Farewell and My Best Recipe on MLK by Maya Corrigan

This is my final post as a member of the Kitchen. Six years ago you welcomed me into this special group. I've enjoyed becoming friends with all of you online and meeting many of you in person at mystery events. We've been on panels together, shared meals, and cheered one another's successes. I've also gotten to know MLK's wonderful readers through their comments. 

This post is a brief retrospective on my time in MLK, not a recipe post, though I do include a link to the best recipe I shared on MLK. When I joined the group, I didn’t know how to take good photos while cooking. Though my photos improved a bit over six years, I still can't take pictures as enticing as other MLKers can...Looking at you, Cleo. I’m just grateful that my phone never fell into a bowl of batter or a pot of soup.

Because of my photo-phobia, I appreciated the opportunity to deviate from the standard recipe posts to write about food history in my 2021 Potluck Monday posts. In each post, I explored the origin of a particular food and I included links to recipes on MLK for that food. If you missed those posts, here are links to some harrowing histories of food: Chocolate Candy's Deadly Past, Candy Corn Calamities, The Dark History of Gingerbread.

The book I'm currently writing isn't a culinary cozy. It's a suspense novel based on history and with crucial food scenes. When it comes out, I hope I can return to MLK as a guest.

In closing I'd like to highlight the hardest dish I ever made, though it has only five ingredients. It’s also the most delicious dessert I've ever eaten. Tarte Tatin, shown in the photo at the top of the post, is the best recipe I posted in the last six years.

Though I've cooked all my adult life, being part of MLK has expanded my culinary horizons. Yourand  recipe posts have introduced me to new ingredients and taught me new ways of cooking familiar foods.  And I really love the AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE conversations.

💕Thank you, MLK writers and readers! 💕

READERS: What's the hardest dish you've ever prepared?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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Chayote Salad #Recipe by Maya Corrigan

I first ate chayote in Mexico decades ago and liked both the texture and the mild taste. A few years later, chayotes showed up in supermarkets near me. Part of the squash family, they are also known as christophine or pipinola, as well as other names depending on the region. When ripe, a chayote looks like a light green pear with rough skin. It's crunchy when eaten raw and tastes like a cross between a cucumber and an apple. 

I adapted the recipe for chayote salad that I'm sharing today from a recipe in the New York Times. 

My version serves 6 as a side dish.

Ingredients

2 chayotes, about 3/4 to 1 pound each, halved vertically

1 heaping tsp imported mustard

1 1/2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

4 Tbsp peanut, vegetable or corn oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 clove garlic, finely minced (approximately 1 tsp)

1/4 tsp dried hot-pepper flakes

3/4 cup thinly-sliced red onion

Optional:

2 cups thin-sliced, halved red ripe tomatoes

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

Directions

Peel the chayotes to remove the tough skin. Split each in half, as shown in the photo of the ingredients. Put them in a pan with water to cover and salt to taste. Don’t remove the seeds, which are edible.

Bring the water to boil and let the chayotes simmer until just tender when pierced with fork. Depending on their size, this can take 10-15 minutes.

While the chayotes are cooking, prepare the other ingredients. Mince the garlic and chop the onion. 

For the dressing, mix mustard, vinegar, and oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Blend the mixture.

When the chayotes are tender, drain and run them briefly under cold water. Drain again.

Cut the halves lengthwise into quarter-inch-thick slices. Put them in a salad bowl, add the onion and garlic, and toss with the dressing. 

You can serve the salad at room temperature, but marinating and chilling it for a couple of hours or even days will give it a piquant flavor. We enjoyed the salad as a side dish three nights in a row.

READERS: Have you recently tried a new ingredient or dish?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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Summer Cranberry Sauce #Recipe from Maya Corrigan

I love cranberries and usually buy bags of them in December to freeze for use long after the holidays. Last year, though, I didn't buy enough cranberries to last until summer. When I had leftover chicken recently, I craved cranberry sauce and tried a recipe that jazzes up canned cranberries so the sauce tastes homemade.The recipe, originally by Ina Garten, appeared in a New York Times article.

I call this "summer cranberry sauce" because in the fall and winter, I would definitely use fresh cranberries to make sauce. 

Ingredients

1 14-ounce can whole berry cranberry sauce 
½ Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated
¼ cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
¼ cup raisins
½ teaspoon grated orange zest
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice

When I went to make the sauce, I discovered that the oranges I'd bought a few days before had been eaten. I didn't have time to run to the store before dinner, so I improvised by using 2 tablespoons of orange marmalade, which has orange zest in it, and 1 tablespoon of orange liqueur, Grand Marnier. I added a bit of lemon juice because I thought the mixture was on the sweet side. 

Warm the cranberry sauce over low to medium heat in a small saucepan. Add the grated apple and the orange juice and zest to the pan. Bring the sauce to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer the cranberry mix for 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

Take the pan off the heat and stir in the nuts and raisins. Move the sauce to a bowl and chill it. Serve it cold or at room temperature. 

Cranberry sauce goes well with summer's fresh produce.

The next time I make this recipe, I'll try chopping the apple instead of grating it. I'll also make sure I have an orange on hand. 

Visit my post about cranberry history and trivia. You'll also find links there to cranberry recipes by the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen crew. 

READERS: What's your favorite way to make or eat cranberries?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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Quick Tuna Salad by Maya Corrigan #Recipe

 A tuna salad sandwich is my go-to lunch when I can't find any leftovers in the fridge. The recipe I shared for Mediterranean tuna salad is my favorite way to use canned tuna, but it involves slicing or dicing celery, peppers, olives, and onions or shallots, and adding mayo and lemon to two different kinds of tuna. On days when I've been working steadily since breakfast and it's 1:30, I suddenly realize my stomach is empty and I want to fill it fast, without spending the time to chop ingredients. 

I was delighted to find a quicker way to make a tuna salad sandwich. Genevieve Ko's recipe for Tzatziki Tuna Salad (New York Times, 5/22/24) included directions for making tzatziki, using full-fat Greek yogurt, diced cucumber, lemon juice, and fresh dill. The recipe suggested the time-saving approach of substituting 1/4 cup of store-bought tzatziki for the homemade version. I had to modify the recipe to make it work with the store tzatziki, as I'll explain below. Here are the ingredients in the modifed version of the recipe.  

Ingredients

1 5-oz can of tuna in olive oil

2 tablespoons of store-bought tzatziki

1 1/2 teaspoons yellow mustard

bread

lettuce

optional: salt and pepper

Drain the tuna and mix it in a bowl with the tzatziki and mustard. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I added no salt and only a few grinds of pepper.)  

The first time I made the recipe, I followed the version in the newspaper, which said to add the oil along with the tuna from the can and to use twice as much tzatziki. I can only assume that the homemade tzatziki is much thicker than the store's version. The tuna came out so soupy and with oil around the edges that I was afraid it might ooze out of the sandwich. 

So I added more tuna--a drained can of tuna in water--to thicken it. That helped, but the tuna salad was still more liquidy than I liked. 

The next time I made the tuna salad with tzatziki, I cut down on the tzatziki and drained as much oil as I could from the can. Without the oil, the tuna had more consistency and fewer calories. For additional flavor, I served Kalamata olives on the side. I could have sliced them into the tuna as I do for the Mediterranean tuna salad, but serving them whole took less time. Altogether, a quick lunch.  

READERS: What do you eat when you want a quick lunch?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

📚

French Food: Crêpes and Tartes by Maya Corrigan

Savory crêpe (galette) and cider 

Instead of experimenting with recipes at home during June, I spent more than half of the month in France, enjoying meals prepared by others. Today I’m sharing pictures from the trip and links to recipes similar for dishes similar to those we ate in Normandy and Brittany. 

My husband Mike and I took an ocean cruise visiting ports on France’s Atlantic coast. Traveling by land, our daughter Nora joined us in four cities. 

In addition to hosting the Olympics this summer, France has been celebrating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. The gratitude of the French for their liberation was obvious in the cities we visited: Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Brest, St. Malo, Bayeux, and Honfleur. The flags of the Allied countries whose troops assaulted Nazi strongholds on D-Day were flying, not just on government buildings, but also along the streets. Some shops displayed the flags of Canada, the UK, and the US, and others had placards with “Thank You” on them. 

On the beaches where the battles raged, the French have erected monuments and tend cemeteries in memory of those who fought to free them. Parisians have a reputation for being curt with those who don’t speak their language, but visitors receive a warm welcome in Normandy and Brittany. Whenever we paused to check a map or looked even slightly befuddled, people stopped and asked in English if they could help us find our way.

Now for the food!

Crêpes and Cider

Restaurants in Normandy serve lunch between noon to 2 pm only, but crêperies are open from morning to evening. Along with the thin pancakes we call crêpes, French crêperies also offer a savory version. This type of the pancake, made from buckwheat flour, is called a galette. It's served with the cheese, meat, vegetable fillings of your choice. The galettes we ate were huge. When folded in two, they covered half of an oversize dinner plate. 

For details about making pancakes with buckwheat, look at two recipes on this site. Our guest, Ann Claire, recently shared a recipe for a French galette and Leslie Budewitz made buckwheat crepes with a savory and a sweet filling.

The photo from our crêperie meal shows another specialty of the region, hard cider, served in a large coffee cup. Once I tasted French cidre, I became addicted and ordered it with every lunch I ate.     

Fish

Along the coast of France, fish is always on the menu. Mike’s culinary goal in Normandy was a shellfish platter like the one he ate four decades ago in Mont St-Michel. The crab atop his platter was gigantic compared to the blue crab we get from the Chesapeake Bay, but not as meaty. Nora ordered a more modest shellfish plate, while I enjoyed a delicious sea bass filet and didn’t have to contend with shells.

Dessert

We saw tarte Tatin on two restaurant menus and ordered it both times. Our first one was more like a standard fruit tart with slightly cooked apple slices on a pie crust. The second restaurant’s tarte was closer to the classic French dessert. The apples were caramelized and served on a base of puff pastry. 

Check out my recipe for a five-ingredient tarte Tatin. That dessert plays a role in The Tell-Tale Tarte, my 4th Five-Ingredient Mystery,  

My birthday fell on the last night of our cruise. To celebrate we ate delicious lobster dinners in the ship’s specialty restaurant. Then the waiter surprised us placing a 6-inch-square layered birthday cake in front of me. It was yummy with a whipped cream icing, but we could only finish a third of it. Sadly, I couldn't pack the leftover cake, and I don’t have the recipe for it. Still, it was the perfect end to a wonderful trip.

 

Have you ever tried making regional dishes from places where you’ve traveled?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

📚

Quick Chicken Alfredo #Recipe by Maya Corrigan

I’m sharing a recipe I made at the last minute from what I had in the fridge and the pantry. It was inspired by a meal I’d eaten at the restaurant chain, North Italia: a pasta dish with chicken pieces, mushrooms, spinach, toasted pine nuts, and parmesan cream. 

I had the first four ingredients, including fresh spinach from our garden. Without any cream in the house, I couldn’t make parmesan cream. But there was a jar of Rao’s Roasted Garlic Alfredo sauce. I'd bought without knowing what I was going to do with it. I cooked everything on the stove in nonstick pans, which allowed me to use a minimum of oil. 

This recipe makes enough for two and is easily doubled.

 Ingredients

1-2 tablespoons olive oil if needed

1/2 pound chicken tenders

5-6 ounces raw cremini mushrooms

4 cups fresh spinach

3 tablespoons pine nuts
5-6 oz of Alfredo sauce
1/2 pound fettuccini
Grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

I left out the cheese in the ingredient image intentionally because it's optional. The pasta is missing because I forgot to include it. Any kind of pasta works with this recipe. I used

Cut the chicken into cubes and the mushrooms into quarters (or more pieces if they are large).

Toast the pine nuts at low or medium heat in a small nonstick skillet, stirring the pan or shaking the pan occasionally to brown them lightly. Then remove them from the pan and set them aside. 

Boil water and cook the pasta while you prepare the other ingredients.

Heat a medium-to-large skillet, lightly coated with olive oil. Sauté the spinach and then mushrooms, setting each aside after it has cooked.

Add another light coating of olive oil to the pan. Brown the chicken cubes. When they’re cooked, add the spinach and mushrooms to the pan and turn down the heat.

Add the cooked pasta and the Alfredo sauce to the pan with the other ingredients. Cook until the mixture is hot. Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle the pine nuts on top.

Serve the pasta and pass the Parmesan cheese.

The verdict on the recipe at our house: Excellent! The dish had less cream and less cheese than the restaurant’s version but still tasted great, without the extra calories and cholesterol.

Have you ever tried to make a dish at home that you’d enjoyed at a restaurant? 

 

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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