Pigs in Blankets to celebrate A DISH TO DIE FOR @LucyBurdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE: My good friend Pat Kennedy adores a party and loves to serve party food. These pigs in blankets are a crowd favorite, and she graciously allowed me to include the recipe in A DISH TO DIE FOR (published August 9!) 

Here's the story behind the recipe: Pat was very young and pregnant when she moved to Omaha, Nebraska, knowing no one and feeling adrift with a baby arriving in eight weeks. Her Iowa mother-in-law suggest that she call Lucy Phipps, her high school friend.  Lucy was a Midwestern homey cook who taught Pat the sweet art of caring for others through shared cooking, saying “Let’s make something really tasty.”  

Pat with the pigs

They made pigs-in-a-blanket, of course. She still has Lou’s handwritten recipe for The Pigs which she copied from HER grandmother’s handwritten page.  She often cooks with one or several of her grandchildren now and remembers her advice. “It’s best,” Lou counseled, “to make something tasty and homey and not too complicated. Something that allows a conversation while you mix things up. Folks and children find it easier to ease their hearts when their hands are covered with flour.”  

In A DISH TO DIE FOR, these are served at a funeral reception at the Key West Woman's Club. I feel that you can tell a lot about the characters by the way they react to the plate of "pigs."

Ingredients for the dough

3/4 cup butter 

3/4 cup sugar 

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 cup boiling water

2 packages dry yeast

2 eggs

1 cup lukewarm water

6 cups all-purpose flour

Ingredients for the Pigs

1 package of Hillshire Farms Lit’l Smokies (you can use other small sausages but they aren’t nearly as tasty)

Small chunks of cheddar cheese (optional)

Directions

In large bowl blend softened butter, sugar and salt; then add boiling water; cool.

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water; add to above and mix in.

Mix eggs with a fork or spoon; add to above mixture.

Blend flour in gradually --½ cup flour at a time beating well. (A large standing mixer makes this easier) Cover dough bowl with plastic wrap; place in refrigerator for 4 hours at least before using. You can leave it in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. Punch the dough down and then take portions out to use as desired.

When the dough is ready, flour your hands then take a small pinch of dough and roll it out into a worm like shape and then roll it around one Lit’l Smokie with or without a chunk of cheese inserted into a split on the sausage. Place shaped rolls on a lightly greased (Pam sprayed) baking sheet. Cover with a tea towel. Let rise 4 hours (on counter). 

Bake 10-12 minutes in 375-degree oven. Check to see if the bottoms are browned too.

Serve when just slightly cooled with a dark grainy mustard on the side.

The dough has to be made in advance but comes together very quickly. Once mixed, it can be refrigerated for up to 10 days. When making the pigs, there is always dough left over. You can use the extra to make dinner rolls or cinnamon rolls for breakfast or even pizza. These are totally delicious but homey and irresistible. The secret is the dough. No Pillsbury crescent rolls could ever compete. They go fast!

Thanks Pat, and you'll find that recipe and more in A DISH TO DIE FOR! Now available wherever books are sold!

Kirkus Reviews said: 

“Key West food critic Hayley Snow proves once again that she understands crime as well as cuisine. A suitably steamy background for a complex tale of murder and deceit.” 

 A DISH TO DIE FOR is now available wherever books are sold

About A Dish to Die For:

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking, to find him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.

 When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.

But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

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