LUCY BURDETTE: I am so super-excited to welcome today's guest to the blog: Julie Williams. She will offer a recipe, of course. And talk about finishing her mother Sheila Connolly's The Secret Staircase. We loved Sheila and still miss her here on MLK, so it's a treat to welcome Julie!
Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for that very special book!
JULIE WILLIAMS: Hello, mystery lovers! I’m dropping in today to share an easy summer recipe and say a few words about The Secret Staircase, the last book by my mother, Sheila Connolly, which is out this week.
I live in Chicago, and it's been hot here. Not as hot as in some parts of the country, but the temp is often still hovering around 90 degrees in the late afternoon, and the air feels like soup as I grudgingly take my daily walk around the neighborhood. When dinnertime rolls around, I am loathe to turn on the oven or even boil water, and I don't have a grill. So... what's in the fridge? I have been hitting the local farmers’ markets in earnest lately, trying to be more conscious of the seasons and the specific gustatory joys they bring, and I remembered a recipe using little tomatoes that I discovered in a restaurant a decade or more ago. (What restaurant, you ask? The memory is entirely gone. Somewhere near Boston? Anyway...) I particularly love this summer salad because it requires no cooking, it comes together quickly, and it surprises the taste buds with its contrast of sweet-tangy balsamic vinegar, creamy goat cheese, crunchy onion and fresh baby tomatoes. You can make a batch a day ahead and keep it in the fridge, but I prefer to eat it as soon as it’s ready – the discrete chunks of goat cheese in the mix are a delicious surprise.
I should mention that The Secret Staircase isn’t really a book about food. It’s the third installment in my mother’s Victorian Village series, and the primary focus is the renovation of an old house – which is interrupted, surprise surprise, by the discovery of a body behind the kitchen wall. But part of the editing process to get the book into its final form was adding sensory detail – places, people, objects, food.
One of the elements I enjoyed building into the book was our hero Kate Hamilton's enjoyment of eating. She’s harried, she’s busy, but she is also something of a sensualist, and relishes stopping for a bite whenever she can, even if it’s a simple takeout pizza at the end of a long day. Part of this arc is Kate’s discovery that the humble luncheonette in town, run by Ted Wilson (a minor character who serves on the board of Kate's town restoration project), makes better food than Kate had realized. Kate used to hang out at Ted’s lunch counter as a bored teenager, probably consuming root beer and french fries exclusively, so she doesn't expect much from the place. But when she returns to the town as an adult and finds few local options to feed herself (she's not much of a cook), she discovers that Ted's food is delicious, full of fresh ingredients and satisfying flavors. I imagine this dish on Ted's lunch menu – only in July and August, of course, when his rooftop tomatoes are perfect and abundant.
You might read this recipe and find yourself thinking, "That's it? I'm done?" But on a busy weeknight, you'll be saying, "That's it! I'm done!" I made this one evening last week, next to a few fried breakfast sausages, and that was dinner. I handed the baby (a very willing eater of most foods) half a grape tomato, to see how she liked it. She put it into her mouth, made a face, took it out of her mouth, and handed it back to me. Dear reader, I ate it anyway. It was that good.
Five-Minute Tomato Salad
Ingredients:
1 pound grape/cherry tomatoes
Half a red onion
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Fresh basil leaves (about a dozen)
4 oz. Goat cheese (a small log)
Process:
Rinse the tomatoes and slice them in two. Dice the red onion, fairly small. Place the onion and tomatoes together in a bowl, and splash on some olive oil and balsamic vinegar (more vinegar than oil). [photo 2] Tear up the basil leaves by hand, or chiffonade (roll up and then chop into ribbons) if you're feeling fancy. Turn the mixture a few times with a spoon, and let sit briefly. Just before serving, crumble some goat cheese (more or less than 4 ounces, depending on how much you love goat cheese) into chunks and sprinkle on top. Toss lightly and serve.
And: I’m giving away a copy of The Secret Staircase! To enter, comment below with your favorite easy dish to make in hot weather.
About The Secret Staircase:
Kate Hamilton is feeling good about her plans to recreate Asheboro, Maryland as the Victorian village it once was. The town is finally on her side, and the finances are coming together.
Kate's first goal is to renovate the Barton Mansion on the outskirts of town. Luckily, it's been well maintained in the century since the wealthy Henry Barton lived and died there. The only substantial change she's planning is to update the original kitchen so that it can be used to cater events in the building. But when the contractor gets started, he discovers a hidden staircase that had been walled in years earlier. And as Kate's luck would have it, in the stairwell is a body.
After her initial shock wears off, Kate is relieved when the autopsy reveals that the man had died around 1880. Unfortunately, it also reveals that his was not a natural death—he was murdered. And serious questions remain: who was he and what was he doing there?
Kate begins a hunt to identify the man and figure out what he was doing at the Barton Mansion. But when a second body is found—this time from the present day—Kate realizes that real dangers lie in digging up the past...
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