HOW TO BAKE A PERFECT LIFE
by Barbara O’Neal

Available TODAY in trade paperback from your local retailer, or these on-line venues

Also available as an ebook for Kindle, and Nook and other formats.

]]> http://www.barbaraoneal.com/2010/12/release-day/feed/ 11 http://www.barbaraoneal.com/2010/12/a-sweet-pair-of-reviews/ http://www.barbaraoneal.com/2010/12/a-sweet-pair-of-reviews/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:05:08 +0000 Barbara O'Neal http://www.barbaraoneal.com/?p=1720 “O’Neal’s third novel is, like its predecessors (The Lost Recipe for Happiness, 2008; The Secret of Everything, 2010), a dramatic, emotional story with honest characters and a warm heart at its center.”

At ABC.com and the Huffington Post, a beauty of a review: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12442774&tqkw=&tqshow=

How to Bake a Perfect Life will be in stores in 4 short days (Tuesday!), and in honor of that date, I’m going to start giving things away. This is the first one, a sourdough crock and either fresh or dried (you choose) starter from King Arthur flour.  To win, just post to the comments and I’ll draw a name tomorrow morning.

Good luck!

Library Journal

(Starred review) O’Neal, Barbara. How To Bake a Perfect Life. Bantam. Dec. 2010. 398p. ISBN 9780553386776. pap. $15.

“Forty-year-old bread maker Ramona Gallagher owns a boulangerie in Colorado Springs, though independence from her restaurateur family members has put a crimp in her financial well-being and in their relationships. Pregnant with her first child, Ramona’s 24-year-old daughter, Sofia, flies to Germany when her soldier husband, Oscar, is burned in an explosion in Afghanistan. Katie, Oscar’s 13-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, comes to live with Ramona after her mother is arrested and forced into rehab for drug use. A surly teen with a dog, Katie adds to the unresolved family issues lying heavily on Ramona’s shoulders. She thinks back on that long-ago summer, when she was pregnant and Aunt Poppy had taught her to bake bread—and, oh, that young man at the record store.

“Verdict: Mothers and daughters are at the heart of this beautiful novel by O’Neal (The Lost Recipe for Happiness). Their interactions can be thorny and insuperable, yet there is love at the root, just waiting for the proper nourishment to make it grow—a lot like mother dough, refreshed and fed and folded into so many tantalizing creations. O’Neal offers baking lore and recipes along with her narrative. Readers will be captivated by the baking process as much as they are by these complex and multidimensional women. Highly recommended.”—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Then we lost Sasha to old age in January.   Which left us with Esmerelda, the 22 year old Siamese; Athena, a very fat 13 year old silver tabby, and Jack, who isn’t that old at 8, but has had a couple of knee surgeries and other ailments, and was slowing down.

For months I’ve been looking out of the corner of my eye for young animals.  Christopher Robin wants us to provide homes for old dogs that nobody wants (which just shows you what kind of man he is and why a person might love him), and I’m fine with that, but just now, this house needed youth and exuberance.

Enter kittens.  Two kittens, siblings, Rafael and Gabrielle, tuxedo babies who are shaking everything up.  Suddenly Jack wants to play.  Suddenly Athena is aware that there is life beyond the back porch (mainly growling, “No, I said I do not want to play tag. Get lost.” Over and over again).  CR has discovered he might actually be a cat person.  I have learned to type with one kitten on my head and another wrapped around my neck, giving me purring in stereo.

Not everyone wants the chaos animals bring into our lives, but this was the answer for us.  Welcome, babies! We’re so happy to have you!

(That’s Gabi in front. Rafe in the back.  My legs are their bed. )

*Couldn’t resist the play on How to Bake a Perfect Life, which will be out in just two months! (December 21).   It must be time to give away an Advance Reading Copy!

Very happy to report that last weekend in Orlando, Florida, the Romance Writers of America awarded THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS their highest honor, the RITA.   Every year, nearly 1200 books are entered and judged, and only a handful win the RITA.  Thrilled!!

IN OTHER NEWS:   I am delighted to let you know that THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS is a RITA finalist.  Quite a powerful panel of books, and I’m honored to be in such company.   Happy, happy, happy. 

I’ll write a post about my deep and visceral reaction to Tucson one day soon.  In the meantime, I’m studying Spanish and have gone back to cello.  Thinking hard about a vegetable garden this summer.  Needed some hobbies that were not related to words and writing!

Will get back to posting regularly soon, I promise.

In THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING, Tessa is an amateur photographer.  So am I, though in typical writerly fashion, she is far more gifted than I.  Still, I do love getting a good shot.

One of my great desires has always been to have a greenhouse.  In a corner of my dining room is a small conservatory, a Victorian imitation, and within are a cyclamen and African violets.  This morning, this cyclamen was blooming and I spent an hour admiring it, shooting the light on its petals, diving into a wordless orgy of appreciation.  There is something so quiet and renewing about flowers, something that heals all those little broken spots and makes you feel you might be able to take a deep breath and keep moving after all.  

If I had a greenhouse, I’d probably never get any writing done.  I’d just be in there, shooting photos from twelve angles, breathing in the fresh exhalations of the leaves.

Is there some small beauty in your life that stops you exactly in your tracks?

THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING  will be out in 27 26 days!   Reader feedback so far has been extraordinary (check out the comments at GoodReads.com), and I’m very excited for everyone to read Tessa’s story.

To celebrate, I’ll offering a some little contests and giveaways over the next few weeks. This is the first one.  I am giving away FOUR free ARCs of THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING.  As soon as I draw names, I’ll run to the post office and mail them out, so you will have it by next Friday. 

To win, just leave your name and email in the comments and I’ll draw 4 names on December 8.   You should have it a couple of days later!

Check back next week for another giveaway.

My challenge was to create a dish that would deconstruct fish & chips and end up tasting like the original.  Since the only ingredients in the traditional offering are white fish (usually cod or haddock, depending on your locale), and potatoes, both fried and heavily salted, then served very hot, it wasn’t easy. But it was intriguing.

THE PLAN

Really good fish and chips are served very hot, very greasy, and very salty. There’s a good crisp breading on the fish, and the chips (fries) are thick and tender, not like McDonalds, but like your mother’s best home fries. I decided to bake the fish, and use potatoes to create the crispy texture of the fried version of both fish and chips (fries).  I had the luxury of two days to think about it, and arbitrarily made a rule that I had to use the fish in the house, which was halibut.   The challenge in my mind was to get the simple, satisfying flavor of that very, very simple food and not add much of anything to the ingredients to try to make it upscale.  I decide to bake the fish, mash potatoes, and try two different crispy potato pancakes.

By happy accident, I was in the English Home Goods store (where we buy stupidly expensive imported PG Tips for $26 for 250 bags, but trust me, if you get used to English tea, American is very pale in comparison). While I was there, I happened to spy a small bottle of malt vinegar. Eureka! Everyone knows you can’t eat fish and chips without malt vinegar!

THE PROCESS
(Note: always remember that I am at 7000 ft altitude, so shorten your cooking times if you decided to try anything I post!)

I started with Yukon Gold potatoes for the mash.  The fish was simple, 7 oz frozen halibut steaks.  The chefs on Top Chef had two hours, but that seemed excessive, so I started 90 minutes out.  Peeled and boiled the potatoes, leaving them a tiny bit undercooked so they could rest in the hot water while I readied the fish and made the two pancakes.   The fish was very simple prep: olive oil in the pan with plenty of kosher salt, in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. 

To get ready for the pancakes, I grated two medium size potatoes and a very small onion.  (Onions are not standard here, but I just couldn’t do potato pancakes without it!)  For the first set of potato pancakes, I mashed about 1-1/2 cups of cooked potatoes with 2 tablespoons butter, enough milk to make a good paste, then blended it until the potatoes were smooth. Added 1/2 a beaten egg (save the other half), a tiny bit of grated onion, roughly 2 tablespoons of flour, and for some body, about a quarter of the grated potatoes, and salt and pepper.  Because I wanted a very thin, crispy cake, I added milk until the batter was fairly thin.

Since time would be short, I also made the second batch of potato pancakes, which were a hashbrown with a little egg to hold them together. Mixed the grated potatoes, grated onions, salt, pepper and the other half of the egg together.

I used an electric grill and poured a generous amount of canola oil on it (this was the greasy element), then added a couple of tablespoons of butter and heated it until it was medium hot.  On one side, I poured the mashed potato pancakes, on the other, the hashbrowns, and let them cook.

Meanwhile, I poured the water off the remaining boiled potatoes, put them back on the burner on low, added 4 tablespooons butter, milk (my mistake is always adding too much milk, so I do it in small amounts) and mashed the potatoes, keeping an eye on the potato pancakes at the same time, and turning them about 3 minutes in.  They were nicely brown and by this time, I was getting very hungry, so I was beginning to look forward to eating this experiment, however it turned out!

CR was in charge of setting the table, and now, the timing was critical.  I took the fish out of the oven, and on the plate I had already sprinkled with malt vinegar, the fish was settled in the middle,  it with the two different pancakes in a circle around it, and a nice mound of mashed potatoes to one side.  It was rather bland looking, all that white, so I put the lemon rounds on top of the fish, even if they are not traditional (“You’re American,” said CR. “We make allowance for you.”) 

The layering was, pancake, fish, mash, all in a single bit, with a dip in the little pool of vinegar.  We both tried it, blinked, and looked at each other in happy pleasure.  He tried one kind of pancake, I tried the other, and—it worked! 

Honestly, it was wonderful, and a faithful deconstruction/recreation.  For the sake of the experiment, I thought the hashbrowns gave the layers the right greasy crispness, but CR preferred the pancake.  Both of them were delicious and very greasy and the kosher salt sprinkled on top added just the right layer of brine.

But I must admit that the malt vinegar was the crowning touch, pulling the flavors together just the way it does when you go to the chip shop.

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY NOW

–I would cut the fish into smaller pieces and grill it rather than bake it, just to give it some color. 
–I would layer the pancakes, fish, and mashed potatoes like a tiny lasagna

I will definitely be making those little potato cakes again.  It was fun to make this dish just to find something we liked so much.