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 (34 page)

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Pour the dressing down the inside edge of the salad bowl, so it runs underneath the leaves and pools beneath them. (This dressing is best when brought up from underneath, instead of poured on top, because it can be thick and a bit heavy.) Place a thoroughly dampened paper towel on top of the lettuce to keep it moist, and allow the salad to sit “undressed” until ready to serve. To serve, remove paper towel and toss salad gently, bringing dressing up from underneath, until the leaves are coated.

Frédéric Masson

SELECTED WOEKS

The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith
(2010)

Inspiration
I am inspired by the people around me and the incredible stories they have to tell. In my memoir
The Bread of Angels
, I take my inspiration from the people I encountered during my year in Syria: my Armenian neighbor, the gossiping Arab Christians who inhabit the streets around me, philosophizing carpet sellers, and Muslim teachers and Christian monks and nuns who live and pray in the Middle East. When I write, I try not only to be honest about my own journeys and struggles, but also to find ways of listening to and learning from the journeys of the people I meet along the way. These days I live between Jerusalem and France, where I've encountered a whole new cast of teachers!

Writing to Heal
I have spent much of the last ten years of my life living in countries scarred by conflict and war. And yet I have always encountered the truest moments of beauty in these places. I found love in one of these places. For me, writing is a way of meditating on the beauty I find in the torn cities I've made my home in. I know that it is old fashioned and melodramatic to believe that writing can be a way to heal, but I try to believe that every working day. Maybe the only person I'm healing is myself, but that's a start, at least.

Readers Frequently Ask
I am always asked about what happened to my relationship with Frédéric, the French novice monk I fell in love with during my year in Syria. Did we run off together, or did he remain in the monastery to take his final vows? I always tell readers that they have to finish
The Bread of Angels
to find out, right through to the acknowledgments!

I am also often asked whether or not I miss Syria. The answer is yes, yes, yes. I miss Syria every day.

Influences on My Writing
One book I have carted all over the world with me is
The Cloister Walk
by Kathleen Norris. She writes movingly about her time as a lay poet living inside of a monastery, inspired by the rhythm of the prayers and the stories of the monks and nuns she meets. She is also extremely funny. I have always struggled with how to live a spiritual life within the chaos of the world, and I go back to her book again and again for answers.

The poet who influenced me the most is probably Czeslaw Milosz, the great modern Polish poet, who described the tragedies of the twentieth century in deep, searing, and beautiful poems. He speaks to my own heart and is a constant reminder that a writer, in all humility, should strive to participate in the act of healing.

Finally, in all honesty, the author who has influenced me the most in the past year is cookbook writer Claudia Roden, whose book
The New Book of Middle Eastern Food
completely changed my life. As I cooked my way through it, she opened up the world of Middle Eastern food in a totally new way and, as a result, Jerusalem came alive to me. Because of her, I know all of the spice store owners, village sellers of greens, vegetable vendors, butchers, and markets in the neighborhoods near where I live.

Makes about 2½ cups

In my memoir
The Bread of Angels
, I write about the incredible journey I lived during a year in Syria, where I studied Arabic, almost became a nun, explored the Quran with a female sheikh, and found myself in love with a French novice monk who lived in a monastery in the middle of the desert. The backdrop of the story is the city of Damascus, a place of remarkable diversity, full of Muslims, Jews, Druze, Kurds and Armenians, Sunnis and Shiites, and every form of Christianity under the sun. It is a city where every day reveals something magical and unexpected. And it is a city full of remarkable restaurants; gorgeous, tiled Ottoman houses with fountains at the center, where a man plays the
oud
at the front on a stage, and waiters bring out endless plates of delicious appetizers, platters of steaming kabobs, desserts laced with rose water, and delicate mint tea. An average meal can last several hours, and you wouldn't want it to end a moment sooner.

All over the Middle East, meals begin with
mezze
, dozens of small appetizers spread about the table in a dizzying array of flavors: hummus and eggplant dips, cheeses and olives, chopped salads, spicy tomato sauces. In Syria, the first thing I asked at any restaurant is if they offered muhammara, the magical dip consisting of an unlikely mix of roasted red peppers, toasted walnuts, and pomegranate syrup. Syria is famous for its muhammara, and for me it represented everything I loved about the country: exotic flavors, surprising combinations and, more than anything, the blending of spicy and sweet. If life in Syria has a flavor, then it is muhammara.

When I moved to Jerusalem, I couldn't find my beloved muhammara anywhere, and so I decided to learn to make it myself. I never knew that I would love a dip so much that it would lead me to roast my own peppers and toast walnuts, but muhammara is not just any dip. Each time I taste it, I taste Damascus. I hope you do, too. Enjoy!

Note:
Muhammara can be prepared countless ways, and no two cooks make it alike. Be sure to experiment with the recipe each time you make it to decide how you like it. Some cooks like it with twice as many roasted red peppers, some like it spicier and pile in the chile peppers, and others double the garlic or leave it out entirely. I always start with the minimum amount of pomegranate syrup, lemon juice, chile pepper, and salt when I begin and then adjust as I go along. It's always delicious!

Muhammara always tastes better the day after you make it, so feel free to make it the night before a party and to let the flavors sit, or to make a double batch so that you can enjoy the leftovers the day after!

Pomegranate syrup is available at Middle Eastern grocers and online.

For the ground hot chile pepper, you can grind hot red pepper flakes or the seeds of whole dried chiles in a spice grinder. Start with the minimum amount and adjust heat to taste.

1 Roast the red peppers:
If you have a gas range, put the peppers directly on the burners with the flames on high, and rotate them until tender and blackened on all sides. If you have an electric range, place the peppers on a broiling tray covered with foil and broil, turning occasionally, until skin is blackened and blistered on all sides. Place peppers in a bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let sit for 5 minutes. Remove stems and seeds and peel off blackened skin.

2
Toast the walnuts in a dry, heavy pan over medium heat, stirring frequently, for 1–2 minutes or until fragrant. Remove from pan and pound with a mortar and pestle, or process in a food processor, until they are ground.

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Put the red peppers into the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times, then add the walnuts, garlic, bread crumbs, pomegranate syrup, chile pepper, lemon juice, cumin, and salt. Process until combined and then, with the processor on, slowly add the olive oil until you have a smooth paste. Adjust the salt to taste.

4
Serve at room temperature with olive oil drizzled on top, and with squares of pita bread for dipping. Sahteen! — to your health!

CANTOMEDIA

SELECTED WOEKS

Conquistadora
(2011)

The Turkish Lover
(2004)

Almost a Woman
(1999)

América's Dream
(1996)

When I Was Puerto Rican
(1993)

Inspiration
I'm of the “perspiration, not inspiration” school, believing that if I fill a blank page with enough words, some of them will be useful. Whenever I feel stuck, or uninspired, I scribble random thoughts, complaints, secrets, lists, word doodles, snippets of dialogue, and descriptions of people, places, or things. These scattered seeds upon the page sprout into phrases and sentences like fragile stems that grow to sturdy branches. A leaf appears, and yes, every once in a while, a flower blooms. Even though this is my process, I'm often surprised that writing is hard work and that I must resist the habit of expectations. I certainly shouldn't expect to be inspired every time I prepare to work. Inspiration is a gift as random and surprising as flashes over running water.

Readers Should Know
I've been writing a novel for five years, and a couple of chapters short of finishing my first draft I had a stroke that robbed me of the ability to concentrate for longer than a few minutes at a time, the ability to read and understand complex sentences in either English or Spanish, the ability to create. Even though my book was outlined, I couldn't get the information that I knew was there from my damaged brain onto a page for about a year. It was a painful, desolate time, especially because there was no obvious physical damage. To everyone else I was fine, but inside I felt confused half the time, and guilty that I'd abandoned my characters. It took me a year to work back to where I was, and I'm happy that my characters' voices were stilled but not silenced. The novel is titled
Conquistadora
, and like my main character, I have learned to conquer a new world by sheer force of will and stubbornness.

Readers Frequently Ask
My e-mail is a constant delight, because readers send so many touching and emotional messages in response to my work. The most frequent question is about the meaning of the title of my first memoir,
When I Was Puerto Rican.
Readers also want to know where my parents and sisters and brothers now live and what they're doing. After the release of my third memoir,
The Turkish Lover
, readers wanted to know whether I'd stayed in touch with Ulvi. I've included the answers, and others, in a FAQs page on my website (
EsmeraldaSantiago.com
).

I try to respond to every reader who gets in touch, although sometimes it takes me weeks to do so, depending on my travel and work schedule. Recently, I've “attended” book clubs via phone and video conferences. Now I wish I could taste some of the treats that some of the members bring to the sessions!

Influences on My Writing

Spanish/English Dictionary: I came to the United States from Puerto Rico at thirteen and had to learn English quickly in order to help my mother cope with American culture. Unwilling to lose my Spanish, I kept it alive by reading, even as English has become my literary language. After all these years, it still feels as if I'm thinking in Spanish and writing in English, still interpreting between cultures.

Abelardo Díaz Alfaro's
Terrazo
, a short story collection published the year before I was born in Puerto Rico. I connected to its stories about rural Puerto Ricans following the invasion of the island by the U.S. Navy that ended the Spanish American War. The stories are filled with sadness, humor, and outrage at the conditions of the rural poor, called
jíbaros
. The style is old-fashioned and sometimes overwrought, but I find beauty in Díaz Alfaro's use of the almost extinct
jíbaro
dialect.

Edith Hamilton's
Mythology
became my favorite book the first time I read it, and inspires me still. It was one of the first books I read in English cover to cover. There was enough drama and adventure for a lifetime within those pages, and all the convoluted relationships convinced me that there were families crazier than mine.

Makes 8–10 servings

I'm not much of a cook, but there's a lot of food in my books and essays. My first memoir,
When I Was Puerto Rican
, begins with me holding a guava in my hand. It represents everything that has been lost and gained with my family's move from Puerto Rico to the United States. In my other books, people connect to each other through food and learn about each other at meals. In
América's Dream
, for example, América Gonzalez discovers just how different her eating habits are from those of her New York employees. In my three memoirs, in numerous essays, and in my upcoming novel,
Conquistadora
, food and cooking are as crucial as the events. Whether or not someone can cook (or can but won't) says much about him or her. What the people in my books eat or don't eat is also important, as well as when and how much, and, of course, where.

For many of us from other countries (or from different regions of the same country), food and its preparation is, at a certain level, ritualistic, a way to remember, celebrate and hold on to our home cultures. I live in the United States and can't travel to Puerto Rico as often as I'd like, but I can slice and fry plantains until they're crispy, dip the warm and fragrant slices into warm olive oil with fresh crushed garlic, salt and pepper, and feel closer to Puerto Rico.