#COOKING WITH CLORIS--COQ AU VIN AND A NEW CULINARY MYSTERY FROM AUTHOR MADDIE DAY

Award-winning author Maddie Day/Edith Maxwell pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, the new Cece Barton Mysteries, the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, and short crime fiction. When not writing, she gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Learn more about her and her books at her website, where you can find links to her other social media, and at the Wicked Authors blog and Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

Cooking up a Theme

I’m delighted to be back visiting Anastasia and readers! 

 

Deep Fried Death, my twelfth Country Store Mystery, released last week. Each book includes recipes in the back. As I’m writing, I find ways to mention food, which isn’t that hard considering that protagonist Robbie Jordan owns and runs a breakfast and lunch restaurant in her country store.

 

This book opens on Memorial Day weekend, so it’s spring in southern Indiana. Later in the week, Robbie and her staff brainstorm specials for the next day. Danna mentions that it will be National Coq au Vin Day and that they could prepare a simple version for lunch. Turner chimes in that they could call it Spring in Paris Day and offer savory and sweet crepes as a breakfast special.

 

Here’s the Coq au Vin recipe, one I make a couple of times a year at home. 

Coq au Vin

The following is a simplified version of the famous Julia Child recipe.

 

Ingredients:

2 pounds boneless chicken

Salt

Pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup butter

1 onion, diced

12 ounces mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

2 cloves minced garlic

2 tablespoons flour

1 quart chicken stock

2 cups hearty red wine

1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary

1/4 minced fresh parsley, plus more for garnish.

 

Remove skin and excess fat from chicken, then pat meat dry with paper towels. Season on both sides with salt and pepper.

 

Heat oil in Dutch oven until shimmering. 

 

Working in batches that don’t crowd the chicken, brown on both sides and remove to a plate.

 

Add butter and saute onion in same pan until it softens. Add mushrooms and continue to saute until they wilt. Add garlic and saute for one minute. Do not let garlic brown.

 

Return chicken to pan and sprinkle all with flour. Stir for two minutes.

 

Slowly stir in stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add red wine. 

 

Cover and let simmer for one to two hours or until chicken is tender. 

 

Stir in herbs. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let flavors combine. Garnish with more parsley.

 

Serve hot over or next to buttered wide noodles or buttered boiled potatoes, and enjoy a salad and a glass of red wine with it.

 

Doesn’t that sound yummy? What’s your favorite way to eat chicken?

 

Deep Fried Death

A Country Store Mystery, Book 12

 

Many residents of South Lick, Indiana, claim the Outhouse Race, in which competitors push old-timey outhouse replicas on wheels at the annual Abe Martin Festival on Memorial Day, is the best thing since indoor plumbing. Just because country store and restaurant owner Robbie Jordan has too much to do managing her new deep fryer as well as an old lover reappearing, she’s not going to miss out on the fun. Plus, it’s good for business. But when a dead body and a cast-iron skillet tumble out of the Pans ’N Pancakes outhouse entry on the race route, it seems someone is trying to frame Robbie—in a most unconventional way. Now she’ll need to be privy to the townsfolks’ secrets as she races to flush out a killer . . .

 

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