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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Angel Slices by Maya Corrigan #Recipe

Today I'm sharing a recipe for my family's favorite cookie. The recipe comes from a 1960s edition of Joy of Cooking. Some later editions modified the ingredients and called the cookies Dream Bars or Angel Bars. We like the old version best. What began as a Christmas cookie is now a year-round favorite. I took these photos when my daughter baked the cookies while visiting us during spring break.

Ingredients

For the dough:

½ cup butter
¼ cup sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

For the topping:

2 beaten eggs
1 ½ cups brown sugar
½ cup flaked coconut
1 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon any baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

For the glaze: 

1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar.

Juice of a fresh lemon. 

Note: I accidentally left a lemon out of the photo below, but it's essential.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees 

Cream the butter and sugar until blended. Beat in the egg, and add the vanilla.

Combine the flour and salt and then add the flour to the butter-sugar mixture.

Pat the dough into a buttered 9 X12-inch pan, or as shown in the photo below. 

Tip: Lining a lightly greased pan with parchment paper before putting in the dough will make removing the cookies easier. 

Bake the dough for 15 minutes at 350 F.

While the dough is baking, combine all the ingredients for the topping. If you don't care for coconut, add an extra half cup of pecans. 

After the dough has baked for 15 minutes, spread the nut mixture on the warm dough and bake an additional 20-25 minutes.

Make the glaze: Combine 1 ½ cups sifted or unsifted confectioners’ sugar with enough fresh lemon juice to make it a dripping consistency. 

When the dough is cool, drizzle the sugar and lemon mix over it. 

Use a hot knife to cut the baked dough into bars or squares. 

READERS: Do you have a dessert or another dish that you still make years after you first tried it?

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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

📚

Pork with tart cherries by Maya Corrigan #Recipe

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I wish I had a green recipe to share today. This one's cherry red. After reading about the health benefits of eating tart dried cherries and not finding them in nearby supermarkets, I spotted them at Costco...in a gigantic bag. If all I did was snack on them, the supply would last me  year. So I searched online for recipes using dried cherries and found many. I adapted this one from a recipe on the Montmorency US Tart Cherry site.

The dish for pork medallions with tart cherries serves 4. 

Ingredients

1 to 1 1/4 pound pork tenderloin, cut in one-inch thick medallions

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 cup tart cherry juice

3 Tbsp Montmorency dried tart cherries
2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
1 clove garlic, minced
I shallot, diced
1/2 cup dry red wine *
1 Tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp dried thyme

* The recipe I found online suggested using a Cabernet, but the only dry red wine I had was a Malbec. Cabernet would probably make the sauce more robust.

To make the sauce:

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan over medium heat. Stir in the shallot and garlic and cook for a minute.Add the wine, increase the heat to high, and cook until it’s reduced by half. 

Stir in the cherry juice, dried cherries, maple syrup, and thyme. Cook over high heat for 10 minutes, until the sauce is reduced. Taste, and season with additional salt and pepper, if desired.

To make the pork:  

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Place the pork on a cutting board or plate, cut side up. Season both sides with salt and pepper.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large cast iron skillet, or oven-safe pan. When the oil is very hot, but not smoking, use tongs to add the pork pieces to the skillet, cut side down. 

Cook until golden, about 2 to 4 minutes. Use tongs to flip the medallions over, cooking the other side for 2 to 4 minutes, or until golden.

Lower the heat and cook until the pork reaches 145 degrees F. (Check the temperature with a thermometer.) 

Add the sauce to the skillet, so the pork soaks up some cherry flavor. Serve with rice.

I love fresh cherries, but tasty ones are hard to find except for a few months of the year. These cherries are good for snacking the year round. I find most dried fruit too sweet, so the sweet-tart flavor of these cherries appeals to me.   

READERS: What's your favorite cherry recipe? 

📚

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

📚

Orzo with Chickpeas & Spinach by Maya Corrigan #Vegetarian #Recipe

 

Don't you love one-pan dishes? This vegetarian meal is simple and quick to make, perfect for a weekday dinner. I started with Melissa Clark's New York Times recipe for orzo, spinach, and feta. I added chickpeas to make the dish more filling and olives to give it some zest. 

This recipe serves 2 as a main dish and 4 as a side dish. 

Ingredients

1 1/2  tablespoons unsalted butter
3large scallions, white parts sliced thinly and green parts for garnish
1large garlic clove or 2 small ones, minced 1
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable stock
2/3 cup orzo
1/2 cup chickpeas
6 ounces baby spinach leaves (6 cups), coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest plus 1-2 tsp lemon juice to taste
1/2 cup crumbled feta (2 ounces) plus 1/4 cup for garnish
 
Optional:
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
1/4-1/2 cup sliced Kalamata olives

 

Warm a 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Then melt the butter in the pan. Add the garlic and white parts of the scallions. Stirring often, cook until softened but not browned. 

Add the spinach in batches with 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until spinach wilts.

Add the stock. Heat it until the stock until it simmers. Stir in the orzo, lemon zest, chick peas, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Cover and simmer over low medium heat until the orzo is nearly cooked through and most of the liquid absorbed, approximately 10 minutes. Stir a couple of times.

Add 1/2 cup of cheese and stir in the lemon juice (and the dill if using). Cover the pan, and cook for another 1 minute. 

Garnish with feta cheese.

Only after I tasted the dish did I realize it needed a bit more flavor. Since the ingredients are typical of Greek dishes, Kalamata olives seemed like the obvious choice. 

The next time I make this dish, I'll wait to add the spinach until after the orzo is cooked so it's less limp. 

As a side, this dish would go well with meat or fish, and/or a large green salad.

READERS: Do you have a favorite one-pan 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

📚

Oven Filet Mignon by Maya Corrigan #Recipe MLK Day

Six inches of snow and temperatures in the teens made me consider using the oven, instead of the gas grill where we usually cook meat, even when it's 40 degrees outside. I found directions for roasting a 1.5 to 2-inch filet on the Rosebud Steakhouse site. The instructions stopped me in my tracks a couple of times as I explain in the recipe below. 

But first, some side notes. 

Today we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, who preached and practiced nonviolent protest against racial discrimination.

 

Amen, Reverend King. The struggle goes on.

On a different note, words from Agatha Christie: In The ABC Murders Hercule Poirot compares various crimes to dishes on a menu. Like Poirot and Christie, all of us at the Kitchen love good food and a good murder.

Now back to today's dish. The only ingredients are filet mignon, salt, pepper, and two types of oil. The recipe is perfect for my sleuth's grandfather, who won't cook anything with more than five ingredients. The photo here shows only four ingredients because I forgot to take the picture with the olive oil included. 

Take the steak from the fridge 30 minutes before cooking so it comes to room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

1. Just before popping the filet in the oven, season the beef liberally on both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper and then lightly coat the meat with olive oil.

What does "season the beef liberally" mean? That instruction might be clear to the steakhouse chef who came up with the recipe, but not to me. I erred on the low side, figuring salt can be added later but not taken away. 

2. Heat a cast-iron or other heavy skillet at medium-high until it is hot, not smoking. Add vegetable oil. When the oil is wavy, place the filet mignon carefully in the pan. 

Oil gets wavy? Another mysterious instruction. I went online to search for an image of wavy oil and found it in a Washington Post video about shimmering oil.

3. Sear the top, bottom, and sides of the filet for 2 to 3 minutes until it looks golden-brown.

4. Put the filet in the oven. For how long? That depends on the size of the filet and your doneness preference. Use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature in the thickest part of the steak. Here are some rules of thumb with approximate cooking times.

Rare:120-125 degrees. Cook 4 to 6 minutes.
Medium Rare: 130-135 degrees. Cook 6 to 8 minutes.
Medium: 140-145 degrees. Cook 8 to 10 minutes.
Well-Done: 150-155 degrees. Cook 10-12 minutes.

5. Remove the filet from the oven when it’s 5 degrees below the temperature you want. It will continue cooking while it rests. Loosely cover the steak with aluminum foil for 5-10 minutes. Resting it helps retain the juices.  

I cooked the filet to medium rare.

The verdict? The filet was good but not great. I prefer beef grilled rather than baked, maybe because I marinate it for half and hour before it goes on the grill. If the weather forces me to cook a filet in the oven again, I'll marinate it first and hope it's tastier than one with just salt and pepper. Going with simple seasoning, though, is probably sufficient for the higher quality beef available to steakhouse chefs than what we get from a supermarket. 

READERS: Do you prefer to grill, pan fry, or roast meat 

or veggies?

📚

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

📚