Mini Fruit Tarts

Sometimes you kind of back into a recipe, yanno? I was contemplating my options before getting out of bed, and realized that I had both strawberries and raspberries that would spoil if I didn’t get around to using them, so I wanted to figure out what to do with them quickly. I didn’t want to make a pie (because I’m lousy at rolling out pie crusts), but I have a wealth of muffin tins in a range of sizes, so why not fruit tarts?

I first went to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but her recipes, lovely (and authentic) as they are, were a bit too complicated for my morning brain. She does have tart recipes, but luckily she allowed for different options for the crust—including one that she admits is more or less a cookie dough. "Aha!" said I. I have a wonderful shortbread cookie recipe (which I shared with you last Halloween) which would do just fine.

Basically you make the pastry, cut out round forms, press them into a muffin tin of whatever size you like, and bake them. Then make a crème patissière (a simple custard) and put a dollop in each tart shell. Put your strawberries (sliced if they’re large) or raspberries on top and voila! Your tarts are ready. I’ll bet they won’t last long.

As usual, I made a half recipe or I'd be eating the tarts for days!

Mini Fruit Tarts

Pastry shells (shortbread)

Ingredients:

2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cornstarch

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Sift together the flour and cornstarch, then add the mixture to the butter-sugar mixture.

Dough ready to chill

Mix together the ingredients until they hold together (if they seem too dry, add a bit more soft butter). Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap (or use a plastic bag) and refrigerate for half an hour.

Spray or lightly grease the muffin tins.

Roll out the dough about 1/4 inch thick on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes (I happen to have several decorative round cutters. Make sure that the cut piece fits neatly into whatever muffin tin you’re using, without slopping too far over the edges.) Yes, it will be small—the finished tart should give you two good bites!

Bake for 20 minutes. Do not allow to brown around the edges—they should be a pale gold. Let cool before filling them. 

Crème patissière

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups boiling whole milk

1 Tblsp butter

1 Tblsp vanilla (you can substitute a bit of liqueur or even coffee)

Instructions:

Beat the sugar and egg yolks together. When they’re well mixed, continue beating for 2-3 minutes until the mixture lightens and begins to thicken.

Add the flour and beat in. Gradually add the boiling milk in a thin stream, beating steadily. (Add the hot milk too fast and the mixture will scramble!)

Pour the mixture into a saucepan and set over moderate heat. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat and continue to beat for another 2-3 minutes to cook the flour and eggs. (Be careful that the custard does not scorch on the bottom.)

Remove from the heat and beat in the butter and flavoring.

If you have any left over after filling the tart shells, you can keep it refrigerated for a week.

Assembling the tarts

Add a tablespoon of crème patissière (or more, according to the size of the pastry shell) to each tart shell. Arrange your fruit over the top. If you’re not serving immedately, you can refrigerate them, but not for too long--these should be eaten quickly!

From famine to feast! This past week my latest Relatively Dead mystery, Revealing the Dead, was released by Beyond the Page, along with the three-book set of the first three books in the series.

By the way, that's my actual front door,
although not my cat

And coming next month, the first in my new Victorian Village series, Murder at the Mansion.

Katherine Hamilton’s goal in high school was to escape from her dead-end hometown of Asheford, Maryland. Fifteen years later she’s got a degree in hospitality management and a great job at a high-end boutique hotel in Baltimore. Until, that is, the hotel is acquired by a chain, and she’s laid off. When Kate’s high school best friend calls with a mysterious invitation to come talk with the town leaders of Asheford, she agrees to make the trip, curious about where this new opportunity might lead.

Once Kate arrives, the town council members reveal that their town is on the verge of going bankrupt, and they’ve decided that Kate’s skills and knowledge make her the perfect person to cure all their ills. The town has used its last available funds to buy the huge Victorian mansion just outside of town, hoping to use it to attract some of the tourists who travel to visit the nearby Civil War battle sites. Kate has less-than-fond memories of the mansion, for personal reasons, but to make matters worse, the only person who has presented a possible alternate plan is Cordelia Walker―Kate’s high school nemesis.

But a few days later, while touring the mansion, Kate stumbles over a body―and it’s none other than Cordelia. Kate finds herself juggling the murder investigation and her growing fascination with the old house, which itself is full of long-hidden mysteries. 

You can pre-order it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

www.sheilaconnolly.com

Malice Omelet with Crab and Brie

Like other MLK members here, I was at Malice Domestic last weekend. It was wonderful to hang out with a few hundred (literally) of my favorite friends, both writers and readers. But by Monday morning, most people had scattered to their homes, or at least to airports.

At the peak of the conference, the hotel’s sole restaurant was packed to bursting. By Monday you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in the dining room. Breakfast throughout the weekend featured a prix fixe buffet, complete with a working chef to make things to order. The number of choices was kind of overwhelming, but I was feeling daring by Monday, and I’m glad I was because I discovered an omelet new to me that seemed like a perfect combination of ingredients, especially if you’re in Maryland.

Yes, it's blue, at least until you cook it

Maryland is known for its crab (from the nearby Chesapeake Bay), mostly the Blue Crab. But it’s still early in the season for them, so I can’t swear where the hotel’s crab was coming from. (Nor can I get it in Massachusetts!) But whatever it was, it tasted good.

Anyway, at the breafast buffet I spotted the crab omelet on the menu and I was sold. Add Brie and I’m in heaven. It’s simple, easy to make, and tasty. Crab omelet, where have you been all my life?


Ingredients:

Fresh crabmeat (that means you have to take the hard shell off! And pluck out the good stuff. Oh, all right—you could use frozen if you’re desperate, but it will still taste good. Just don’t use the “Imitation Crabmeat”—I don’t want to know what that’s made of.)

How much? Depends on how big an omelet you’re making, how much you like crabmeat, how expensive it is at any particular time, and so on. Put it more than a sprinkling, and less than an ice cream scoop per omelet.

The legs/claws pictured here weighed a pound (including the shell) and yielded enough meat to make two omelets.

What came out of those legs

Brie cheese (It should be ripe enough to be soft at room temperature.) Slice it about 1/4-inch thick. Some people don’t like the velvety white mold on the outside (I’m one of them), but you can trim that off easily if you like. Be generous with it, again depending on how big your omelet will be. You should have a layer about one slice thick, covering half of the unfolded egg part of the omelet.)

Brie, unwrapped

Two or three eggs per omelet
Butter
Salt and pepper (taste the cheese first to see how salty it is)
You could add other herbs or spices, but that’s kind of gilding the lily. Crab and Brie both have delicate flavors, so why hide them?

Instructions:

Pick out the crabmeat from its shells (and check the meat twice to make sure there are no shell shards). Slice the Brie.

Make your egg mixture for your omelet (this can include milk, cream, crème fraiche, or whatever pleases you). Add salt and pepper sparingly to the mixture.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a round-sided non-stick pan. Pour in the egg mixture and gently shake the pan while it cooks to keep it from sticking. It should be round.

Just in

Halfway there

When it looks like the omelet is beginning to cook, distribute about half a cup of shredded crabmeat over the eggs. Continue cooking for a bit longer, then lay the pieces of Brie over one-half of it. 

Carefully fold the omelet in half, covering the cheese, and slide it carefully onto a warmed plate. Let it rest a couple of minutes to allow the cheese to melt, then serve, accompanied by French bread, croissasnts, crumpets, English muffins, or whatever you have handy.

I did it! I got it out of the pan without
making a mess!

The result? Pretty good for a first try. The crabmeat was tender, and the cheese made a nice gooey mess. I may keep it on the menu! 

Books, books . . . Aha! The next Relatively Dead book finally has a name: Revealing the Dead! Coming from Beyond the Page next week. Or maybe the week after. And the cover is almost ready for its big reveal!

Stay tuned for updates!

Spinach Soup in Carnival Squash

DON'T YOU LOVE FALL?

Even though our daughter is long gone from the house, my husband and I still carve pumpkins to invite in all the children from the neighborhood (and beyond) on Halloween, and we hand out plenty of candy. But we’re usually slow to select and carve our pumpkins—and this year we didn’t get to it until last weekend. Off we went to our local farm stand--and then I went crazy.

I couldn't help myself!

Choosing which pumpkins to carve was easy: we prefer the traditional shape but we’ve gone over to warty ones because they’re interesting. But then at the pumpkin stand I spied a batch of crazy gourds. I picked one up and said, “It’s a swan!” And I had this immediate image of a nest of wacky multi-colored swans sitting together, so I had to buy a basket for the nest and scavenge some straw for it.

But I didn’t stop there. I stumbled upon a selection of squashes. Confession: my mother used to make acorn squash, by cutting them in half and, after removing the seeds, filling the cavity with butter and brown sugar. But despite that I hated the things—I think it was the pasty stringy texture.

But! There were some lovely striped squashes called Carnival. I looked at them and didn’t see dinner—I saw a soup bowl with dark green soup in it. Maybe with some white accents—cheese? Sour cream? So I brought home two squashes.

Then I went looking for a green soup recipe. Spinach is the obvious choice (sorrel a close second, but I couldn’t find any), and fresh spinach is easy to come by, but after that I couldn’t find just the right combination of ingredients in any available recipe. So I improvised, borrowing from at least four different recipes, old and current.


Spinach Soup in a Carnival Squash

Ingredients:

3 Tblsp butter

1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 leek, sliced (white part only)
4 cups stock (vegetable or chicken) or, if you want a creamier soup, a combination of stock and milk or cream
1 lb fresh spinach (I know it looks like a lot, but it will cook down)
1/2 cup crème fraiche or sour cream (you can mix it in or add it at the end as garnish)
Salt and pepper to taste



Instructions:

In a large deep pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the green onions and the leek. Stir the vegetables in the butter, then cover and let them “sweat” for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. (Do not let the vegetables brown.)

Pour in the liquid and simmer for a few minutes.

Buy baby spinach leaves if you can. Rinse them and dry them (a salad spinner is a good choice!). If they are large, remove the tough stems. Chop roughly.

Add the spinach to the liquid and cook over low heat until the leaves are wilted. Use a food processor or an immersion blender to puree the soup.

Stir in the crème fraiche or sour cream (or save it for garnish). Taste for seasoning. Heat through and serve (in those wonderful squashes, with the top sliced off and the seeds removed) with a tangy bread such as cheese biscuits.

Various sources suggested possible additions: a dash of cayenne, minced garlic, onion rather than green onion. If you want to make it heartier, cook a peeled potato along with the other vegetables until it is soft, and add chopped ham at the end. It’s a quick, simple basic recipe, so you can experiment!

Halloween may have come and gone, but the spirits are still with us! Here's the fifth book in the Relatively Dead series, Search for the Dead, which came out last week.

Find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Cheese Blintzes

by Sheila Connolly

A week ago I spent four days in New York City for a romance writers’ conference. I know—I write mysteries, but I started out trying to write romance, and now I’ve come back to it with a self-published paranormal romance series. I figured it was time to see what the opposition, er, our colleagues were up to now.

I won’t bore you with the details of a very large, very busy and very interesting convention. And I’ll admit up front, I wanted to go in part because it was held in New York, on Times Square. It’s a city with more restaurants than you could eat at in your life, assuming you ate out three meals a day. Or maybe four. You have Thai restaurants next to French bistros next to Cuban nightclubs next to Irish pubs. Yes, I found an Irish pub named Connolly’s and had dinner there, and a couple of pints.

But even the hotel food surpasses 97% of what I can get in my neighborhood. My last (sob) meal in the city, in the conference hotel, was breakfast at the hotel buffet, where I ate my first blintz. And then I went back for seconds. How was it I had never met these cuties before? They’re a bit time-consuming to assemble, but the ingredients are simple. Mostly they’re a thin crepe wrapped around a flavored ricotta filling, then sautéed in butter. The crepes and the filling can be made ahead, if you want to wow your guests at breakfast. (What, you never have guests at breakfast? Go ahead and eat them all yourself.)

Cheese Blintzes

Crepes

1 cup milk

1/4 cup cold water

2 eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour

Pinch salt

1 Tblsp sugar

3 Tblsp unsalted butter, melted

More butter for sautéeing the crepes

Combine the milk, water, eggs, flour, salt and sugar in a food processor. Blend on medium speed for about 15 seconds, until the batter is smooth and there are no lumps. Scrape down the sides and pour in the melted butter. Blend again to mix.

Refrigerate the batter for an hour to let it rest.

Place a non-stick skillet over medium heat and brush with a little melted butter. Pour 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan and swirl to cover the bottom evenly.  Cook for 30-45 seconds, until the batter sets. Loosen the crepe from the pan, then flip and cook the other side for 30 seconds. (They will not be crisp—you want to be able to fold them.)

Slide the crepe onto a platter. Cover each one with a paper towel to keep them from drying out or sticking to each other. Repeat until all the batter is used up (this recipe made nine—if I’d made them a bit smaller I could have had a couple more).

Filling

1-1/2 cups ricotta cheese

4 oz cream cheese

3 Tblsp confectioner’s sugar

Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated

1 egg

In a food processor, combine the cheeses, the sugar, the lemon zest and the egg and blend until smooth. Chill to firm up a bit so it won’t squish out when you make the blintzes.

Forming the Blintzes

Lay a crepe in front of you and spoon 1/4 cup of the filling along the bottom third. Fold that edge away from you to just cover the filling. Fold the two sides in toward the center, then fold the top side down. Roll it around to make a package, ending with the seam side down.

Halfway there

In an oven-proof skillet over medium heat, brush on melted butter, and pan-fry the blintzes for 2 minutes per side, until they’re crisp and golden.

When they’re all sautéed, place the pan in a 400-degree preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes, to cook the filling through. Transfer to serving plates.

There are only eight here because one collapsed
in the making. I ate it.

You can serve these as is, or you can add a fruit sauce or fresh fruit of your choice (blueberries or a mix of blueberries and raspberries works well). I went with a lightly-cooked blueberry compote.

Yes, dear readers, I write romance--a paranormal romance series (available in multiple e-formats). The only mystery in them is why my heroine starts seeing her dead ancestors. Luckily her boyfriend does too. BTW, I borrow a lot of my Massachusetts ancestors for this series, but I haven't met any of them face to face. Yet.

In Search of Umami

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s book Cooked. It’s one of those books that’s easy to pick up and put down after reading a few pages, so I’m not rushing through it. If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading any of his books, he’s immensely entertaining, well-informed, and curious about a lot of things, including food. And he really loves food: the history, the making, the meaning, and the eating.

The book is divided into sections. The first is Fire (how humans started cooking food with heat, which does all sorts of great things for the food and how we digest it). The second is Water, or how people cook with liquid. And that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. Still to come: Air (baking) and Earth (fermentation). In the Water section, Pollan talks about umami.

For those of us who grew up believing that there were four flavor senses on our tongue (salty, sweet, sour and bitter), surprise! Scientists have confirmed a fifth one, which has its own receptors not only on our tongues but in our stomachs. We’ve all been enjoying it all our lives, but we didn’t know it. Its main characteristic is that it balances flavors (it may also make you drool and make your tongue feel fuzzy).

The sensation is based primarily on glutamate, which is present in soy and mushrooms and tomatoes and a lot of other things. And MSG (aka monosodium glutamate, or to us older folk, Accent, which my mother used liberally), no surprise. I love Pollan’s characterization of umami/glutamate: it italicizes food. It has no flavor of its own, but it makes everything else taste better.

I asked my husband (a scientist!) if he’d ever heard of umami, and he looked blank.

I developed a sudden craving for umami. If there are umami cookbooks, I don’t know about them. I looked at my fridge and my pantry. Hmm, a nice slow-cooked pork roast (a tribute to Pollan’s first section!). I had scallions (Pollan also talks about the significant contributions of the onion family in that first section). I had soy sauce.

And I had a weird package of dried something Chinese called “Black Fungus,” also known as Cloud Ear Fungus. When our daughter lived with us, she would bring home all sorts of exotic food products, many of which are still sitting on a shelf waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. This was one of those. It is widely used in all sorts of Asian cooking even outside of China, in Japan, Hawaii, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It is reputed to possess anticoagulant properties, and may reduce cholesterol. How could I go wrong?

The instructions were in Chinese, except for about three lines of English that were not very helpful (1. Soak and wash the black fungus clean with cold water. 2. Cook the black fungus throughly (sic) with 100 deg C boiled water. 3. Stir-fry or stew the black fungus as per personal preferences.). But I figured, what the heck?

When I was last at the market, I also realized that I’d never cooked with soba (buckwheat) noodles. Since I was venturing into uncharted territory for this recipe, I decided that they were going into this dish too.

So here is the result: my multi-national mishmash in search of umami.

In Search of Umami

1 lb. cooked pork shredded (you can chop it finer if you insist, but the shreds work well for texture)

4-5 scallions, cut into 1/2” lengths

1 clove garlic, mashed or minced

Neutral cooking oil (not olive oil)

1 package dried black fungus (if you can’t find this, you can used any dried mushroom. You might find dried wood-ear in your market, which is similar in texture to the fungus.), soaked in boiling water and drained (you can save the soaking water, strained, if you want to add more liquid to your dish). Note: as a newbie, I made the whole package. These things expand! I’ve still got half of the rehydrated fungi in my fridge, waiting for…I don’t know what.

Dry black fungus

Soaked black fungus

Chopped black fungus

1/4 cup soy sauce

Salt to taste (depending on how salty your soy sauce is)

1 lb soba (buckwheat) noodles

Rehydrate your fungi (wow, I never expected to say that!), then drain and slice into ribbons or chop coarsely.

In a broad pan or wok, add a bit of oil and briefly sauté the green onion and garlic over medium heat (do not brown). Toss in the pork and fungi. Add the soy sauce and toss, then heat through (you can add more soy sauce, or some of the fungus liquid, if the mixture seems too dry).

Prepare the noodles according to the package directions. (My package said, basically, boil for 4 minutes and drain.) Put a serving of noodles in a bowl and spoon the meat-fungus mixture over them, along with some of the liquid.

Quick and easy. The fungus has a nice crunch, even after cooking, and there’s a good blend of savory flavors—including umami!

And introducing... Defending the Dead, the third book in the Relatively Dead paranormal romance series.

Abby Kimball is slowly adjusting to her recently discovered ability to see the dead, but none of the harmless sightings she’s experienced so far could have prepared her for the startling apparition of a centuries-old courtroom scene—where she locks eyes with a wicked and gleeful accuser. Suddenly thrown back more than three hundred years, Abby realizes she’s been plunged into a mystery that has fascinated people throughout American history: the Salem witch trials.

With her boyfriend Ned at her side, Abby digs into the history of the events, researching the people and possible causes of that terrible time and her own connection to them—all the while going more deeply into her connection to Ned, both extrasensory and romantic.

As Abby witnesses more fragments from the events in Salem and struggles with the question of how such a nightmare could have come about, she’s suddenly confronted with a pressing personal question: Were one or more of her ancestors among the accused?

 Available in most e-formats, from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.