BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR CONNIE ARCHER

Connie Archer is the national bestselling author of three Soup Lover’s Mysteries with a fourth due out in March. Learn more about Connie and her books at her website. Today Connie joins us to talk about one of her favorite holidays. 

Halloween has to be one of my favorite holidays . . . there’s something about the season, the cooler air, the pumpkins, the red and gold of the trees and the macabre decorations of witches, skeletons, cobwebs and headstones that delights me. Horror films, ghost stories, trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, haunted houses, corn mazes, and hayrides are just some of the things that mark this season. Costume stores have cropped up everywhere. In fact, in my neighborhood there’s one that’s open all year, just in case you have the urge to don some crazy gear for no good reason at all!

Hallowe’en, a contraction of Hallows Even or All Hallows Eve, is closely related to the Celtic Samhain (pronounced Sow-in). The Celts of the British Isles and Northern Europe celebrated this Druidic festival for thousands of years when the sun reached the fifteenth degree of Scorpio. It was the end of one year and the beginning of the next. In our century, this position of the sun actually occurs on November 7^th.

At this time, those spirits must be comforted with offerings of food and drink to ensure the tribe and their livestock survived the winter. Wearing costumes of animal heads and skins, the people of the tribe attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. At a deeper level, these rites were observed in order to make contact with the spirits of the departed who were considered sources of guidance rather than sources of dread. Druid priests built bonfires and the community gathered to burn crops as sacrifices to their deities. At the end of the celebration, they re-lit the fire of their hearths from the sacred bonfire in the belief that this would protect them during the coming winter.

Carved Turnip

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Mass immigration from the British Isles and Europe during the 19^th century popularized the rituals we now know today. Immigrants brought their varied All Hallows Eve customs and a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. In Ireland and Scotland, the turnip had traditionally been carved during Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the pumpkin, which was larger, softer and much easier to carve.

The American tradition of trick-or-treating most likely dates back to early All Souls Day rites in England during which poor citizens would beg for food and be given “soul cakes” in return for a promise to pray for the family's dead relatives. The soul cakes to the poor replaced the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. This practice, “going a-souling” was eventually done by children who would visit houses in the neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money.

Samhain was a time for divination, and apples were often used to tell the future. An unmarried girl would peel an apple in one long strip and cast the peel over her shoulder. The peel was believed to reveal the initial of her future husband. Another practice involved cutting an apple into nine pieces while sitting before a mirror in a room lit by only one candle. Turning away from the mirror, the individual would eat eight pieces of the apple, ask a question and throw the ninth piece over his or her shoulder. The mirror would then display an image responding to the question.

But what is it about this date – October 31st? The eve of November 1? Or the time period when the sun reaches the fifteenth degree of Scorpio? It’s not the shortest day of the year; it’s not actually a time of harvest, yet so many cultures throughout the centuries acknowledge this night and day as significant.

In Poland, people are told to pray out loud as they walk through the forests so the souls of the dead might find comfort. In 19th century rural England, families gathered to burn straw on a pitchfork while kneeling in a circle to pray for the souls of the dead until the flames went out. In Spain, special pastries known as the “bones of the holy” are put on the graves of the churchyard. In Finland, visitors to cemeteries on All Hallows Eve light votive candles, referred to as the sea of light. Totenfest or Totensonntag is celebrated in some Protestant churches on this day. Kalan Gwav, also known as Allantide, is a pagan Cornish festival traditionally celebrated on this night. The Mexican Day of the Dead is marked by gathering to pray for the dead and bringing favorite foods of the departed to their graves. On the Isle of Man, Hop-tu-Naa, a Celtic festival, is observed. And in Scandinavian countries, a Norse ceremony called Alfablót involves sacrificing to the elves, meaning nature spirits or spirits of dead ancestors.  

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Could it be that the Druids were right? That among the stars are doorways to other dimensions including the land of the spirits? That on a certain night the veil between this world and the other thins, allowing spirits to warm themselves at the hearths of the living, and for those who are prepared, to make the journey safely to the other side?

Samhain or Halloween will be upon us soon. This is a time to complete the old and prepare for the new in our lives. Consider the last twelve months. If there are matters unresolved, now is the time to complete them and begin to look forward to the new year.

And don’t forget your pets. Here’s a Samhain ritual designed to honor the spirits of both wild and domestic animals: [http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/samhainoctober31/ht/Animals_Samhain.htm]

Happy Halloween!

A Roux of Revenge

Snowflake, Vermont, is known for its skiing in winter—and its soup all year round, thanks to Lucky Jamieson’s By the Spoonful. Autumn brings golden leaves, pumpkin rice soup, the annual Harvest Festival…and murder.

Lucky’s soup shop is busier than usual this October, with groups of itinerant travelers in town to work the Harvest Festival. One newcomer seems to take a particular interest in Lucky’s young waitress Janie, spying on her from across the street. Is the stranger stalking Janie?

After an unidentified man is found murdered in a van by the side of the road, simmering suspicions about the travelers are brought to a boil. But when Janie is put in harm’s way, Lucky must join forces with the travelers to turn up the heat on a killer…

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COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST AUTHOR EDITH MAXWELL

Former organic farmer Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mysteries Under the pseudonym Tace Baker, she writes the Speaking of Mystery series and the historical Carriagetown Mysteries. She also writes award-winning short crime fiction. Learn more about Edith and her books at her website and blog.

Edith is currently running a contest for a hand-painted silk scarf. See her website for details.

On Keeping and Cooking Chickens

I’m delighted to be a guest again on Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers. I was an organic farmer about twenty years ago for a few years, and I love immersing myself in that world again as I write the Local Foods Mystery series. The second book in the series will be out later this month. As‘Til Dirt Do Us Part opens, farmer Cam Flaherty is hosting a fall farm-to-table dinner under a big tent, with chef Jake Ericsson cooking up food from her farm and several others to serve to eighty guests.

Later in the book, Cam gets rescue chickens. Two of her volunteers discover that another farmer in town is maltreating her hens, and the Board of Health is about to have them put down. The volunteers get permission to relocate the chickens to Cam’s farm. With Cam’s permission, they build a coop and tell her how to take care of them.

My son works on a local organic farm that raises hens for eggs, so he gave me a tour. I laughed out loud when I heard the funny noises they make. It’s almost a gargling sound. Several other friends also keep hens, so I’ve been picking up bits of information all over the place. The birds have personalities, and some are smarter than others.

So far, Cam hasn’t eaten any of the birds, but she might sometime soon! In Book Three, Farmed and Dangerous, some backyard hens are “donated” to her farm (without her pemission) because the owners hadn’t realized how much work it is to take care of them. Unfortunately, this is happening a lot these days. Chickens are also being dropped off at overcrowded pet shelters.

Here’s an easy and tasty chicken recipe you can make with fresh local ingredients. We get our chicken at a local farm so we know the birds have ranged outdoors and have been treated well.

Foil Pesto Chicken and Vegetables

Serves four

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons fruity olive oil

1/2 cup basil pesto

4 boneless chicken breasts

2 slender zucchini, sliced thinly crosswise

2 Asian eggplants, sliced thinly crosswise

1 pint gold cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

Salt and pepper

White wine, plus plenty for drinking

Heat an outdoor grill. Flatten the chicken breasts with a mallet or rolling pin. Place a fifteen-inch piece of heavy-duty foil on your work surface and lay one piece of chicken on that. Spread 2 tablespoons of pesto on the chicken. Layer a quarter of the zucchini and eggplant on top. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of olive oil over the top. Sprinkle salt and pepper on, and splash on some white wine. Fold the foil in and double-fold so the packet is sealed.

Repeat for remaining chicken. Put all packets on the grill and cook for ten minutes, then turn and cook for twenty more minutes. Remove from grill and let sit five minutes before serving.

Great served with a tossed green salad, fresh corn on the cob, and a nice cool glass of white wine.

'Til Dirt Do Us Part

Autumn has descended on Westbury, Massachusetts, but the mood at the Farm-to-Table Dinner in Cam's newly built barn is unseasonably chilly. Local entrepreneur Irene Burr made a lot of enemies with her plan to buy Westbury's Old Town Hall and replace it with a textile museum--enough enemies to fill out a list of suspects when the wealthy widow turns up dead on a neighboring farm.

Even an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident locavores went loco-at least temporarily--and settled a score with Irene. But which one? With the fall harvest upon her, Cam must sift through a bushel full of possible killers that includes Irene's estranged stepson, her disgruntled auto mechanic, and a fellow CSA subscriber who seems suspiciously happy to have the dead woman out of the way. The closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out of the compost pile, she'll have to wrap this case up quickly.

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COOKING WITH CLORIS--QUAIL WITH AUTHOR JUDY ALTER

Author Judy Alter returns today with a new recipe and a new book in her Blue Plate Murder Mystery series. The series is set in a small East Texas town with the setting modeled after a restaurant that was one of her family’s favorites for years. Learn more about Judy and her books at her website and her Judy’s Stew and Potluck with Judy blogs.

Murder at the Tremont House, the sequel to Murder at the Blue Plate Café, features a love triangle, a cooking school, a kidnapping, a broken marriage, and a lot of adventure before the threads of this mystery are untangled, and Wheeler can go back to being a peaceful small town. If it ever does. But food is always an important part of life in Wheeler, and particularly in the life of Kate Chambers, proprietor of the Blue Plate Café.

The Blue Plate Café is a typical small-town café—you can find them in East Texas, West Texas, the Midwest, and such western states as New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. They are casual restaurants, usually with a counter and some tables, where farmers, ranchers, and townfolk come in blue jeans to eat down-home cooking—hamburgers, fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, turnip greens—all the things you mostly associate with country ways and food.

When Kate Chambers inherits the café on the sudden death of her grandmother, Johnny Chambers or Gram, she continues the menu, including Gram’s wonderful sticky buns, which usually had a waiting list by the time they were ready in the morning. She serves humongous breakfasts with eggs, steak, potatoes and biscuits, and she carries on Gram’s tradition. But gradually she works in some offerings that Gram didn’t serve—chicken and tuna salads, for instance. And she begins to make her own potato salad instead of buying pre-made in quantity. She cultivates fresh greens for dinner salads, and makes her own dressings.

Much as Kate loves the café and cooking the foods she learned as a child from Gram, there’s another culinary side to her. She appreciates fine food, so a trip to a high-end restaurant in Dallas is a treat as is a homemade dish, such as veal piccata.

When twin sister Donna, who runs The Tremont House B&B, decides to offer gourmet meals, Kate sees trouble ahead. She stops by Donna’s one morning to find her in a tizzy, her kitchen a mess, with every pot and pan dirty. Donna is trying to make Coquilles St. Jacques. In French, the dish is simply scallops, but in this country it denotes poached scallops and mushrooms, covered with a rich sauce made from the poaching liquid, and served with mashed potatoes, preferably piped around a special shell-shaped dish. It’s not a recipe for the faint-hearted, but Kate rescues Donna’s disaster and announces she has a fine dish to serve her husband that night. Donna says, “He doesn’t eat seafood.” Kate takes the dish home and serves it to one of her beaux.

Inevitably Donna coerces Kate into conducting a cooking school at the B&B, and Gram, from beyond, urges Kate to help her sister. Kate decides the challenge is to fix dishes the women of the town can master and the men will eat. She chooses Beef Wellington made easy, Chicken piccata (veal being hard to get in a small town), chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce, shepherd’s pie, and quail and dirty rice. Below is her recipe for quail—she figured ever woman in town knew how to stuff a jalapeño in a quail, wrap it with bacon, and grill. She’d give them something different for those quail the hunters brought home. And she stressed the hunters had to clean the birds, including getting the birdshot out of them.

Quail with Green Grapes

Ingredients:

one or two birds per person—use your best judgment.

salt and pepper

green grapes

butter

bacon strips

white wine

Salt and pepper each bird inside and out. Then stuff cavity with green grapes and 1 Tbsp. butter. Wrap each with a slice of bacon and secure with toothpicks. Put in baking dish and pour white wine over all. Cover and bake 1-1/2 hours at 325^o. Uncover and brown.  Garnish and serve on warm platter with dirty rice.

Dirty Rice

(Serves 4. Can be doubled.)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup long grain rice

2 cup chickens broth
1/2 cup ground pork

1 cup chicken livers (optional)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

three slices bacon, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, diced

1 jalapeño, seeded and chopped (optional)

Cajun seasoning

Salt and pepper

Green onions

Cook rice in 2 cups water and 1 cup chicken broth; remove from heat and let sit 5 minutes. While rice is cooking, mash and finely chop chicken livers—or pureé quickly in food processor. Put 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in large skillet, add pork and bacon and cook until bacon is crisp.

Put another tablespoon oil in skillet and add onion, celery, and optional jalapeño. Add minced liver and cook until pink disappears. Add 1 cup chicken broth and scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Add 1 tablespoon (or to taste) of Cajun seasoning. Add salt and pepper as needed. Boil until most of broth disappears. Add cooked rice and toss. Garnish with green onions.

Murder at The Tremont House

When free-lance journalist Sara Jo Cavanaugh arrives in Wheeler to do an in-depth study of Kate’s town for a feature on small-town America, Kate senses she will be trouble. Sara Jo stays at her sister Donna’s B&B, The Tremont House, and unwittingly drives a further wedge into Donna’s marriage to Wheeler’s mayor Tom Bryson. And soon she’s spending way too much time interviewing high school students, one young athlete in particular. Police chief Rick Samuels ignores Kate’s instinct, but lawyer David Clinkscales, her former boss from Dallas, takes it more seriously.

Sara Jo arouses animosity in Wheeler with the personal, intrusive questions she asks, and when she is found murdered, the list of suspects is long. But Kate heads the list, and she must clear her name, with the help of David and Rick. A second murder confirms that someone is desperate, and now Rick is convinced Kate is in danger.

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COOKING WITH CLORIS--AUTHOR LUCY BURDETTE'S ONE BOWL CHOCOLATE CAKE

Lucy Burdette (aka Roberta Isleib) is the author of twelve mysteries, including the latest in the Key West series featuring food critic Hayley Snow. Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. Learn more about Lucy/Roberta at her website.

Eating Key West

As of today, with the release of Murder with Ganache, I'm four books into writing my Key West food critic mysteries. This series has really tweaked my interest in food and cooking because I have to think the way that my character, Hayley Snow, thinks. I have to cook what she might cook and eat where she might eat. Since Hayley came on the scene, my family and I have enjoyed her shrimp and grits, key lime cupcakes, strawberry rhubarb coffee cake, and many more ravishing dishes. There's only one problem. These days, if I don't photograph dinner before putting it on the table, my husband worries: Maybe it's not going to meet Hayley's standards.

Along with the home cooking, we've tried about every restaurant in Key West. (I know, hard life.) But Hayley not only visits restaurants and writes reviews, she uses food as a way to connect with people, and to calm herself down, and to seduce the folks she’s trying to get information from that may solve the mysteries. I think more than I ever did about what food and cooking might mean to people.

I like what Hayley wrote for the style magazine, Key Zest, at the end of Death in Four Courses: “I’d summed up by saying how important it was to remember that while food did mean life and death in its most elemental form, most often we in the food writing industry were talking about food as the pleasure of connections. When we wrote about simmering a stew or a sauce for hours or days, we were really talking about how much we owed to the folks who came before us and the importance of cherishing their memory. And how much we yearned to give to the people in our present who’d be gathered around our table. We were writing about food as family history, and love, and hope, and sometimes a little splash of guilt.”

Hayley doesn't believe that food has to be fancy to be good. She would say that a grandmother’s recipe for chocolate cake scratched out on a notecard can hold its own with a fancy chef’s menu. We'd love to share my grandmother's recipe for a simple chocolate cake. But first, I'll leave you with a bit of conversation from Hayley and her mother in Murder with Ganache:

"Why is it that cooking always makes things feel a little less hopeless?” my mother mused as the vegetables softened.

“At least we’re doing something,” I said, as she whipped the eggs with a splash of water and stirred them into the pan.

“We feel like we’re taking care of people when there’s really nothing to be done.” I grinned. “That’s what you taught me anyway.”

Lucy Burdette's One Bowl Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup Hershey's cocoa

1 egg

 1/2 cup sour milk (or sweet, with one TBSP vinegar added)

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup boiling water

Beat softened butter and sugar until well combined. Then add the other ingredients one at a time, mixing after each. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bundt pan, add the batter, and bake for about 30 minutes until cake springs back when touched. Cool for ten minutes and then invert onto a cake plate. Once it's completely cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Murder with Ganache

Hayley Snow, the food critic for Key Zest magazine, has her plate heaped high with restaurant reviews, doughnut and sticky bun tastings, and an article on the Hemingway cats. But this week she’s also in charge of her best friend’s wedding. And then someone adds a side of murder…

For better or worse, Hayley has agreed to bake over 200 cupcakes for her friend Connie’s wedding while still meeting her writing deadlines. The last thing she needs is family drama. But her parents come barreling down on the island like a category 3 hurricane and on their first night in town her stepbrother, Roby, disappears into the spring break party scene in Key West.

When Hayley hears that two teenagers have stolen a jet ski, she sets aside her oven mitts and goes in search of Rory. She finds him, barely conscious, but his female companion isn’t so lucky. Now Hayley has to let the cupcakes cool and assemble the sprinkles of clues to clear her stepbrother’s name—before someone else gets iced.

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COOKING WITH CLORIS--CHICKEN CACCIATORE WITH GUEST AUTHOR CAROLINE MICKELSON

Image credit: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/photo_9797080_cacciatore.html'>yatomo / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Caroline Mickelson has attending graduate school in a Scottish castle, ridden a camel around the Pyramids in Giza, and taken a best-in-a-lifetime road trip to Graceland. She also writes the Little Italy mystery series. Learn more about her and her books at her website. Today she joins us to share a recipe for chicken cacciatore and a little bit about From Mangia to Murder.

One of the most enjoyable parts of having published the first book in my Little Italy cozy mystery is hearing from readers. Some of them are Italian-Americans, some aren’t, and I enjoy hearing what they thought of my book. One comment that I’ve heard many times is, “All the food in your book brings back so many memories.” Because my own grandfather was Italian-American, I know just what they mean when they reminisce about family gatherings and holidays that center around family and food.

My main character, Sophia Mancini, could say much the same. Sophia’s best quality is that she cares deeply about her family. Naturally, this is the quality that gets her into trouble when she decides to play amateur sleuth after a chef is killed at a restaurant where her family is celebrating the opening of their new private detective agency. On the menu that night was zuppa di ceci (creamy chick pea soup), pasta with mascarpone, sun dried tomatoes, and spinach, followed by gnocchi caprese and finally chicken cacciatore. Throughout the book, the characters sit and hash out the mystery over – what else? – food. Coming up with new-to-me recipes to try has been a fun part of the research for both this book and the next in the series, Lights Out in Little Italy, which takes place at a dinner party where one dinner guest doesn’t survive the meal.

Chicken Cacciatore

(four servings)

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

3-4 lbs cubed chicken

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 chopped onion

2-3 minced garlic cloves

1 chopped green pepper

1 12-16 ounce can of diced tomatoes

1/2 cup white wine

2 cups sliced mushrooms

Oregano, salt and pepper to taste

Mix flour, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl. Add the chicken cubes and mix until coated. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Fry the chicken until browned. Remove chicken from skillet and set aside. Sauté the garlic, onion, and green pepper in the skillet until all are lightly browned. Return chicken to the skillet. Add tomatoes and wine. Simmer for 20-30 minutes. Add mushrooms, oregano, salt and pepper as desired and simmer for another 10-12 minutes. Serve over pasta or with a salad and fresh loaf of garlic or Italian bread.

From Mangia to Murder

Little Italy, 1946 - Sophia Mancini would have enjoyed the grand opening celebration of her family's private detective agency if the volatile chef at Vincenzo's Ristorante had actually survived the meal. But before Sophia's chilled spoon hit the spumoni, someone plunged a knife into Vincenzo's back, and the word on everyone's lips went from mangia to murder.

Sophia soon finds herself trailing crime boss Frankie Vidoni, chatting with his mouthy mistress Maria, and dodging henchman Mooch DiMuccio. She's suspicious of Vincenzo's widow Stella and his assistant chef Eugene because they don't appear the least bit dismayed by Vincenzo's passing.

There is no conversation Sophia won't eavesdrop on, no question shewon't ask, and no danger she won't face to find the killer.

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COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST COOK AND AUTHOR ROSIE GENOVA

It’s always a pleasure to welcome a fellow Jersey girl to Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers. With us today is Rosie Genova author of the Italian Kitchen Mysteries. An English teacher by day and novelist by night, Rosie also writes women’s fiction as Rosemary DiBattista. Learn more about her and her books at her website.

There’s a moment in my book, Murder and Marinara, when things look particularly dark for the staff of the Casa Lido, the restaurant at the center of the series. The chef responds by making a frittata, an egg-based dish that is one part quiche, one part omelet. And while the characters’ problems aren’t solved for another hundred pages, at least they get a warm, comforting meal.

In real life, I’m a big fan of Italian food that might be categorized as cucina rustica, or as we say in English, comfort food. Particularly at this time of year, I turn to favorites like roasted sausage with peppers and polenta; pasta with pancetta; greens with garlic and white beans, and one I  recently served up: a lovely frittata rounded out with a green salad and homemade bread.

The frittata pictured came about at the end of a long day. I was tired, nothing was defrosted, and I didn’t want pizza. In the refrigerator were some leftover roasted potatoes with caramelized onions and a package of fresh mozzarella. I always have eggs on hand; ditto Progresso flavored bread crumbs, a staple no Italian kitchen is ever without. I sliced the potatoes thin, estimated how much cheese to slice (then added six more slices) and scrambled up some eggs with freshly ground pepper, salt, grated Parm, and the flavored crumbs, making sure to get every last piece of sweet browned onions in there. I started it on the stove in the cast iron pan and finished it off in the oven. While it set up, I threw together a salad and warmed up half a loaf of bread. With a glass of strong red wine, that meal was nirvana. And I put it together in just about the time it would have taken me to get to the pizza place and back. 

The recipe below is a more formalized version of my thrown-together version, but this is a dish with many variations:

Ingredients:

1-2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1 quarter of a large Vidalia onion, thinly sliced

5 ounces of baby arugula (or baby spinach, escarole, or other tender green)

8 large eggs

¼ pound of fontina cheese cut into cubes (or fresh or regular mozzarella)

½ teaspoon of salt, or more to taste

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper, or several twists of a grinder

Italian flavored bread crumbs and grated cheese for topping

1.             Pre-heat oven to 350°.

2.             Heat oil in a well-seasoned 10-inch cast iron pan or other heavy ovenproof skillet. Cook the onion over medium heat, separating it into ribbons until nicely browned. Add arugula and cook, stirring frequently until wilted, about 2 minutes.

3.             Whisk together the eggs, cheese, salt and pepper until frothy. Pour over arugula and onions in the skillet and cook over medium heat without stirring until almost set, about 5-6 minutes.

4.             Remove from heat and sprinkle bread crumbs and cheese over the top. Bake for about 15 minutes until edges are golden brown and center is set.

(You don’t have to be limited to this recipe, however. You can do as I did, and use leftovers, any other veggies of your choice, or meats such as crumbled cooked Italian sausage, sautéed pancetta, or ham.)

Murder and Marinara

Hit whodunit writer Victoria Rienzi is getting back to her roots by working at her family’s Italian restaurant. But now in between plating pasta and pouring vino, she’ll have to find the secret ingredient in a murder.... 

When Victoria takes a break from penning her popular mystery series and moves back to the Jersey shore, she imagines sun, sand, and scents of fresh basil and simmering marinara sauce at the family restaurant, the Casa Lido. But her nonna’s recipes aren’t the only things getting stirred up in this Italian kitchen.

Their small town is up in arms over plans to film a new reality TV show, and when Victoria serves the show’s pushy producer his last meal, the Casa Lido staff finds itself embroiled in a murder investigation. Victoria wants to find the real killer, but there are as many suspects as tomatoes in her nonna’s garden. Now she’ll have to heat up her sleuthing skills quickly…before someone else gets a plateful of murder. 

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COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST AUTHOR CONNIE ARCHER AND A PYE OF MANY THINGS

Connie Archer is the national bestselling author of A Spoonful of Murder and A Broth of Betrayal, the soup lover’s mystery series set in Vermont, from Berkley Prime Crime. The third book in the series, A Roux of Revenge, will be released in April 2014. Learn more about Connie and her books at her website.--AP 

Early American Food

The soup lover’s mystery series is set in New England, in the imaginary village of Snowflake, Vermont, where, at the By the Spoonful Soup Shop, the restaurant’s talented chef creates fantastic recipes. When I first started to choose recipes for this Vermont location, I couldn’t help but think about the history of food in New England and the struggle of the first settlers to survive. 

The original Puritans were people of modest means who endured months of a harsh crossing of the North Atlantic. They carried only the most basic foodstuffs: dried peas and beans, salted dried meats, oatmeal, salt, flour, and hard cheeses. Water on board ship was contaminated, so beer was the only drink, even for children. Atlantic storms made it impossible to stay dry and even more difficult to prepare hot meals. The only method of cooking was to fill boxes with sand in order to safely build a small fire. The size of the ship and lack of sanitation made it impossible to transport large animals, but the colonists were able to bring poultry, goats, and pigs. They carried seeds as well -- of corn, wheat, barley and pea to establish vegetable gardens in their new land. Herbs were available but needed to be saved for medicinal purposes.

Once on land, there was plentiful seafood and wild game: fish, lobster, duck, squirrel, rabbit, turkey, swans, geese and deer. Eventually, these early settlers were able to grow corn, turnips, onions, garlic, carrots, parsley, sage, and thyme.  Fruit and nuts were abundant in season -- strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, blueberries, wild grapes and chestnuts. An early record even recounts the eating of eagles, a sad commentary on our national bird. In fact, the Pilgrims ate just about anything that crossed their path.

One of my favorite recipes originally came from the present day Plimouth Plantation website. It’s called a Pye of Many Things and even though I’ve altered it quite a bit, it’s a very special recipe and a family favorite:

Pye of Many Things

Ingredients

2 pie shells (I admit to purchasing these ready made, but a basic recipe is included below)
1 lb. bacon, cooked and broken into 2” pieces (I like to use turkey bacon)
10 carrots, peeled and shredded
1/2 stick of butter
1/3 cup of mustard (yellow or Dijon)
1-14 oz. bag of frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 large onion, sliced and sautéed
1 bar of sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Prepare all the ingredients above before beginning to layer them in the pie shell.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the mustard, mixing well. Combine this mixture with the shredded carrots for flavor. Place 1/3 of the cooked and sliced onions in the bottom of the pie shell, then add additional layers as follows: 1/3 of the spinach, 1/3 of the cooked bacon, 1/3 of the carrots, and 1/3 of the shredded cheese. Continue to add layers of onion, spinach, bacon, carrots and cheese until all the ingredients are used.  

Cover with the top pie shell. Coat with butter or egg white. Make slices in the top crust to let heat escape. Bake at 350˚ for 45 minutes.

Basic Pie Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup butter
6 to 7 tablespoons water

Stir together flour and salt, cut in butter until the mixture is the size of small peas. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of water into the ingredients and gently toss with a fork. Repeat until the dough is sufficiently moist. Divide the dough in half and roll out on a lightly floured surface until each piece forms a circle about 12” in diameter.

If you’re interested in the subject of early American food, you can visit the Plimouth Plantation and the Wampanoag Homesite here: http://www.plimoth.org/what-see-do/17th-century-english-village

And you can even join the Pilgrims for dinner.
http://www.plimoth.org/dining-functions/event-menus/themed-dining

If you would like to read more on this subject, follow this link to the Plymouth Colony Archive Project: http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/mourt1.html. Written between November 1620 and November 1621, it describes in detail events from the first landing at Cape Cod, through the exploration and eventual settlement at Plymouth and relations with the surrounding native Americans.

A Broth of Betrayal

Snowflake, Vermont is an old town with roots as deep as the earliest days of the American colonies. And, like any other place on earth, it has its secrets, secrets that have lain buried for years, even centuries, until they erupt . . . in murder. Two men fall victim to a murderer and a woman disappears. Lucky Jamieson, the owner of the By the Spoonful Soup Shop is convinced the missing woman is the key to the mystery, but can Lucky find her before the town discovers another victim? 

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