RELEASE DAY NEWS: Nipped in the Bud by Sheila Connolly

Congratulations to our own... 

SHEILA CONNOLLY

on today's release of her brand new
"Orchard Mystery"

NIPPED IN THE BUD 

The New York Times bestselling author of A Late Frost returns with orchard owner Meg Chapin trying to stem the tide of crime...

Winter still has a firm stranglehold on the small town of Granford, and newly married orchard owner Meg Chapin is restless to begin her spring pruning and planting, while Seth busies himself with a new project of his own. But their relative peace is shattered when a gunshot breaks the winter silence and they discover the body of a dead woman on their land. What's just as troubling is that the state police have hushed up the murder and are warning Meg not to investigate.

Never one to sit by idly with a killer on the loose, Meg starts digging for clues and probing for answers as discreetly as she can. When the victim turns out to have been an undercover reporter doing a story on the blossoming trade in illegal drugs in the area, Meg's stunned to learn that this very modern crime has come to sleepy Granford. Unwilling to accept that the nasty business has put down roots so close to home—and led to a murder that occurred literally in her own backyard—Meg is determined to nip it in the bud before the town she knows and loves turns rotten...

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BOOK CLUB WEEK: Golden Malicious by Sheila Connolly

Massachusetts is enjoying what everyone agrees is an incredible bumper crop of apples this year, and since I write about an apple orchard, I'm thrilled. What's more, when groups such as book clubs gather, there is always food.  There's something very basic about feeding your guests, and it's also a wonderful opportunity to introduce and sample new dishes. 

When I started writing the Orchard Mystery series, I knew what most people know about apples—I could recognize an apple tree (if it had apples on it) and I knew the names of what I saw in grocery stores, not that those names meant a lot to me.  So when I created my heroine, Meg, I made it clear that she didn't know much about apples either.  She's been learning a lot in the past couple of years (going on two years in the books).  That goes hand in hand with learning about the people in her new town, Granford, Massachusetts.

Of course, learning to manage an orchard doesn't leave Meg a lot of time or energy for cooking, but everybody has to eat.  And apples lend themselves well to so many dishes, both sweet and savory.

But book club members have to earn those tasty dishes (work before play, right?), so I have some questions for you to think about.

Golden Malicious, coming out next week, is the seventh in the Orchard Mystery series.  Meg's life has definitely changed since she arrived in Granford.  But since not all readers will have read all the books, I've combine some specific questions about Meg and her new community with more general questions about reading cozy series.

• Do you find that using a single theme in a series, like a craft shop or a food producer or seller, is too confining? Do you find it believable that a woman like Meg would go from a bank job crunching numbers to managing an orchard? 

• Do you enjoy learning about something new in books, or are you impatient and wish the author would just get on with the story? Meg keeps getting distracted by murders in Granford, even while she's trying to expand her orchard and harvest her crop. Do you ever wonder how she manages to juggle it all? 

• Do you prefer to read about crafts or trades that you might actually practice in your life, or do you just enjoy imagining them? Do you harbor a secret desire to return to a simpler life on a farm? (Warning:  it's hard work!) 

• Most cozies are set in small towns, and Granford is a typical New England town.  Does it bother you that bodies keep turning up there?  Or that the local police seem unable to solve murders without help from an amateur? 

• Do you like reading about new places you've never been, or do you prefer places you recognize or even know? How much description of the place can the author include before you're distracted from the story? 

• Do you as a reader find yourself as identifying with the protagonist when she decides to get involved in solving a crime?  At the beginning of the series, Meg is a newcomer in town, so why is she qualified to investigate crimes there? Because she's smart, or because she has something to lose if the crime isn't solved or if the wrong person is accused? 

• Many cozies include romantic elements, and sometimes there may be two men vying for the attention of the protagonist as she tries to solve crimes.  Do you think that romance has a place in cozy mysteries? How much attention should it be given? 

        In Golden Malicious, Meg and Seth have known each other for well

        over a year.  Is their relationship moving too slowly, too fast, or just

        fine (given all the other things they face, like multiple murders)?

In honor of the Massachusetts apple crop, I'm including my favorite apple cake recipe, but I've modified it for serving a group (individual slices work but they can be messy).  This recipe is tasty, dependable, and easy to make (it appeared in the first Orchard Mystery, One Bad Apple, and also in a guest post here in 2010).

FRESH APPLE CAKE

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 eggs (mix one of them up and add half)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups shredded apples (do not peel -- the skin adds texture to the cake; the shredding disk of a food processor works very well, or you can use a hand-grater).  How many apples you will need will depend on their size.

1 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze:

2 Tbl butter

2 Tbl brown sugar

2 Tbl granulated sugar

2 Tbl heavy cream

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Butter and flour small cake tins (the flour is important to keep these from sticking!) This recipe makes a total of four cups of batter.  The pans I used held 1/4 cup for each mini-cake, so should make 16.  The recipe can easily be doubled.

From my ever-growing vintage cookware collection

Combine the oil and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Blend very well.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.  Sift these into the oil-egg mixture and combine thoroughly.  Add the vanilla. Then fold in the raw apples, mixing well with a large spoon or spatula.  Pour or spoon the batter into the little cake pans. Note: when filling, stop 1/4-1/2 inch from the top, because the batter does rise a bit.

Ready to bake

Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick tester comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and let them cool while you prepare the glaze.

Glaze: Melt the butter, sugars, and heavy cream mixed with vanilla in a heavy pan.  Boil for 1 minute without stirring, then remove from heat.

A word of warning about the glaze: it’s addictive.  At my house we usually double the recipe, and fight over who gets to lick the pan.  My daughter pours it over ice cream, and she adds chopped nuts and coconut.  And sometimes we just skip the cake and eat it right out of the pan.  Yum!

Remove the cakes from the pans and drizzle the glaze over them while they are still warm.

GOLDEN MALICIOUS           (Orchard Mystery #7)

Coming October 1st!

Coffee Jelly

by Sheila Connolly

I have finally solved the mystery of my grandmother's coffee jelly.

I may have mentioned that my grandmother never really learned to cook, with the exception of penuche fudge and meatloaf.  But I have a lingering memory of her and my mother making a coffee gelatin dessert a long time ago. The result was memorable because it consisted of two distinct layers, one clear and dark, one lighter and opaque. It was never replicated, and I didn't like coffee back then, so I more or less forgot about it.

But this past weekend, in my never-ending hunt for strange and obscure cooking memorabilia, I came upon a Knox Gelatine pamphlet dated 1927 (when my grandmother would have been a young bride), and lo and behold, there were two coffee-based recipes in there, and a light-bulb went on:  make both, and spoon one over the other before chilling (the lighter one floats, and when you unmold the dessert, it ends up on the bottom).

Of course, gelatine in 1927 is not quite the same as gelatine today.  For one thing, the older form required some form of "acidulation" to make it work, either in the form of an acidic fruit juice or by adding a separate package of lemon flavoring (you have to remember that lemons were harder to come by in the 1920s; they were probably also smaller, so when a recipe called for "juice of half a lemon" it may have been no more than a teaspoon's worth). I ignored the whole issue of lemons here.

Per their measurements, a tablespoon of gelatin could "jell" a pint of liquid. The recipes given below were said to make 6 servings, although what size that may have been is anybody's guess. A half cup?

Funny thing—I have a whole lot of molds for jellied desserts, both large and small.

COFFEE JELLY

1 level Tblsp Knox Gelatine

¼ cup cold water

1 ½ cups clear strong coffee (hot)

1/3 cup sugar

A few grains of salt

Soak the gelatine in the cold water for five minutes.  Dissolve in the hot coffee.  Add the sugar and salt and stir until dissolved. 

Rinse your mold in cold water and fill with the jelly mixture. Refrigerate until set. (Small molds with harden more quickly than a single large one.)

To unmold, immerse the mold to the top for a second in warm—not hot!—water (do not let the water flow over the molded jelly).  Slightly loosen jelly at the edge, turning the mold from side to side, then place a serving dish on top of the mold, invert it, and carefully remove the mold.

MOCHA SPONGE

1 level Tblsp Knox Gelatine

¼ cup cold water

1 ½ cups clear strong coffee (hot)

3/4 cup sugar

Whites of two eggs (room temperature)

A few grains of salt

Soak the gelatin in cold water for five minutes.  Add to the hot coffee, then add sugar.

Strain into a pan or metal bowl.  Set the pan/bowl in a larger pan/bowl of ice water, cool slightly, then beat, using a wire whisk, until quite stiff. 

Beat the whites of the eggs until stiff, then add to the cooled mixture and continue beating until the mixture will hold its shape.

Turn into a wet mold.  Chill thoroughly. 

Remove from mold and serve with sugar and thin cream.

Of course you can make either one on its own.  But if you're trying to make My Grandmother's Layered Coffee Jelly, you would wet your mold, pour in a layer of the clear jelly, then carefully spoon over it a layer of the foamy jelly, and chill.  When you serve it, garnish with plenty of sweetened whipped cream.

Who knows—maybe molded salads will make a comeback!

(We will not explore the social and bovine implications of this publication!)

STILL COMING OCTOBER 1ST

Lobster and Corn Soup

by Sheila Connolly

This past month, for our 37th (!) anniversary, my husband and I went out to dinner.  Where we live, there are few nearby choices (although plenty if we want to fight traffic for an hour or more), and this place is one of the few that is both close and serves good food.

The first-course special of the evening was Lobster and Corn Chowder.  I though the combination of local lobster and fresh corn was brilliant, although I had my reservations about the "chowder" part, because most often that means a soup heavy with potatoes and cream. But we took the plunge anyway, and were not disappointed by the very tasty soup that appeared before us.  As predicted, the sweetness of the lobster and the corn made them the perfect pairing, with a little edge contributed by grilling the corn first. 

I wanted to recreate it at home.  Simple, right?  Except when I started looking for a recipe, I came up blank.  Nothing on Epicurious.  Nothing in my large and eclectic selection of cookbooks (oh, no, Julia has failed me!).  So I was stuck with improvising.

It wasn't hard. The basics are simple:  boil a lobster (please don't make me explain how to terminate the poor creature—just honor it by enjoying the soup), remove the meat and chill, covered, until you need it.  Since there were only two of us eating this, I used one one and a quarter pound lobster and one ear of corn.  You can easily increase the amounts, and increase the stock (below) proportionately.

Make a hearty fish/lobster stock:

Lobster carcasses and shells

1 quart water

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 small carrot, thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 sprigs fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

Sea salt

Place the lobster carcasses (minus meat) in a large pot and add the water (it should cover the lobster bits). Add the wine, onions, carrot, garlic, thyme, bay leaf and peppercorns, and let simmer, uncovered, and reduce for about an hour. (Keep the lobster shells covered with liquid.)

Season with a bit of salt and taste.  If the flavor seems light, simmer for another 10-20 minutes.  Strain (if you're not going to use it immediately, cover it after it has cooled and keep refrigerated, no more than three days; you may also freeze it).  Makes about two cups.

When you are ready to make the soup:

Husk the corn and remove as much silk as you can.  Grill it briefly so that some of the kernels are a bit charred.  When cool enough to handle, cut the kernels from the cobs. You should have about one cup (for two servings).

Now comes the fun part.  Place your stock in a clean pan and bring to a simmer.  Taste!  Stir in 2 Tblsp unsalted butter and 3/4 cup heavy cream.  Add some paprika (sweet) and a dash of any herbs or spices that strike your fancy (I used turmeric, for a bit of an earthy taste; you could also add a pinch of cayenne if you want some bite).  Taste again.  Add some more sea salt and freshly ground pepper if you like.

When you're happy with the flavor, you can plate your soup:

In a wide shallow bowl, scatter the corn kernels.  Take your lobster meat (at room temperature) and make a nice nest of it in the middle of the bowl, so that some rises above the surface. Ladle the soup around the lobster island. 

And enjoy!  We found this goes well with a crispy flatbread toasted with some Parmesan cheese—it's a nice contrast.

Note:  this is a relatively thin soup, nice for a summer meal.  If you want to thicken it, you can mix some cornstarch in water, then add to the strained soup, stirring well.  Simmer for a few minutes until the mixture thickens.

COUNTING THE DAYS:  COMING OCTOBER 1ST!

Quick and Easy Curry

by Sheila Connolly

Everybody needs a go-to dish when you want something flavorful and fast, and this is one of my favorites.

Let me say up front that I don't cook Indian food. This recipe originated on the can of my favorite curry powder. It wasn't a very big can, so you can imagine how short the recipe was. Of course, I've changed it over the years, and it's one of those recipes to which you can add whatever you have on hand.

Before I jump in, a word about curry powders. One of the few things I have learned about Indian cooking is that each curry powder is different, and I'm not even going to touch the idea of blending your own. I grew up with McCormick's version, which is very mild, and which my mother used sparingly, so it provided just a hint of flavor (I still have a sneaking fondness for it mixed into scrambled eggs). I have a current favorite that is easy to find in grocery stores, but you'll have to try a few until you find one that suits your taste–and you can always add spices to it, if you find that the balance is off.

So here's the recipe:

Quick and Easy Curry

Chicken, onions, tomatoes and yogurt

2 cups protein. Most often I use left-over cooked chicken, cut up, but you can just as easily use skinless chicken breasts, or lamb (a rarity, at least in our market) or shrimp. Hey, for all I know it works just as well with tofu–I've never tried it.

2 large yellow onions, sliced lengthwise

1 clove garlic, chopped or crushed

3 Tblsp curry powder of your choice (it seems like a lot but it isn't)

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes (you can use fresh if you have them)

1 cup creamy yogurt

Salt and pepper, to taste

Peanut oil for sauteing


Chop all your ingredients before you start, because the cooking doesn't take long.

In a skillet, heat the peanut oil and add the onions, garlic and curry powder. Cook at medium heat until the onions are softened. (Adding the curry powder now really brings out its flavor.)

Add your protein. If you're using leftovers, just toss to warm through and coat with the curry-onion mixture. If you're using uncooked meat or shrimp, saute at medium-high heat for a couple of minutes.

Add the tomatoes, stir, cover, and cook on low heat for 5-10 minutes (you'll note that everything in this is already cooked, so this is just to blend the flavors).

When you're ready to eat, add the yogurt and blend well over low heat, just enough to heat up the yogurt–you don't need to cook it. Yogurts vary widely in consistency, so if you want the end result to be creamy, you'll have to experiment. The less creamy yogurts may look a bit curdled when cooked, but the dish still tastes good.

Serve over steamed rice. (I like to pep up my rice by adding some cardamom seed pods while the rice cooks.)

IRISH STEW

by Sheila Connolly

We’re celebrating Easter Week here at Mystery Lovers Kitchen, and I realized that my family had few if any food traditions for the holiday.  We always dyed eggs, and my grandmother would arrive from New York with bags full of exotic candy for baskets.  Among these were little rabbits dipped halfway in dark chocolate.  I adored them, and luckily for me no one told me they were made of marzipan, which is made of almonds—because if I’d known there were nuts involved I would have said, “oh, ick”, and refused to eat them.  (I still have reservations about peanut butter, but that’s because I ate a peanut butter sandwich every day during my freshman year in high school—and it was not a particularly happy year.)

My father was born to Irish parents, so I grew up eating lamb.  My husband, raised in the Midwest with lots of beef, has never warmed up to lamb, so I’ve been known to indulge myself in lamb chops when he’s out of town.  But he is fond of a lamb stew recipe that I’ve been making for decades.  I found it in a British cookbook which dates to 1974, but of course I’ve changed it over time. The recipe is very forgiving in terms of proportions—sometimes lamb chunks are hard to find (including in my town, which according to census records has a population of which 25% have Irish ancestry).  And the Easter tie-in is that the new lambs are ready for market at this time.

Let me add that there is no one kind of Irish stew in Ireland.  Some include carrots or cabbage, others add Guinness.  Those aren’t bad (although in the hands of some cooks you end up with a watery mess of overcooked veggies and tough lamb chunks), but to my mind this is the classic recipe, with nothing more than lamb, potatoes and onions.  It’s simple to make, if you don’t mind slicing (which is very easy with a Cuisinart and slicing blade), and you do have to allow time for it to cook in a medium oven—at least an hour, and an hour and a half is better.

This was the last dish we made in our cottage in Ireland last month (believe me, I know this recipe by heart), and I’ve made it since my return, since I can do it sitting down nursing my bum ankle (on the way to recover!).

CLASSIC IRISH STEW

3 lbs. stewing lamb (you can use less)

6 large potatoes (not baking potatoes, which are too soft)

2 yellow onions

2 Tblsp. finely chopped parsley

1 tsp. thyme (fresh if you have it)

1 tsp. salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2-3 cups chicken broth

1 1/2 Tblsp. butter, softened

1 Tblsp. flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the lamb into cubes. If you buy it cubed, trim off the fat and chewy stuff (which my daughter calls “squidgely bits”).  Peel the potatoes (oh, heck, you can skip that step—a little potato skin never hurt anyone) and onions and cut them into slices.  A Cuisinart is great for this part, but use a thicker blade (4mm), because otherwise the sliced potatoes and onions will be reduced to mush before the lamb is tender).

Mix the parsley and thyme together (you can also chop all this together in the Cuisinart).  Butter a casserole with a lid, or use cooking spray.

Arrange a layer of 1/3 of the potatoes on the bottom of the casserole.  Cover with a layer of lamb, then a layer of onions.  Season with the herbs, salt and pepper.  Repeat to form 3 layers, seasoning between each layer and ending with the onions.  Add the broth (add enough so that the contents of the casserole are nearly covered but not submerged—the contents will shrink a bit while cooking).

Cover the casserole and cook in a 350 degree oven for 1 1/2 hours until the lamb is tender.

Combine the butter and flour in a small bowl and evenly distribute dollops of the paste to the casserole.  Cover again and ontinue cooking 5 minutes until the juices are thickened.

If you have any left over, this is even better the second day.

APPLE CAKE

by Sheila Connolly

Thank you, members of Mystery Lovers Kitchen, for inviting me to cook with you. I just love to talk about food.

It’s apple time again! I mean the apples that come from trees around here, not the apples that are flown in from New Zealand and Chile. Warning: Do not stand next to me in the fruit section of a supermarket—I start foaming at the mouth. I do not want to eat food that has flown halfway around the world. If there’s flying involved, I want to be the one doing it.

Think calm thoughts…rolling acres of trees, their boughs bent almost to breaking with the weight of gleaming red clusters of ripe fruit…oops, now I’m hungry. I’m giving you my go-to apple cake recipe, the one that I take to every pot-luck. The one that is impossible to mess up and doesn’t even require peeling any apples. But first I want to talk about my mania for collecting antique cookware. You’ll just have to wait.

Actually, some of the cookware was my mother’s and I’ve just kept on using it. Then I started noticing pieces just like them at flea markets and (gasp) antique shows. Wait a minute—that Pyrex bowl set? That red-handled potato ricer? You’re telling me they’re antiques?

But when I’m not beating myself up about using my treasured heirloom items, I collect bakeware. I don’t even recall how I got started—probably because I saw something odd, like a muffin tin that makes square muffins—and I had to have it, and besides, it cost only $3. Now I’ve got a wall full. I can make any size and shape muffin you might want.

But I also have a lot of cake pans (I’m sneaking back up toward the apple cake recipe). Older cake pans are wonderful to bake with because usually they’re heavy-gauge metal, so they distribute heat evenly and you don’t end up scorching parts of your cake while the rest is still gooey. Besides, they used to make such interesting shapes. Modern ones just aren’t the same. I’m particularly fond of my spiral one (which I think is a steamed pudding mold).

Now the apple cake recipe. My favorite pan for that is one I’ve had for years, and it’s just the right size for the recipe—it’s 8 cups (well, now and then the batter likes to try to escape over the sides, so put a baking sheet under it just in case). It makes a handsome cake. There’s only one problem: there are only three of us at home, and I can’t make a whole cake for the three of us to consume (although we try).

So I was thrilled when a couple of years ago, I found the baby version in an antique store—same shape, same vintage, but half the size. Now I can make a half-recipe of the cake, without guilt. (And I confess—just this weekend I bought a friend for it.)

FRESH APPLE CAKE

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups shredded apples (do not peel -- the skin adds texture to the cake; the shredding disk of a food processor works very well)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze:

2 Tbl butter
2 Tbl brown sugar
2 Tbl granulated sugar
2 Tbl heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9- or 10-inch tube pan (8-cup capacity).

Combine oil and sugar in a bowl. Blend very well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Sift these into the oil-egg mixture and combine thoroughly. Add the raw apples. Mix well with a spoon or spatula, then add the vanilla. Pour the batter into the pan.

Bake for 1 1/4 hours, or until the cake tests done (tester comes out clean). Remove from the oven and let rest while you prepare the glaze.

Glaze: Melt the butter, sugars, and heavy cream mixed with vanilla in a heavy pan. Boil for 1 minute without stirring, then remove from heat.

Let the cake cool for a few minutes before removing it from the pan. Spoon the glaze over the cake while it is still warm.

A word of warning about the glaze: it’s addictive. We usually double the recipe, and fight over who gets to lick the pan. My daughter pours it over ice cream, and she adds chopped nuts and coconut. And sometimes we just skip the cake and eat it with spoons right out of the pan. Yum!

This recipe appears in One Bad Apple, the first of the Orchard Mystery series. Of course I'm always looking for more apple recipes, so if you have a favorite, send it along!