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 (8 page)

Nutritional yeast is an inactive yeast with a nutty, cheesy flavor. It is popular with vegans because of its similarity to cheese when added to food, and because it's a reliable source of protein and vitamin B12. Nutritional yeast is available at natural food stores and online.

1
Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2
To make the biscuits: In a large bowl, combine both flours, cornmeal, wheat bran, salt, and yeast. Add 2/3 cup of the chicken or turkey stock (or dissolved bouillon). Mix, and continue to add stock, one or two tablespoons at a time, until the batter forms a ball with the consistency of bread dough.

3
Roll out dough to ¼-inch thickness on a lightly floured board. Use a knife or cookie cutter to cut out shapes. (Bone shapes, about 3½ inches long, work well.) Place shapes on baking sheet.

4
To make the egg wash: Whisk together the egg and milk. Stir in garlic powder. Brush egg wash on shapes.

5
Bake for 40–45 minutes until shiny and golden brown. Turn off heat, and leave baking tray in oven for 6 hours (or overnight) to allow biscuits to harden.

Niall McDiarmid

SELECTED WOEKS

Little Bee
(2009)

Incendiary
(2005)

Inspiration
Real events, often communicated to me by friends who are reporters, inspire my writing. I write fiction about real themes in contemporary life. My belief is that real life is exciting and engaging, and that it is an admission of defeat to turn from it to fantasy or escapist genre. I try to go out with a reporter's eyes or, failing that, to borrow a reporter's eyes and find what I feel is the biggest story in town. Then I try to tell that story in the most unexpected way for the most adventurous readers. I like to write in the first person and to use quite intimate narration of ordinary people living through extraordinary events.

Readers Should Know
I think readers should know that I have two sides to my writing. My main work is the novels, but I have a lighter side too, which comes out on Fridays when I write a comedy column about my family for
The Guardian
newspaper. You can check it out on my website at
www.chriscleave.com
.
I also write stories for my kids, just to make them laugh, and one day I might publish some of them. Writing novels is a very committed and serious undertaking, and I find that having the lighter side too helps keep me happy and sane. I also ride my bike and swim a lot, because you go mad very quickly as a writer if you don't get physical exercise every day.

Readers Frequently Ask
The question I'm asked most often is how and why, as a man, I write from the point of view of female characters. There are many ways of answering the question. Sometimes I pretend that I lived as a woman until my early twenties. Other times I try to get closer to the truth, although in all honesty what writer can ever know the reasons for the stories that come out of him? I think I have always really liked women and found them good company, and because of that I've had the kind of conversations with women that have given me things to write about. Men don't talk so easily, so they're more of a closed book to me. That isn't to say that men aren't just as interesting, or just as complex. I simply haven't worked out a way to write about men yet.

Avoiding Influence
With the work of other writers (as with drugs and alcohol), I try never to work under the influence. Of course there are writers whose work I hugely admire. If I am to list just three books then I would choose
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens,
Germinal
by Émile Zola, and
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dickens because he used entertaining fiction to examine uncomfortable emotional truths in the make-up of the society he lived in; Zola for the same reason, and also because of his fanatical commitment to his project; and Stevenson because he knew how to tell a yarn in such a way that one's own brain endlessly chews over the story, filling in all the details and imagining plots, subplots and backstories within his narrative.

Makes 6 servings

When different cultures meet, their cuisines, like their stories, join.
Little Bee
is the story of the friendship between a Nigerian girl, the eponymous Little Bee, and an English woman, Sarah. My wife, who is a chef, created this recipe to celebrate that friendship.

Fish pie is a traditional and comforting British dish. Since Britain now has a thriving and successful Nigerian community, the traditional recipe is revisited here to give it a Nigerian twist, replacing the potato with yam, using tilapia for fish, seasoning it with lots of pepper, and livening it up with a hint of chile.

Here is how Little Bee and Sarah would cook it:

Note:
Wear plastic or rubber gloves while handling chiles to protect your skin from the oil in them. Avoid direct contact with your eyes and wash your hands thoroughly after handling.

1
In a large shallow sauce pan combine the milk, onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, a few parsley stalks, and the peppercorns.

2
Place the pan on low heat and add both types of fish fillets. When the milk begins to simmer, turn off the heat and leave the fish to poach gently for 2 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the fish from the milk. Strain the fish milk, saving the milk for the béchamel sauce. Discard the vegetables and herbs.

3
Peel the yam and cut it into even, small chunks. Place in a large pot, cover with water, add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Once boiling, cook for roughly 10 minutes until tender. Drain the water. Return to the pan and mash the yam adding 5½ tablespoons butter in cubes and pouring in a bit of the strained fish milk in order to get a nice textured mash. Season generously with lots of freshly ground pepper to taste. Set the mash aside.

4
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Make the béchamel sauce: In a large saucepan, on medium heat, melt the remaining 5½ tablespoons butter. Add the flour and stir well, leaving it to cook for a couple of minutes when starting to bubble. Pour in the fish milk, whisking constantly, reduce the heat and cook for 5 minutes until it thickens into a creamy sauce. Season with freshly ground pepper and a bit of salt. Roughly chop the remaining parsley. Add parsley and chile pepper to the béchamel.

5
Check for bones in the fillets and place the big chunks of fish into the béchamel, stirring them in gently so the fish doesn't break up too much.

6
Butter an ovenproof dish. Pour the fish and béchamel sauce into the dish and cover with spoonfuls of yam mash, gently spreading mash on top. Sprinkle a few cubes of butter on top. Place the dish in the oven, and cook for 20–30 minutes until it has a nice golden color and is bubbling.

SELECTED WOEKS

The House at Sugar Beach
(2008)

Inspiration
I like to read, I like to travel, I like to eat, and I like to live. I guess all of that inspires my writing.

Readers Should Know
Since my book, The House at Sugar Beach, came out, I've switched back to newspaper writing, the antithesis of memoir writing. I'm now the White House reporter for the
New York Times
.

Readers Frequently Ask
The question most people ask me is how my family members are doing, particularly my sister Eunice. And to that, my answer remains the same: great.

Authors Who Have Influenced My Writing

Chinua Achebe. This Nigerian writer was the first African writer I ever read. I had a Western education which didn't include African literature, so when I discovered Achebe on my own I was thrilled. He is so evocative, and an amazing storyteller, in the classic West African sense of the word, to boot. There's a lot of imagery and spirituality in his writing. Reading his books, from
Things Fall Apart
to
No Longer
at Ease, put me right in the middle of my home continent in the best way possible. I thought about him a lot when I was working on my book.

Alexandra Fuller. I read her memoir,
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
, while on the plane flying back to the United States from Iraq. Her writing is lyrical and her story, while completely different from my own, felt like my story at the same time. Her book was the model for my own. I kept going back to it, again and again, while I was working on The House at Sugar Beach. I so admire her honesty, and her ability to render her family in such a stark way while at the same time leaving the reader with no question of how much she loved them, warts and all.

Jane Austen. I know. Such a cliché. But come on, who can resist a happy ending? My recipes are all family recipes, and the recipes I've included represent classic Liberian cooking. This is the food I grew up on.

I was posted to the
Wall Street Journal
's London bureau the year I turned thirty, where, suddenly, I was deluged with invitations to dinner parties. There were these four to five-hour affairs that came complete with dessert wines and cheese courses; far more well-thought out than the pot of chili dinners I was used to having with my friends back in Washington.

After a few months of this, I realized that at some point, I would have to reciprocate. I was terrified — my cooking skills, at that point, veered toward spaghetti and mashed potatoes.

I was on the phone long distance with my mother, trying to come up with a menu, when she suggested I go Liberian. “I'll help you,” she said. “And even if it doesn't turn out well, they won't know the difference anyway.”

So, coached by my Mom, I had my first formal sit-down dinner party, in my one-bedroom apartment in Notting Hill, with eight folding chairs crowded around the rough pine table I had bought from Ikea. I had exactly eight plates, eight wineglasses, eight forks, eight knives.

About an hour before my guests were to arrive, one of them, Danny, called me to ask if he could bring a friend, who was visiting him. “I only have eight plates!” I said.

“So I'll bring a plate,” he replied. Which he did (along with a chair, knife, fork, and wineglass).

I served: potato greens, Shrimp Creole, rice, fried plantains, and ripe mangoes (peeled and sliced). This last dish served as a perfect dessert after this heavy meal.

Makes 4 servings

Note:
Although this dish has greens, it's more of a substantial main dish with chicken and beef. I couldn't find sweet potato leaves in London, so I substituted spinach.

1
Heat oil in a large stockpot or saucepan over medium high heat and sauté chicken pieces, in two batches if necessary, for about 10 minutes, until browned on each side. Remove chicken from pot and set aside. Add beef, and sauté until brown, about 5–10 minutes. Remove beef and set aside.

2
Add onion, bell pepper, and chile, and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the spinach, one bag at a time, until all four bags are incorporated. Add bouillon cubes and salt and pepper to taste. Return chicken and beef to the pot. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Add mushrooms and simmer for 10 more minutes.

3
Serve over white rice.

Makes 4 servings

Note:
You can buy fresh shrimp, or pick up frozen shrimp and thaw them. We leave the shell on for cooking and serving shrimp because that helps retain the flavor. It's peel and eat while on your plate, but I highly recommend first licking all the lovely Creole juice off the shrimp before peeling it.

Wear plastic or rubber gloves while handling chiles to protect your skin from the oil in them. Avoid direct contact with your eyes and wash your hands thoroughly after handling.

1
Season shrimp with paprika, salt, seasoned salt, and pepper, and toss to coat shrimp evenly.

2
Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat, and sauté shrimp on both sides until opaque, about 5 minutes.

3
Add remaining tablespoon of olive oil, onion, bell pepper, and chile, and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add okra, carrots, and water or broth. Simmer, stirring frequently, about 15 minutes. Add peas, adjust seasoning, and simmer another 10 minutes.

4
Serve over white rice.

1
Peel and slice plantains thinly (about 1/5-inch) lengthwise. Salt slices.

2
Heat oil in a sauté pan and fry plantain slices, about 2–3 minutes per side, until golden. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.