like pots and kettles and chefs are said to lurk within.)
Imagine her surprise, she tells us, to see things laid out so prettily, almost as if by magic, ready for assembly. A half dozen fresh peaches, sliced and arranged in a pretty design on a pink ceramic plate with scalloped edges. A lemon freshly squeezed and its pips removed, its juice waiting in a small cut-glass decanter. And rough but handsome pastry dough, chill to the touch but ready for manipulation on this convenient, broad, and floured board! Why, who knew cooking could be so easy? And such fun! She'll have to have friends over. She leaves the job half-done to go pen a few hundred notes, only to her very very closest friends, to come sample her baking. While she is gone, nameless staff come in and finish the job. Your nameless staff can do it, too. But if you should want to impress someone, anyone, do the whole thing yourself. (Glinda will not be able to visit; she is previously engaged, she urges me to mention. No matter when you write.)
Note: Use our tart dough recipe below or thawed commercial dough (unwrap it, and thump into lumpiness so Munchkins think you made it by hand the day before).
Dough for one 11-inch tart (see note and recipe)
6 ripe peaches or plums (about 1½ pounds of fruit or 3¾ cups), peeled and pitted
¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar, divided
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Whipped cream, for topping
1 Preheat oven to 450°F. On a lightly floured board, roll out the dough into an 11-inch circle. Transfer to a cookie sheet (lined with aluminum foil, if you prefer). Chill while preparing the fruit.
2 Cut fruit into wedges (about ½-inch). Melt butter in a large skillet and sauté the fruit over medium heat until soft but not broken up, 10–12 minutes. Sprinkle with lemon juice and ½ cup of sugar. As soon as sugar has dissolved, remove from heat and stir in flour.
3 Remove dough from refrigerator. With a slotted spoon, arrange fruit as attractively as your skills allow in the center of the dough, leaving most of the excess liquid in the skillet. Leave a 1½-inch border around the edges. Sprinkle with remaining ½ cup sugar.
4 Gently fold the border of the pastry over the fruit, leaving the center of the tart uncovered, pleating it to make an edge.
5 Bake for 20–25 minutes. Slide tart from cookie sheet (or remove with foil). Cool before serving. Serve with whipped cream.
TART DOUGH
Adapted from Cucina Simpatica: Robust Trattoria Cooking From Al Forno by Johanne Killeen and George Germon (Morrow, 1991)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 cup superfine sugar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter, diced
1/8 cup ice water, plus 1–2 teaspoons if needed
1 Place flour, sugar, and salt in food processor. Pulse a few times to
combine. Add butter. Pulse 15 times, or until butter pieces are pea-sized.
2 With motor running, add 1/8 cup ice water all at once through the feed tube. Process for about 15–20 seconds, or as soon as dough comes together. Add additional water as needed.
3 Turn dough out onto a well-floured board, roll into a ball, and press into a flat disk. Wrap disk in plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour in the refrigerator before using. Remove dough from refrigerator and allow to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before rolling. The dough may be refrigerated for up to 2 days, or frozen for up to 2 weeks.
ELPHABA'S LUNCH SANDWICH* (LUNCH AT SHIZ UNIVERSITY-PART II)
Makes 1 sandwich
(*supplied by the buttery at Shiz University)
Frankly, Miss Elphaba Thropp was not inclined to answer our request to supply a recipe. She has bigger fish to fry, though not literally she hastens to point out. Who knows if any individual fish might open its mouth and remonstrate against the situation in which it finds itself, browning in unsalted butter on a medium-high flame? Downright undignified.
However, spies who like to keep an eye on Elphaba have found the following in the extensive files kept on her in the archives of the Emerald City. They are not sure if there is any deep meaning or seditious intent in this recipe. Specialists from the “There's No Place like Homeland Security” bureau are still studying it, and believe they will be able to file a report within the decade.
1 scoop (2–3 tablespoons) softened goat cheese (was it generously donated or was it — horrors — appropriated from some incarcerated goat? Check this out!)
2 slices white bread
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 Page 15
