Welcome our guest Hank Phillippi Ryan!!

Hank is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston's NBC affiliate. She's won 32 EMMYs, 12 Edward R. Murrow awards and dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. A bestselling author of seven mystery novels, Hank has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: three Agathas, the Anthony, Daphne, Macavity, and for THE OTHER WOMAN, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a "master at crafting suspenseful mysteries" and "a superb and gifted storyteller." Her 2013 novel, THE WRONG GIRL, has the extraordinary honor of winning the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel and the Daphne Award for Mainstream Mystery/Suspense, and is a seven-week Boston Globe bestseller. Her newest hardcover, TRUTH BE TOLD, is a Library Journal Editor’s Pick and RT Book Reviews Top Pick, with starred reviews from Booklist and from Library Journal, which raves, “Drop everything and binge read!” She's a founding teacher at Mystery Writers of America University and 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime.

Thanksgiving Solution!

from Hank Phillippi Ryan

Thanksgiving is coming! (You don’t need me to remind you, I know.) Every time I think of Thanksgiving, I think of my mom. She taught us that turkey was best if it was dry, not juicy. Seriously. I grew up thinking that juicy turkey was undercooked.

At our Thanksgiving table, you’d hear—“Oh, yum, Mom, this turkey is great, it’s really dry.”

Good going, mom. Fooled us all these years. (I still prefer dry turkey. But that is another blog.)

TRUTH BE TOLD, there’s no such thing as a holiday for a reporter, so the last time Jane Ryland (the lead character in my latest series) sat down to a fabulous holiday dinner is—well, never.  I know the feeling. As a reporter for the last 40 years, I’m often working on Thanksgiving, so all I get are the leftovers.

However! Making something out of nothing is the hallmark of a good reporter—as well as a good story-teller. And in this case, it’s especially wonderful if the “nothing” includes wine and fresh mushrooms. And leftovers.

First, get the leftovers from a roast turkey. (Okay, I know this may be a problem. If you’re doing Thanksgiving, it’s easy. If not, get some turkey. But it can’t be sliced deli turkey. It’s got to be authentic turkey that a real person actually cooked.)

Then, read this recipe all the way through before you start because its success depends on doing several things at the same time--and having the ingredients prepped and the utensils ready to go. It sounds a little more complicated than it actually is, and the first time I made it I burst out laughing--it looked like I had used every pan I owned. Now I've made it so often I don't even need the recipe anymore!

You can use more or less pasta and mushrooms and turkey--it doesn't really matter. An added bonus--your kitchen will smell fantastic while this is cooking.

This serves about 6-8 people-- and reheats beautifully. This is so delicious and decadent, we look forward to this just as much as our holiday turkey.

And read to the end for a special MLK only giveaway!

 Turkey Tetrazzini ala Hank

INGREDIENTS:

*1 pound mushrooms

*1/4 to ½ pound spaghetti or macaroni

*two or three cups shredded cooked white meat turkey (leftover from your holiday turkey!)

*3 Tablespoons butter, plus three more tablespoons butter

*I clove chopped garlic

*3 Tablespoons flour

*2 cups chicken broth

*1 cup heated whipping cream (fat-free half and half will also work)

*3 Tablespoons dry white wine

*salt and pepper
* grated Parmesan cheese.

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 375.

Saute:

*1 pound sliced mushrooms

 Saute' in butter and chopped garlic...keep warm, while at the same time you

Cook

*1/4 to ½ pound spaghetti or macaroni.

While this is cooking,

Take the leftover meat from your holiday turkey--shred it so you have

*two or three cups shredded turkey

(I like just using white meat--but it works with dark too)

Set aside in a bowl large enough to allow you to add to it.

Okay, I know this sounds complicated, but at the same time you're going to make a sauce:

Melt

*3 Tablespoons butter

Sprinkle with

*3 Tablespoons flour

Stir to make a paste, then add  (a little at a time…)

*2 cups chicken broth

Allow to thicken...this will take about 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, then stir in

*1 cup heated whipping cream (fat-free half and half will also work)

*3 Tablespoons dry white wine

*salt and pepper

Now

**Drain the pasta, put it back into the pan and mix in the sautéed mushrooms. Add one half of the sauce to this mixture.

**Add the other half of the sauce to the bowl of shredded turkey.

**Put the pasta and mushroom mixture in a greased baking dish. Make a hole in the center, and

**put the turkey/sauce mixture in the middle.

**Sprinkle the top with

* grated Parmesan cheese.

Bake till lightly browned and cooked through...at least 20 minutes.

SO delicious! You will not believe it. So--make a lot.

HANK: Well, now I’m hungry. But do you have any turkey secrets? Leave a comment..and you’ll be entered to win the Hank book of your choice: THE OTHER WOMAN, THE WRONG GIRL, or TRUTH BE TOLD! Remember to leave your email address so Hank can contact you if you win.

Visit Hank online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @HankPRyan and Facebook at

HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage.

Here's a teaser for:






TRUTH BE TOLD begins with an all-too-familiar tragedy in today’s headlines: a middle-class family evicted from their home in the suburbs of Boston. In digging up the facts on this heartbreaking story—and on other foreclosures—reporter Jane Ryland soon learns the truth behind a big-bucks scheme and the surprising players who will stop at nothing, including murder, to keep their goal a secret.


Boston police detective Jake Brogan may have a liar on his hands. A man has confessed to the Lilac Sunday killing, a long-unsolved murder that haunted Brogan’s police-commissioner grandfather. While Jake’s colleagues take the confessor at his word, Jake is not so sure.


In the meantime, Ryland and Brogan’s paths are once-again intertwined—and as their private relationship heats up, it may mean difficulties in their professional lives.


Financial manipulation, the terror of foreclosures, the power of numbers, the primal need for home and family and love… What happens when everything you believe is true turns out to be a lie?