Cat Soup for Cat Week

by Sheila Connolly

CAT SOUP

I’ve had a cat in one way or another since I was seven. The first one (actually, three at once) entered my life when we moved into a new house and found the prior owners had left their cats locked in the garage (my mother had a few choice words for them). We kept two of them for a long time.

When I moved into my first apartment after college, I got a cat before I got furniture. That was Victoria, and I had her for more than twenty years. Since then there has been a steady succession, mostly rescue cats or “found” cats. Right now I have three: siblings Dexter and Lila and newcomer Oliver, who showed up at our back door looking skinny and meowing piteously for food—hence the name Oliver (“please, may I have some more?”). Three months later he’s still inhaling food at record speed, and he's put on a wee bit of weight.

Only one of my fictional characters has a pet: when Meg Corey in the Orchard Mysteries moved to rural Granford, she adopted Lavinia, AKA Lollie (named for Emily Dickinson’s sister’s cat), who had been abandoned. Her fiance Seth Chapin acquired Golden Retriever Max along the way. The animals get along just fine, and neither one is a picky eater. [Note: cozy writers, make sure to remember to feed fictional pets now and then!] As for my other heroines? Well, their lives are a little unsettled, but maybe someday soon…

Now for the recipe. No, I am not making soup out of cats.

Recently pet food maker Fancy Feast® (Purina®) released a new product called Broths. I first saw this in a television commercial, which opened with an image of a bowl of soup which set me drooling. It was gorgeous. I seriously though it was people food.

So I had to go looking for it, and what I found was interesting. The broths come as clear and creamy (both broths are described as “decadent.”). They promise on the back of the pouch that the contents feature “Real recognizable ingredients” (their italics), and no by-products or fillers. Made with real fish. All good.

The pouch weighs 1.4 ounces. It is labeled a “gourmet cat complement,” which is to say (according to the fine print) “intended for supplemental feeding only … may be fed daily along with a complete and balanced cat good diet.” It costs $1.25 for a single-serving pouch  Uh-huh.

But it sure is pretty! And I wanted it (good advertising works!). So I decided to make the human version.

First, I read the ingredients: Broths contains fish broth, wild (!) salmon, fish extract, whitefish, milk, tapioca starch, potato starch, wheat starch, added color, sugar, salt, soy protein, vegetable oil, guar gum, xanthan gum, Vitamin E supplement, egg whites, spice and coloring. Most of these I have in my pantry, and all in all it sounds pretty good (although I wonder why they need so many thickening agents).

(For comparison, a can of Friskies® Classic Paté, the standard food for our three cats (and Oliver eats for two easily), the ingredients are: ocean whitefish, poultry by-products, meat by-products, liver (I thought this was a fish paté?), crude fiber, ash, taurine—this is only the first two lines of ingredients, and the list goes on. I am not going to be making this any time soon!)

So this is the two-legged version. I have endeavored to replicate the spirit of the original (cat) soup, although I don’t think cats really care about onions or fresh thyme. Also, most fish soup recipes call from cream, but I substituted whole milk (per Broths) and a bit of cornstarch for thickening:

Potage au poisson a la crème

3/4 lb wild salmon filet

3/4 lb white fish (I used cod)

4 cups of fish stock

1 Tblsp butter

1 medium yellow onion, diced

3 or more sprigs of fresh thyme, stripped 

     from the woody stems

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper to taste

1 cup whole milk

2-3 Tblsp cornstarch

Bring the fish stock to a simmer in a skillet and lay the fish in it.  Cover and simmer until the fish is cooked through, about ten minutes (don't overcook it!).  Remove the fish to a plate and set aside.  When cool, flake the fish into bite-size pieces.  Reserve the stock.

In a heavy pot, melt the butter over medium heat, then add the chopped onions, thyme and bay leaf to the pot and sauté on medium heat until the onions are soft but not browned.

Season generously with kosher or sea salt and pepper.

Add the flaked fish to the pot and heat over low heat, for about five minutes.  Pour in the milk and heat until the soup is warmed through.  Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

To thicken the mixture, put the cornstarch in a small bowl and add a small amount of the warm liquid from the soup (do not just dump the cornstarch into the soup—you’ll get lots of lumps!) and stir until well blended. Add gradually to the soup, stirring, and simmer over low heat until you reach the consistency you want.

Serve. In the interest of full disclosure: when offered the two bowls at the same time, Dexter chose the Broths version first and finished it; he ignored my version. At least my husband liked it. (Addendum: I finally persuaded Oliver to finish off a bowl of mine--after he'd eaten the canned cat food.)

Purina's (left) and mine (right)

Oops, almost forgot the bonus picture! My sister and I saw this truck on the street in New York last spring, and she insisted I include it here. Happy Cat Week!

And now Max has demanded a token dog appearance. He earned his place on the cover for Picked to Die through his heroics in the last book, Golden Malicious. (Lolly made her debut on the cover of Bitter Harvest, but she had to share it with Meg's goats, Dorcas and Isabel.)

Spicy Fish

by Sheila Connolly

Redfish was back this week in my market (okay, flash-frozen then thawed). I loved working with it for my recent Blackened Redfish recipe, because it stands up well to cooking and has a pleasant flavor. The filets are small, but that means they cook fast, so it’s a quick and easy dinner dish.

A pound of filets

 Spicy Fish

4 Tblsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, crushed or minced

Spices

1 cup flour

1 tsp ground cumin

1 Tblsp dry mustard

1 Tblsp ground turmeric

1 tsp ground white pepper

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp curry powder

2 Tblsp cooking oil

1 lb fish filets (skinned)

Salt and pepper to taste

2 Tblsp lemon juice

In a small saucepan, heat the olive oil and garlic over medium heat until the garlic just begins to brown (about 3 minutes—do not burn!). Place in a small bowl and set aside to cool for an hour.

In a large bowl, combine the flour and spices.

In a cast-iron skillet, heat the cooking oil over medium-high.

Dredge the fish filets in the flour-spice mixture and shake off the excess. Season with salt and black pepper. Place the filets in the pan and cook until they begin to brown lightly (1-2 minutes). Turn the filets in the pan, then immediately remove the pan from the heat and let the filets rest in the pan for about a minute.

Remember that garlic-flavored oil? Whisk it with the lemon juice to make a kind of vinaigrette, the spoon it over the fish when you serve—it really brightens up the flavor.

I decided to serve orzo on the side, but that would have made a rather blah plate of food. So I took some cauliflower and broccoli and a red pepper that I had on hand and cut them fine, then steamed them in the microwave while I cooked the orzo (which takes longer than you’d think), then blended them at the last minute. Love the colors!

Told you it was easy!

It's been a busy month, with not one but two new books!

Picked to Die is the latest in the Orchard Mystery series. You can find it at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Seeing the Dead is the sequel to last year's Relatively Dead, and it looks like it's now part of a series (ebook only). Look for it at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Cornmeal-Crusted Salmon with Yogurt Sauce

by Sheila Connolly

Often I start cooking with one ingredient that I want to use in mind and then back into a recipe from there. This is one of those times.

The Plimoth Plantation Grist Mill

I live near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and recently I learned that I’m descended from John Jenney, who managed the first mill built in the Plymouth Colony. It’s still there—in spirit, at least—and now belongs to Plimoth Plantation. The site of that first mill is known, although once it shared space along the small river that runs through the town with a lot of other mills of varying kinds—but the original mill itself burned down in the 19^th century and was rebuilt then. The millstones (there are only the two, top and bottom) in the newly-rebuilt mill came from Pennsylvania.

Anyway, I decided to pay tribute to the memory of great-great…grandfather John and visited recently, and learned how corn was ground in 16-whatever and for a long while after that. It’s a process that still works, so of course I came home with some ground corn, both coarse and fine.

The "Sampa" on the left is coarser

Now, what to do with it? Cornmeal is a little sweet, and so is salmon, so I decided to put them together. Cornmeal also adds a nice crunch to the fish, but you’ve got to make it stick. So I came up with a recipe for a yogurt sauce. Most sauces using yogurt seem to come from Middle Eastern recipes, with herbs such as mint or coriander, but that didn’t seem to work with the colonial theme, so I tinkered with the recipe to emphasize the savory rather than the sweet.  Here’s the result.

Cornmeal Crusted Salmon with Yogurt Sauce

1 pound salmon filet (I used a single piece, which 

   doesn’t dry out so quickly when you broil it)

1/2 cup Greek style plain yogurt

1 Tblsp olive oil

1 garlic clove, pressed

Salt and pepper to taste

Sauce ingredients

1/2 cup coarsely ground corn meal

Mix the yogurt, olive oil, garlic and spices together. Coat the salmon with the mixture, then press the cornmeal onto the surface to form a thin crust. Save the sauce you have left over to add after cooking.

Cover a broiler pan with foil and place the coated salmon piece on it (you could also do this on an outdoor grill, but watch that it doesn’t overcook). Set the oven rack in the middle of the oven, not too close to the broiler flame—you need to make sure the fish is cooked through before the crust is too brown. Broil for 5-10 minutes (sorry to be vague, but this time depends on how hot your broiler is, and how thick your salmon filet is), or until the fish feels springy rather than squishy.

Serve immediately, topped with some of the remaining yogurt sauce, accompanied by a vegetable—in this case I had some lovely little peppers so I sliced those and sauteed them quickly in olive oil while the fish was broiling.

Breaking news! Reunion with Death (Beyond the Page Publishing, 2013) will be available for a week starting Saturday, October 4th, for 99 cents! In case you missed it when it first appeared, here's the description:

Laura Shumway couldn’t say why she’d agreed to go on the class reunion trip to Italy. Maybe it was to take stock of her life, or maybe it was just to catch up with old friends, take in the sights, and relax in the beautiful Tuscan countryside. Either way, she knew she’d discover a lot on the trip, both about herself and her former classmates. What she didn’t expect to discover was the dead body of esteemed professor Anthony Gilbert.

Before the polizia or carabiniere get involved, Laura and a few trusted classmates set out among the vineyards and hills of the Italian Riviera to solve the murder on their own. With the help of some influential locals and good old-fashioned detective work, they're soon led to the conclusion that one of their classmates might be a killer—and what started as a trip to see how far they’d all come may turn into a stark lesson about just how far one of them would go.

Available for Kindle and Nook, and most other e-formats.

And in case I haven't reminded you enough, Picked to Die (Orchard Mystery #8) comes out next Tuesday!

What the Heck is Burdock Root

by Sheila Connolly

Not long ago I was in a Whole Foods store and saw that they had burdock root.  Oh, joy, quoth I!

Huh? I have no idea what to do with burdock root. All I know is, I had never cooked it. As far as I could recall, I had never seen it in my life. But I love a challenge, so I bought a pound of the stuff. Which sat for a while in my fridge, waiting for inspiration to strike.

I tried to find a recipe, really, I did. There were several suggested paths: (1) treat it like any other root vegetable; (2) go with Asian flavors, particularly soy sauce and anything aiming for umami (which I still don’t really understand); or (3) make a healthy, all-natural face product with it. Oh, yum.

LONG roots!

It’s a plant native to this country, but it’s also an invasive weed, so if you find it and pull it out, you’re doing your native habitat a favor. (No, I don’t know what it looks like in the wild, or where to find it.) But then, it’s not easy to pull out because the plant has a very long root. You must be determined!

You can see where the
Velcro idea came from

The best explanation of the stuff came from a blog called Edible Manhattan, by Marie Viljoen. She says it provided the inspiration for the invention of Velcro. Not the greatest recommendation for a tasty side-dish.

As for cooking… She was adamant that you had to peel it first. Looking at it in its natural state, I’d say that’s kind of obvious. But really peel it—get down to the creamy white part. To cook it, slice or julienne it and sauté it in olive oil or butter; add white wine or lemon juice; maybe throw in some garlic and sweet carrot (nice color contrast, that). She and lots of other food writers say burdock pairs well with soy or miso.

Cross-section

So, what the heck—you only live once (no, burdock root is not poisonous!). Here is my stab at sautéed burdock.

1 pound burdock root, peeled and julienned (long thin strips)

1 Tblsp butter

1 Tblsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 Tblsp soy sauce

In a skillet set over medium heat, melt the butter and mix in the olive oil. Add the minced garlic and sauté until it is translucent (do not allow it to burn).

Add the julienned burdock root and toss to cover the pieces. Cover the sauté pan and let the burdock cook through (test regularly—you don’t want the pieces to turn to mush). When cooked, add the soy sauce and toss. Serve warm, with grilled meat.

You can change it up by adding julienned carrots, and add a touch of color with chopped parsley.

Good luck!

The new Orchard Mystery coming in October. Wonder if Meg likes burdock root?

And the schedule seems to be holding for a new ebook in September. Hint: it's a sequel to last year's Relatively Dead (which was a NYT ebook bestseller), and it's called Seeing the Dead. More details to follow!

Other Burgers

by Sheila Connolly

Here we are in full summer, and farmers' markets are bursting with goodies. It’s often too hot to cook inside, so across the nation barbecues are turning out wonderful smells of cooking meats, chicken, and even vegetables. Life is good.

But don’t you ever get tired of the same-old-same-old hamburgers and hotdogs? And our government keeps telling us that we have to cook our beef all the way through (per the Food Network, “Because E. coli is killed at 155 degrees Fahrenheit, the USDA sets the minimum safe temperature for ground beef at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. We can only second this.), or risk dire consequences. The pundits on newscasts are saying, literally, “cook your beef until it is gray.” I respect the threat of various nasty bacteria, but I don’t want to eat gray meat. I’d rather do without.

But there are other options! I’m presenting two here, with a nod at Mark Bittman (who puts out too many darned good recipes). You do need a food processor to make these work, unless you really, really love chopping things very fine.

[Disclaimer: these recipes make four burgers. Since it’s only my husband and me around to eat them these days, I made half-recipes, and that’s what the pictures show.]

Lamburgers

1-1/2 pounds boneless lamb (whatever cut you can get, or can afford)

1 small onion

1 Tblsp garlic, chopped

2 Tblsp parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Trim as much fat as you can from the lamb, as well as the “squiggly bits” as my daughter used to call them. Cut the lamb and the onion into coarse chunks (or if you don’t want a strong onion flavor, use shallots). Put everything in the food processor and pulse just until the meat is ground (do not just leave the food processor on or you will end up with lamb paste).

Before...

...and after

Shape the meat into burgers and grill, turning once, for 4-8 minutes total. If you like, you can top them with feta cheese.

Or for something completely different: Tunaburgers!

1-1/2 pounds tuna (fresh, not canned!)

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp mayonnaise

1 Tblsp capers, drained

Salt and pepper to taste

Cut the tuna into large chunks. Put a quarter of the total amount in the food processor along with the mustard, mayonnaise and capers. Process until the mixture becomes pasty (this time you’re supposed to!). Add the rest of the tuna and pulse until the fish is chopped and well mixed (but don’t over-process).

Shape into four burgers. The cooking is a smidge more complicated, because (a) there is no fat in the fish, and (b) you want to cook these quickly over high heat to sear the outside while leaving the inside rare. Brush the burgers with oil and grill over high heat, turning once, about 4-6 minutes total.

This might work well with salmon too—I’ll try that next.

Yes, there's another Orchard Mystery, Picked to Die,  coming out on October 7th, and this one's about Meg's second harvest in Granford (nice timing, debuting in October, right in the middle of the harvest season, don't you think?).

But there may be another ebook sneaking into September: Seeing the Dead, a sequel to Relatively Dead (2013). No cover or blurb yet, so stay tuned!