Comment to Win an NYPD Coffee Mug and help Cleo Coyle countdown to A BREW TO A KILL

My NEW comment to win
contest is now at this link... 

Click Here and leave a comment
TODAY on  my Fresh Fiction blog

for a new chance to win
an NYPD mug and a 
signed copy of my new
Coffeehouse Mystery:

A Brew to a Kill.

Good luck!

Below is last week's contest

and it is now over.

Help me celebrate a fantastic Kirkus review that was published in this week's printed issue. The review is about A Brew to a Kill, my 11th Coffeehouse Mystery, which goes on sale next week. 

The NYPD plays an important role in almost all of my Coffeehouse titles. No surprise since the cops of New York's Sixth Precinct are addicted to the coffee that my amateur sleuth Clare Cosi serves in her landmark Greenwich Village shop.

In A Brew to a Kill, you'll meet a brand cop character, a detective from the Highway Patrol division named "Mad Max" Buckman. Max works for AIS, the Highway division's Accident Investigation Squad, and he becomes Clare's biggest annoyance and her greatest ally as she works to solve the crime of a brutal hit-and-run that takes place outside of her coffeehouse.

In tribute to the NYPD and the coffee
they run on, I'm giving away a
signed copy of my book and this
fun NYPD Latte Mug, which is also
also fun to use for soup or cereal.

Comment on this post and
you'll be entered to win it!

Contest now over.
Winner announced
here.

More than
20 fun recipes!

More to come next week
about my new book,
including a sneak peek
at the featured recipes!

In the meantime, help me celebrate
my very good news on BREW,
which includes...

* RT BOOK REVIEWS:

"Completely entertaining!" 4-1/2 Stars!

* A Mystery Guild Featured Alternate Selection

* AudioGo audiobook release (digital and CD formats) 

scheduled for later this month

* A Fresh Fiction Featured Book for August

* PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
"Coyle lavishly details an ethnically diverse

New York City in her lively 11th coffeehouse

mystery featuring Clare Cosi..." 

and...

* KIRKUS REVIEWS:

"...it won't be easy to solve this case! A foodie’s delight, packed with information on coffee and desserts, along with appended recipes and a satisfyingly rich mystery."

Cleo Coyle's
Key Lime Coolers

Key Limes are still in season, but they won't be for long! That's why I'm baking up this favorite today. I've shared this one before with you here in the Kitchen, but for those of you who missed it, I hope you enjoy it as much as Marc and I do. 

FYI: You can make these babies with other limes, too, including the standard Persian limes found all year long in local grocery stores. To get the recipe click here to download a PDF that you can print, save, or share. Or read the original blog post by clicking here.

Yes, this is me - Cleo Coyle
Learn about my books here.
Friend me on Facebook here.
Follow me on Twitter here.

Read with joy!

~ Cleo Coyle, author of
The Coffeehouse Mysteries

To view the
Coffeehouse Mystery
book trailer, click here.

To get more of my recipes, enter to win

free coffee, or learn about my books, including
my bestselling Haunted Bookshop series, visit my online coffeehouse: CoffeehouseMystery.com

The Coffeehouse Mysteries are national bestselling

culinary mysteries set in a landmark Greenwich Village 

coffeehouse, and each of the ten titles includes the 

added bonus of recipes. 

 

The Ghost and
Mrs. McClure

Book #1 of 
The Haunted Bookshop
Mysteries, which Cleo writes
under the name Alice Kimberly
To learn more, click here.

Cremini Mushroom White Pizza

Do you have a garden? Is it overflowing? Ours is producing like crazy right now. I've pinched back the basil and made pesto. I've roasted, sauteed, and steamed zucchini and yellow squash.




All these lovely Roma tomatoes went into a simple sauce that went into the freezer for the winter.




Now a reasonable person might have used some of this fresh tomato sauce to make a pizza.




But if there's one thing I look forward to every summer, it's white pizza. I've blogged about it before, but this mushroom and onion pizza was so good that I had to share. I'll be making it again and again! It's very simple, but the mushroom flavor is so wonderful with the garlicky pesto. Oh, yum!

I use pesto as the base on my white pizza. I'll include my recipe here, but feel free to use a store brand. While I should have made my own pizza crust, I have to admit that I love the convenience of a ready made crust. (Shh, don't tell Natasha!)

Now, in the recipe, I'm going to say to follow the instructions on your crust, but I've discovered a little trick. My preferred brand says to prepare the pizza and bake it for 8 - 12 minutes. I've finally wised up. I put the pizza base in the oven plain (nothing on it at all) for about eight minutes. Then I put our toppings on it and bake it for another 10 minutes. What a difference! Such a nice crisp crust.

I used my favorite white goat Gouda, Cablanca, but our resident cheese expert, Avery Aames, tells me that Havarti or San Simon are great alternatives.

WALNUT PESTO

3 tablespoons walnuts

2 cups fresh basil leaves

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Chop the walnuts in a small food processor.  Add the basil leaves and garlic and pulse.  Slowly add the olive oil in a stream while pulsing or add in small amounts and pulse in between.  Add the parmesan cheese and pulse.  Add salt and pepper to taste and pulse one last time.

Cremini Mushroom White Pizza 

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 medium onion

1 8-ounce package Cremini mushrooms

1 pizza crust

walnut pesto 

1 - 1 1/2 cups low-fat mozzarella, shredded

1 cup Cablanca or Havarti or San Simon, shredded

Preheat the oven to 425 (or follow the instructions for your pizza crust -- read above regarding pre-baking the crust).

Slice the onions into rings. Heat the oil and saute the onions. Meanwhile slice the mushrooms. Add them to the onions.

Spread pesto over the pizza crust. Top with mushroom and onions. Sprinkle mozzarella over the pizza, then add the Cablanca.

Bake 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the pizza bubbles ever so slightly.

What's your favorite? White pizza or tomato sauce pizza? Deep dish or thin crust?

Ooh La La Cream Puffs

Have you met author Heather Blake? I've never seen her without a smile. You might be familiar with some of her books since Heather also writes under the name Heather Webber. She's the author of over a dozen novels. She's a Dr Pepper enthusiast, total homebody who loves to be close to her family, read, watch Reality TV (totally addicted, especially to competition shows), crochet, occasionally leave the house to hike the beautiful mountains in the northeast, bake (mostly cookies) and dreams of owning a house at the base of Mt. Mansfield in Stowe, VT. Heather grew up in a suburb of Boston, but currently, she lives in the Cincinnati area with her family and is hard at work on her next book.


Her latest book A Witch Before Dying hits the stores officially on August 7th.

When Darcy is hired by Elodie Keaton to clean up her missing mother’s disorderly home, the Wishcrafter is certainly up for the task. After all, the motto of her Aunt Ve’s personal concierge service As You Wish is “No Job Impossible.” But beneath the piles of old newspapers and knickknacks, Darcy discovers something much more disturbing: Patrice Keaton’s body.

Darcy’s determined to give Elodie peace of mind by investigating her mother’s disappearance and death. Patrice was last seen over a year ago after a fight with her Charmcrafter boyfriend. Was her murder a crime of passion? Or were Patrice’s troubles caused by the Anicula, a wish-granting amulet? Now Darcy has to find not only a killer but also the Anicula— before the power of ultimate wish fulfillment falls into the wrong hands…

Read more about Heather at www.heatherblakebooks.com .

And now -- Heather!

Back in the spring, my daughter came home from school with a specific assignment for her high school French class: She had to make a French recipe.

Of course, I volunteered to help because as I have a French character in my latest mystery series (Pepe, the mouse familiar from my Wishcraft mysteries), I felt as though I was fully qualified.

However, my daughter being the good girl she is opted to do the project on her own, though she graciously allowed me to be her sous chef (I can measure flour like no one’s business).

She pored over various recipes and ended up making something that we’re quite fond of in our family: Cream puffs! Light and crisp pastry shells that have a yummy filling. Fillings can be anything you choose, from savory to sweet. She opted to use our family’s vanilla custard filling for her assignment.

There are many recipes for cream puffs out there—all very similar. Here’s hers:

Pastry:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp. salt

2 eggs at room temperature

Preheat oven to 375˚. In a medium pot, combine the water and the butter and bring it to a boil. Remove it from the heat and dump in the flour, stirring until it’s all combined. Let it cool for a couple of minutes before returning it to the heat (on medium) and stir constantly until a dough ball forms. One at a time, add the eggs, and stir briskly until the dough is nice and smooth (great arm workout!). 

Place rounded tablespoons of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet (which can be lined with parchment if you prefer), 2-3 inches apart. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the pastry is nice and golden brown. During the last few minutes of baking, you can poke one or two holes in the dough with a toothpick to let steam escape and prevent puffs from collapsing (she didn’t do this and her puffs were fine). 

After cooling, cut the top part of the puff off (save it!), remove some of the doughy insides (they look like strings), and fill the pastry with your favorite filling. Then replace the top (like a little hat).

***You can adjust the dough amount depending on what size puff you prefer. Small bite-sized puffs are great for appetizers.

Yield depends on size of the puffs. My daughter’s batch made twenty.

Vanilla Custard Filling (can be easily doubled):

1 cup milk

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3 Tbs. flour

1/4 tsp. salt

2 egg yolks

2 tsp. vanilla extract

In a small bowl, combine sugar, flour, and salt

In another small bowl, combine egg yolks, beating gently to combine

On medium heat, warm milk in a pot until you start to see steam rising. Slowly whisk in the sugar, flour, salt mix. Stir until the mixture thickens, about five minutes. Remove a teaspoon of the mix and slowly temper it into the egg yolks, then slowly whisk the egg yolk mixture into the custard. Continue to cook for another five minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla. Transfer into a bowl and let cool for ten minutes before placing a layer of plastic wrap over the top of the custard (actually touching the custard—this prevents skin from forming) and refrigerate until completely cool—a few hours. 

***A quick and easy substitute for vanilla custard is to use instant vanilla pudding.

You can dust the top of your cream puff with confectioner’s sugar or drizzle with chocolate.

Bon appetit!

 

Voila!

Lucy Burdette’s Chard Tart

 

We have a close neighbor who neither gardens nor cooks, but she’s very good at appreciating what we produce at our house. In fact, she’s given us a couple of packets of heirloom seeds from an event she attends each year celebrating farm food. The heirloom tomatoes were out of this world. This year we planted seeds for chard and the green beans. The chard has been stunning, but it’s one of those vegetables where a little goes a long way. I make a recipe from Diet for a Small Planet called “cheesy chard,” but we’d gotten a little tired of it. Then I saw a recipe for a chard tart in the Joy of Cooking. Chard tart. It’s not a sexy-sounding recipe, but when we were finally overrun with greens, I decided to give it a whirl. Naturally, I tweaked. And I promise you, it was delicious!

I don’t own the kind of tart pan the recipe called for, so I used a plain old 9 inch Pyrex pie pan. And then I made my usual crust, which is easy as “pie”—you’ll find the recipe here. This time I replaced one cup of the white flour with King Arthur white whole wheat, and replaced the vegetable oil with olive oil. The whole thing came out very well—a little more hearty and nutty than usual, which stood up nicely to the chard. Refrigerate the crust while you make the rest of the dish.

Ingredients for the filling:

One large bunch chard, washed well, woody stems removed, and chopped

One onion, chopped

4 or 5 leaves fresh basil, or to taste (don’t skip this—it adds a nice flavor)

3 eggs

1/3 cup milk or half and half

1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

Saute the onion until tender, about 8 minutes. Add the chard and cover, cook until tender. This could take another 8 minutes. Chop the basil, and add that to the vegetables with salt and pepper to taste. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, then beat in the milk. Then mix in the cooked vegetables and finally the cheese.

Scrape the filling into the unbaked crust. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 375, until the filling is set. You may need to cover the edges of the pastry with foil if it’s browning too fast.

I made this twice, just to be sure, the second time using beet greens in place of half of the chard. It tasted fine but the beets gave the mixture a muddy reddish color which wasn’t quite so attractive. The J of C suggests serving this at room temperature, but go ahead and eat it warm if you can’t wait.

Lucy Burdette is the author of the Key West food critic mysteries. DEATH IN FOUR COURSES, filled with delicious foods and a foodie mystery, will be published on September 4, but you can preorder now!

And please follow her on Twitter @lucyburdette, and "like" her on Facebook.

MORELS

by Sheila Connolly

This past weekend I made a very quick trip to Philadelphia, for an event that was kinda, sorta held in my honor by a person who was the model for one of the main characters in my Philadelphia-based Museum Mystery series.



One of the Reading Terminal Market
vegetable stands

Since the hotel where I was staying was right next door, I had to visit the Reading Terminal Market again.  Twice.  I can't stay away.  Yes, I know I bored you with the fish recently, but this time I was hunting for mushrooms.  (This just might have something to do with the fact that Level Best Books will be publishing a short story of mine in November called "Kept in the Dark," which is about…a Pennsylvania mushroom farmer.)

And I found mushrooms, beyond the standard button and shitake and portabello.  I found fresh morels! Jack Czarnecki, the former proprietor of the beloved Joe's Restaurant in Reading, Pennsylvania, where I was privileged to eat many years ago (alas, it moved to the West Coast), called morels "aristocrats of the forest," right up there alongside truffles.  So of course when I see morels, I buy them—and celebrate!

So what to do with a lovely batch of fresh morels?  I turned to Jack Czarnecki's lovely cookbook, A Cook's Book of Mushrooms, for inspiration and found a simple pasta dish that highlights the flavor of the mushrooms (note that this is inspired by the original recipe, not a copy).

Pasta with Morels (or maybe it should be Morels with Pasta)

6 ounces pasta (you may use plain, spinach, or tomato or a mixture).  I had some amusing artisanal pasta that came in a jumble of diverse shapes, so I just picked out about six ounces of the shapes I liked (and I've got lots left), including butterflies

6 ounces fresh morels, cut in pieces more or less the same size as your pasta

2 Tblsp. vegetable oil or melted butter

1 shallot, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

1 Tblsp. soy sauce

½ cup beef bouillon

1 Tblsp. arrowroot (if you have it; if not, use cornstarch, but sparingly) mixed with one Tblsp. cold water

Bring about 6 quarts of lightly salted water to a boil and cook the pasta to your taste

While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil or butter in a skillet.  Add the shallot and sauté over medium heat for about a minute, until it softens.  Add the sliced morels and sauté gently until the liquid is drawn from the mushrooms.  Stir in the salt, sugar, soy sauce and stock.  Simmer for another minute, then add the arrowroot mixture and cook gently until the sauce thickens.

Drain the pasta, place in a bowl, and toss with the morel mixture.  Serve immediately. In the amounts given here, it served two.  The available morels were the limiting factor (and they were delicious!).

This is about as simple a dish as you can make with mushrooms.  Of course, you can feel free to experiment by adding any of a number of chopped fresh herbs, or adding heavy cream or crème fraiche. But whatever you do, let the mushrooms shine!

Diner, Beware!

There is a long story about why I have no picture of this week's recipe ...

I haven't subscribed to a magazine since the mid-1990s.  Honestly.  I now find what I'm looking for (articles, recipes, etc.) on the web.

Still, I somehow have been getting Woman's Day in the mail for the last year.

It's an absolute mystery.  I don't know how I got on their mailing list, and I don't know how to get OFF their mailing list (because, to be honest, I don't really read the magazine, and it seems like a waste).

This week, when the August edition arrived, I made a vow:  I will either figure out how to make it stop OR I will start donating the magazines to my doctor's office.  Or dentist's office.  Somebody's office.  Because going straight to the recycling bin is no just fate for a perfectly good magazine.

In my renewed effort to make use of the mystery magazine, I actually did flip through the August edition.  Okay, there was ice cream on the cover, and I flipped quickly through until I found the ice cream recipes.

The article was about Philly-style ice cream (that's ice cream that requires no cooking).  This particular variety relies on whipping the cream and sweetened condensed milk to introduce air before freezing, thus avoiding the need for an ice cream maker.

Since most of my ice cream recipes do require that special bit of equipment, which I know a lot of people don't have, I thought it might be nice to try this technique.  There were a huge host of flavors in the magazine, but I made the berry version because I happened to have frozen berries on hand.

The end result was ice cream.  That's about all I can say for it.  It set up, and it was scoopable, and it tasted like discount grocery store ice cream.  It also had a slightly oily mouthfeel that I found a bit icky.

So I'm not going to share that recipe with you (that recipe I took pictures of), because I cannot in good conscience recommend it.  Instead, I'll share another Philly-style ice cream recipe, this one from my personal stash of old recipes and with my official stamp of approval.  It requires an ice cream maker and I don't have a picture of it, but it's delicious ... and it's all about delicious, right?

Frozen Irish Coffee

2 Tbs. instant coffee crystals
2 tsp. hot water
1 can sweetened condensed milk
3 1/2 cups half and half
1/2 c. Irish cream liqueur
2 tsp. vanilla extract.

In a small dish, dissolve coffee crystals in water.  Combine all ingredients; mix well.  Freeze in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.  Devour.

Oreo Truffles ala Faith (Regular & Gluten-free)

When I was at Malice Domestic conference this spring, one of the editors at Berkley, a darling woman named Faith, mentioned an Oreo cookie creation that was a hit at every party. It's a cute little ball of goodness that pops in your mouth.

Well, as a gluten-free person, I can't have Oreos unless they're sort of the "fake" kind, you know, gluten-free.  Guess what? There are gluten-free homemade Oreo recipes, including one by Gluten-free Girl.

But there is also a store-bought crispy "Oreo-type" GF cookie by GLUTINO. So that's what I used. I like easy sometimes.

I made Faith's recipe and it was, indeed, a hit and no one could tell that I hadn't used "real" Oreos.

So here is my gluten-free version of Faith's OREO TRUFFLES.

Faith, the editor for the fabulous Janet Bolin

FOR OBVIOUS REASONS...You can use "real" Oreos in this recipe.  :)  Enjoy!

OREO TRUFFLES

Ingredients:

One package gluten-free “Oreos”

8 ounces whipped cream cheese

8 ounces semisweet chocolates

Sea salt (or good granular-type Kosher salt)

Directions:

Whizz up a package of “Oreos” in a food processor until they are crumbs.

Then mix in (I use a hand mixer) whipped cream cheese (it’s fluffier). It forms a sort of dough.

Melt chocolate chips in a microwave. [I put them on medium-high and I added 1 tablespoon water. Takes about 30-60 seconds. Stir with a spoon.]

Roll Oreo-cream cheese mixture into balls with your hands and dunk each ball in melted chocolate. Cover completely with chocolate and set on a piece of aluminum foil on a cookie sheet pan. Sprinkle them all with sea salt.

Stick in fridge to cool. Serve. 

**Receive heaps of compliments and oohs and aahs.

How easy is that?? Shout out to Faith!!! Thank you!

So...

What is your favorite change-up on a cookie?  What is your favorite cookie COOKBOOK?

***********

I'm very excited to share my newest cover for the 

4th in A Cheese Shop Mystery series: 

TO BRIE OR NOT TO BRIE.  


You can pre-order the book HERE. 

You can learn more about me, Avery, by clicking this link.

Chat with me on Facebook and Twitter.

And if you haven't done so, sign up for the mailing list

 so you can learn about upcoming events, releases, and contests!

Also, you probably know about my alter ego.
DARYL WOOD GERBER... 
Daryl's new series: THE COOKBOOK NOOK MYSTERIES
debuts July 2013

"Like" Daryl's page on Facebook and "follow" Daryl on Twitter.

"She" doesn't say all the same things "Avery" does. Promise.

ALSO:

I'm pleased to announce that my short story, PALACE ON THE LAKE,  in Fish Tales: A Guppy Anthology has been nominated for both the Anthony Award and Macavity Award. 

Go Sisters in Crime Guppies! 

Without them, my career would not be possible. The group support is invaluable!

You can read PALACE ON THE LAKE by clicking on the title above. :)

Say cheese!

***********