by Trysh Ashby-Rolls –
After only three months in the marketplace, Outlander Kitchen – The Official Outlander Companion Cookbook, is a smash hit. Fans of Diana Gabaldon’s novels and the Starz television series will know how Claire Beauchamp Randall journeyed from post-war Britain back to 18th-century Scotland and France … and that each novel includes much feasting! Author and professional chef Theresa Carle-Sanders has reworked every one of those dishes into taste sensations you can make in your own kitchen.
Seaside Magazine first wrote about this remarkable woman, who lives on Pender Island, several years ago in “Grey Matters.” At that time Theresa was doing something known in the publishing biz as “building her platform.” That is, increasing her visibility as an author and growing an audience through blogging, posting on social media and crafting a website.
“Hook yourself to a star,” Vlad Konieczny, author of two books about Glen Gould, and a friend, advised.
Walking her dog in the woods one day, a recipe from Voyager popped into Theresa’s head. It sparked the idea of writing to Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series and herself a foodie who loves to cook. Would Gabaldon answer five questions for a new blog, OutlanderKitchen.com? The originality of the questions piqued the author’s interest. Nobody had ever asked those particular questions before. Yes, she said. She loved the idea of the cookbook, too, giving Theresa permission to use excerpts from the Outlander series as an emotional tie-in to each recipe.
Behind the scenes, Theresa experimented with turning rich 18th-century food into everyday fare. The results are outstanding: Jamie and Claire’s wedding feast is as fit for a Clan Chieftain as it is a 21st-century family dinner; ditto, warm almond pastry with Father Anselm; fortune-teller Mrs. Graham’s oatmeal scones with clotted cream; Sarah Woolam’s Scotch pies – considered sinful by the Scottish Church in the Middle Ages; Mrs. FitzGibbon’s overnight parritch – stirred with a spurtle of course! But what was Theresa to use in the recipe for Drunken Mock-Turtle Soup?
Having made her stock with several oxtails, innumerable other items and a bottle of sherry (a restorative in Aloysius O’Shaughnessy Murphy’s day) Theresa didn’t think the soup turtle-y enough. She threw in a handful of scallops, then handed a bowlful of the finished product to her husband, a cross between Frank and Jamie. “This stinks!” he exclaimed, heading into their garden where he dug a hole and buried the entire evil brew. She rethought the tang of the sea bit, coming up with a soupçon of Vietnamese fish sauce that saved the celebratory dish.
The time came for Theresa to find an agent. She wrote a proposal and drew up a list of possible literary agents. Yes, said the first, then backed down. A flat no, said the second; there’s been one Julia Child and there’ll never be another. The remark got Theresa’s juices flowing. She worked even harder at her author platform. Meanwhile, the Starz TV series became a hit. A third agent called her.
Delacorte released the book June 14 and it comes complete with full-colour mouth-watering photographs by Victoria resident, Rebecca Wellman. Forget bon appéit. As the Scots say: ith do leòr!
