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 (36 page)

3
At this point you can store the won tons in the refrigerator until needed for cooking. When storing, make sure the won tons don't touch each other or they'll stick together.

4 To make the dipping sauce:
Combine ingredients in a small bowl.

5 To fry the wontons:
Pour 1–2 inches of oil into a pot or deep-sided skillet. Heat oil over medium heat. Test the oil temperature by tearing off pieces of one won ton wrapper and dropping them in the oil. The wrapper should turn brown quickly but not get too dark. Fry a few won tons at a time in a single layer until golden and crispy. Make sure they don't touch each other, and use tongs to flip them. Don't overcook! Drain on paper towels. Serve with dipping sauce.

Makes 4–6 servings

Food is memory, and many of my memories are linked to food. This recipe has grown and evolved over three generations in my family. My grandfather used to own a restarant in Los Angeles's Chinatown called Dragon's Den. It was only the seventh family-style Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles. Back in 1936, when Dragon's Den opened, this dish — minus the curry and the noodles — cost just twenty-five cents. The restaurant had closed by the time I was born, but I can remember my grandfather making a version of the Dragon's Den tomato beef at home.

My father first tasted curried tomato beef chow mein (with fried noodles) in a restaurant in San Francisco. He later found it in a café on San Pedro Street, close to Ninth Street, and opposite the wholesale produce market in Los Angeles. He's been perfecting his version ever since. You can use Chinese egg or rice noodles for this dish, but my dad uses angel hair pasta. If I'm not in the mood for noodles, then I just serve the curried tomato beef with rice. My other addition to the recipe is the marinade. It tenderizes the beef and adds a little extra flavor. What I love about this dish is the taste of the tomatoes and vinegar. It's a combination that takes me right back to my childhood. Best of all, this dish is fast, colorful, and combines all the food groups.

Tomato beef is a uniquely Chinese-American dish — symbolic in many ways of Amer-ica's “melting pot.” “Mein” means noodles in Cantonese, but beef and tomatoes are not typical Chinese ingredients. In the past, if you were Chinese and lucky enough to own your own restaurant, you put together ingredients you thought would please your American customers. That's how American tomatoes and beef came to be thrown together with Chinese noodles. For a time, tomato beef chow mein and curried tomato beef chow mein could be found on every menu in Chinese-American restaurants and cafés, such as the Golden Dragon Café and Pearl's Coffee Shop in
Shanghai Girls
. Now you can't even find tomato beef in Chinese restaurants! No one asks for it, orders it, or remembers it. So this truly is a taste of the past, specifically 1950s Chinese America.

Note:
There is no right or wrong way to make this dish. It's all about your personal taste and whether you like more vinegar or sugar.

For the more health conscious, you can substitute chicken for the beef. My dad fries boneless, skinless chicken thighs until they're done enough to cut them up easily. Then he adds them back to the wok after the onion and bell pepper to cook a bit more.

Some people like to add the noodles to the wok and toss them with the other ingredients. Transfer to a platter and sprinkle with cilantro.

1
In medium bowl, combine soy sauce, sherry, sesame oil, salt, pepper to taste, and cornstarch. Add sliced beef, and let marinate for 20 minutes.

2
Heat water in a large pot and cook the noodles of your choice or rice according to package instructions. When done, drain the noodles or rice and put them on a platter (see note).

3
While noodles are cooking, heat oil in a wok or frying pan over high heat. When oil is hot and smoking, add the beef and stir fry until browned but not fully cooked, about 4 minutes. Add the onion and bell pepper. After they've cooked for a while but are still crisp (3–4 minutes), add the curry powder, vinegar, and sugar. Add tomatoes and cook until just heated through. (You don't want the vegetables to lose their shape. They should remain whole and crisp.) Taste for flavor. The sauce should be strong, because it will be toned down by the noodles or rice.

4
Pour the curried tomato beef on top of the noodles, sprinkle with chopped cilantro, and serve.

Frank Huster

SELECTED WOEKS

The Art of Racing in the Rain
(2007)

How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets
(2005)

Raven Stole the Moon
(1998, republished 2010)

Inspiration
When I hear the voice of a character or several characters, I get really excited about finding their stories. For me, it isn't so much creating, but rather discovering or excavating the backgrounds and lives of these characters. I know my story will work when I start talking about it with my wife and she gets a little spooked. “They're here,” she says. And they are here. We can feel them. They are showing me the way; they are telling me what they will do next. When they start telling me how the story goes, I know I have it, and then I get very excited about writing.

The Drama of Everyday Life
My writing tends to grapple with families in crisis: in
Raven Stole the Moon
a woman struggles with her grief over the death of her young son; in
How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets
, a musician must reveal his secret — he has epilepsy — to a teenage son he has never met; and in
The Art of Racing in the Rain
, a man must choose between his racing career and custody of his daughter in the wake of his wife's death. My interest is not in every day life, but in the dramatic moments, the moments when people are forced to act even when they might not want to. My goal is to capture these moments in an honest and humorous way that inspires people and highlights the drama of our everyday lives.

Readers Frequently Ask
Everyone wants to know about the stuffed zebra that figures prominently in
The Art of Racing in the Rain
. I rarely speak about the zebra. Some things about books are fun to learn from the authors of those books; some things are more fun to puzzle out for oneself. I think all Zebronic themes fall into the latter category.

Theatrical Influence
My writing has been mostly influenced by the theater. I have always acted, and I wrote a play that was produced in Los Angeles a few years ago, titled
Brother Jones
. I very much enjoy the immediacy of drama that comes to life on stage. Therefore, my greatest influences are Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Tom Stoppard, Sam Shepherd, Bertolt Brecht, and others in the theater. I look forward to writing more plays in the future.

Makes 16–18 medium pancakes

My childhood dog was an Airedale terrier named Muggs, to whom I dedicated my book. She loved pancakes more than any other food, and, in fact, her last meal was “hotcakes,” as my mother calls them. My current dog, Comet, was cut from the same cloth apparently, because she loves pancakes as well; in our house, Sunday is Pancake Day, and I know it is Comet's favorite day of the week. I am not above stealing from my own life for my books, so it was a no-brainer for me to give Enzo, the narrator of
The Art of Racing in the Rain
, this passion for pancakes.

When trying to think of a recipe that reflected some part of my book, I had to go with our Sunday pancakes. Enzo has some dietary peculiarities: he loves pancakes and bananas; peperoncini upsets his stomach; he enjoys cookie batter when he can get it. If you want to go completely crazy with these pancakes, add a mashed banana — Enzo's second favorite food!

My wife, Drella, and I discovered this recipe many years ago, when my two older boys were on a gluten- and casein-free diet. We absolutely loved the flavor of all the different flours. Several years ago, after my kids were liberated from their dietary restrictions, we kept making this recipe though we now usually use cow's milk and real eggs instead of their substitutes. Still, these pancakes can go either way and are equally delicious.

If you try this recipe, I hope you keep in mind the tastes of your personal Enzo — dogs love pancakes!

(Thanks to Gifts of Nature, an all natural baking mix company, Bette Hagman and, of course, Drella.)

Note:
We use cow's milk now, but you can easily use rice milk or another milk substitute, to make it casein-free. If you do so, reduce the sugar by a teaspoon. Egg substitute is totally acceptable as well.

Bette Hagman's flour mix is available online or in natural foods stores.

These pancakes won't bubble as visibly as flour pancakes, so you need to watch the doneness by lifting the edge of your pancakes with a spatula. If the batter gets too thick, thin with a little water. If they end up gummy, your griddle is too hot!

For waffles, add ¼ cup milk or water, 1 egg, and 2 tablespoons oil, and use a waffle iron. Yum!

1
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour mix, salt, baking powder, and sugar. In a medium bowl, beat eggs lightly. Add oil and combine, and then add the milk and combine.

2
Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until smooth. Let sit for 5 minutes. Add up to ¼ cup water, as needed to thin batter to pourable consistency (it all depends on humidity, temperature, air density, dark matter, E=MC
²
).

3
Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat. Grease lightly with butter or oil. Ladle enough batter onto the warm griddle to make a thin pancake of desired size. Cook on both sides, turning once. Remove when lightly brown on both sides.

Makes enough flour mix for 1½ pancake recipes

Note:
These flours are available at any natural foods store, or online.

In a large bowl, combine the ingredients. Sift, and store.