Puff Pastry with Asparagus, Brie, and Honey -- a taste of spring

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  Once more with the asparagus, my friends! 

In case you missed the memo, we here at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen decreed ages ago that using frozen puff pastry is NOT cheating. Especially those of us who have ever tried making it ourselves! It is, in fact, one of the wonders of the freezer case, a boon for busy cooks, a treat for anyone who loves buttery, flaky things. 

We made these for our Easter dinner, more of a celebration of spring than anything else for us. (You already know we are nontraditionalists when it comes to holiday meals.) They were easy, fun, and pretty, and we won’t wait until next Easter to make them again. After all, we only made half the recipe, using one sheet of puff pastry, so we still have half a box waiting. And you don’t want to keep tasty food waiting now, do you?

The original recipe, which I adapted from Red Stick Spice Company in Baton Rouge, called for smoked honey. Lacking such a taste treat, I used Montana clover honey and it was delish. When I warmed up a leftover packet and forgot the honey-butter drizzle, the result was still good, so you could skip it. But why skip an extra bit of butter and sweetness? 

How much asparagus you need will depend on the thickness of the stalks. For the asparagus, any herbed salt will do—I used a blend I bought in Paris, but you can make your own following the instructions in The Solace of Bay Leaves. Or just a bit of sea salt. For the drizzle, if you use salted butter, skip the added salt. 

PS: I finally figured out how to embed a PDF of the recipe for easy printing. 

Scroll down to the 💕 for the link. 

Puff Pastry with Asparagus, Brie, and Honey 

For the pastry bundles:

1 package refrigerated or frozen puff pastry, thawed

30 (or so) stalks of asparagus, washed, ends trimmed

8 ounces brie, sliced

olive oil

herbed salt 

For the honey drizzle:

1/4 cup honey

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

For the egg wash: 

one egg, lightly beaten

Heat oven to 375°F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper or a silicon liner.

Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Break the asparagus stalks in half and add to water. Reduce the heat to a high simmer, and cook until stalks are bright green and just tender, about 3 minutes depending on their size. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Toss with a little olive oil and herbed salt. 

Lay the pastry sheets on a flat surface and roll into a 10 by 11 inch rectangle. Cut each sheet into 6 rectangles, and transfer to baking sheet.

Place a slice of brie on each piece of pastry. Add 3-4 pieces of asparagus, alternating heads and cut ends. Take 2 corners of the pastry and wrap up and over the asparagus, pinching firmly to close. Repeat with remaining pastry and asparagus.

Brush each pastry with egg wash.

 Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

While the pastries are baking, add the honey, butter, and salt to a small saucepan. Melt and simmer 2-3 minutes, until it begins to thicken; the glaze will thicken as it cools. 

To serve, drizzle the honey-butter glaze over the baked packets, or serve on the side in a bowl and allow each diner to spoon up as much as they would like. 

Makes 12 pastry packets.

Do you have a favorite puff pastry recipe or treat? Do tell!

💕 Click here for a free printable PDF! 

At Seattle Spice Shop, owner Pepper Reece has whipped up the perfect blend of food, friends, and flavor. But the sweet smell of success can be hazardous . . .  

Spring is in full bloom in Pike Place Market, where Pepper is celebrating lavender’s culinary uses and planning a festival she hopes will become an annual event. When her friend Lavender Liz offers to share tips for promoting the much-loved—and occasionally maligned—herb, Pepper makes a trek to the charming town of Salmon Falls. But someone has badly damaged Liz’s greenhouse, throwing a wrench in the feisty grower’s plans for expansion. Suspicions quickly focus on an employee who’s taken to the hills. 

Then Liz is found dead among her precious plants, stabbed by a pruning knife. In Salmon Falls, there’s one in every pocket. 

Pepper digs in, untangling the tensions between Liz and a local restaurateur with eyes on a picturesque but neglected farm, a jealous ex-boyfriend determined to profit from Liz’s success, and a local growers’ cooperative. She’s also hot on the scent of a trail of her own, sniffing out the history of her sweet dog, Arf. 

As Pepper’s questions threaten to unearth secrets others desperately want to keep buried, danger creeps closer to her and those she loves. Can Pepper root out the killer, before someone nips her in the bud?

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

ALL GOD'S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A STAGECOACH MARY FIELDS COLLECTION, now available in in paperback and ebook 

Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Out September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing.  

“Finely researched and richly detailed, All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories is a wonderful collection. I loved learning about this fascinating woman . . . and what a character she is! Kudos to Leslie Budewitz for bringing her to life so vividly.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of Crow Mary

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest books are To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, in September 2024. Watch for Lavender Lies Bleeding, the 9th Spice Shop Mystery, on July 15, 2025.

A past president of Sisters in Crime and former national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen Welcomes Guest Sally Goldenbaum

Sally Goldenbaum writes about knitting but her true love is cooking (shh, don't tell)!

Marla’s Grilled Brie and Avocado Sandwich

An enormous thank you to the amazing mystery writer cooks who inhabit this bountiful kitchen. Have all of you seen the recipe list? I gained weight reading it! I am so happy to be here and to have the chance to talk food with these writers I greatly admire.

Summer is finally coming to New England, making me think of all those summer things: the seashore, gardening, and attempts at a ‘healthy’ lunch. My go-to choice for today is a grilled Brie and avocado sandwich. Fictionally, the sandwich was developed by Marla, a gossipy bakery and café owner in A Pattern of Clues. She put it on the menu to satisfy Kate Simpson, a sometimes vegetarian recently returned to Crestwood, KS from Berkeley, CA (and the sandwich, for a minute anyway, made Kate think she, along with Dorothy, wasn’t in Kansas anymore—even though she very much was).

But the real life place that gave me the inspiration for this sandwich is a place my daughter and I discovered in Beverly MA. On Fridays we team up, looking for places with great food, coffee, and plenty of outlets for our laptops—Aria to do development work for her nonprofit and me to eavesdrop and come up with murderous ideas in beautiful sunlit places. That’s exactly what we found in the Tartine Kitchen and Eatery. Bright and lovely—and they do incredible things with avocados and grilled toast, an inspiration for these grilled sandwiches. (Although Tartine’s, as their name implies, makes open-faced sandwiches. An option with these, unless you love bread as much as I do~)

But before we get into the sandwich, an apology for the photos. A food photographer, I am not. The fictional Kate in the Quilt Shop mysteries is a substitute teacher, but also on her way to becoming a talented photographer. And if I had good sense, I would have had her take them. But thank you everyone for seeing the creamy grilled treat behind and beyond my photographic attempts!

Marla’s Grilled Brie and Avocado Sandwich

Makes two sandwiches

Ingredients

4 T butter, softened

3 T Dijon-mayo (mix equal parts Dijon mustard and mayonnaise together)

1 medium just-ripe avocado, sliced

4 generous slices Brie, rind removed

4 slices sourdough, 8-grain, ciabatta, or your favorite bread

1 T sliced black olives (optional)

2 slices fresh tomatoes

S&P

4 leaves fresh basil

leafy lettuce

Directions

Spread butter on one side of each slice of bread

Heat griddle or pan to medium-low and grill bread until golden (approximately 4 minutes)

Assemble sandwiches

On toasted side of bread, layer a piece of lettuce, Brie, avocado, and tomato slices. Add a sprinkling of olives. Then S&P to taste.

Top with the remaining slices of bread, toasted side on inside of sandwich.

Spread the mayo-Dijon sauce on the outside of each side of sandwich. Place back in the skillet and cook until cheese is melted and each side is golden brown, about 4-6 minutes on each side. 

Enjoy!

Sally will be giving away both an ebook and POD of A Patchwork of Clues (June 2019) and one hardcover of How to Knit a Murder (the latest Seaside Knitters Society). To enter to win, leave a comment below and please include an email where you can be contacted.

Sally Goldenbaum writes the Seaside Knitters Society Mysteries and the Queen Bees Quilt Shop mystery series, the latter being re-released this summer.  She and her husband recently packed up years of living in the Midwest and followed the seaside knitters to Cape Ann, MA, where they are happily settling into a home by the sea.

You can reach Sally at:

Website: sallygoldenbaum.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/

Twitter: @sallygoldenbaum

fb: https://www.facebook.com/authorsallygoldenbaum/

About the Book

Small-town quilters look for a killer's pattern in this delightful new series by the national bestselling author of the Seaside Knitters mysteries . . .
 
On her morning jog, Portia Paltrow comes upon the dead body of antiques store owner and college professor Owen Hill, sprawled across the back doorstep of Selma Parker's fabric and quilt shop on Elderberry Road. The site of their Saturday morning quilting bee just became a crime scene. Violent crime is rare in the charming village of Crestwood, Kansas, and rumors are soon circulating of a burglary gone wrong. But who would rob a quilt shop? No, Owen Hill has been murdered.
 
Selma and her assistant manager Susan are understandably at loose ends over the crime. So while the tightly knit covey of quilters—who range from a new mother to a wise octogenarian—work together on a Crystal Pattern quilt for Selma's store's anniversary, they also get busy stitching together a patchwork of clues. But they'd better work fast—before a crafty killer bolts . . .

🌷

Sally will be giving away both an ebook and POD of A Patchwork of Clues (June 2019) and one hardcover of How to Knit a Murder (the latest Seaside Knitters Society). To enter to win, leave a comment below and please include an email where you can be contacted.

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!

TO BRIE OR NOT TO BRIE - Brie Blueberry Ice Cream

From Avery:

TO BRIE OR NOT TO BRIE launched yesterday! Winners for the launch contest were picked from those that had signed up for my newsletter. First prize was a cheese basket and bookstore gift certificate. Were you in the running? If not, sign up for my newsletter HERE.

Speaking of WINNERS...last week, I chose a winner from those that commented. It was LIZARDO. My sweet friend, you have not yet contacted me, so please do at avery at averyaames dot com.

BUT because Liz hasn't contacted me, I've chosen one ADDITIONAL winner. 

SUE FARRELL.  You've won A Cheese Shop Mystery of your choice. Contact me!  (Same email as above.)

Congratulations to all!!

I'm so excited. TO BRIE OR NOT TO BRIE, the fourth in the series, features Charlotte Bessette, who has a lot on her plate: setting a date with her fiance, feeding the actors in her grandmother's production of Hamlet, and planning the menu for her best friend and cousin's upcoming wedding. At least her new creation—sinfully delicious Brie blueberry ice cream—has turned out perfectly.

Just days before the wedding, a stranger turns up dead in the Igloo Ice Cream Parlor's freezer, his head bashed with a container of Charlotte's signature ice cream. But this stranger turns out to be more than he seems, and his death threatens to unravel all that Charlotte has worked for. She has no choice but to add one more thing to her to-do list: find the killer before the villain destroys all that she loves.

I hope you enjoy the book. I'd love to hear what you think of this one, so drop me a line at avery at averyaames dot com. And please remember that online reviews at Amazon, BN.com, Goodreads, etc. are *always* appreciated! Word of mouth is the best way to sell a book.

Per Jenn McKinlay, NY Times bestselling author of so many wonderful series it's hard to keep count: "[Brie]...is a mouthwatering mystery with characters as colorful as its autumn setting."  [Thanks, Jenn!]

Like all CHEESE SHOP MYSTERIES, you'll find a number of recipes at the end of the book.

Here's a sneak preview of Brie Blueberry Ice Cream. Enjoy.

BRIE BLUEBERRY ICE CREAM

1 cup 1% milk


1 cup half-and-half

1 cup cream

4 egg yolks


3/4 cup sugar


1 teaspoon vanilla extract

dash of nutmeg

4 ounces Brie or Fromage d’Affinois, trimmed of its rind


1/2  cup blueberries (rinsed and de-stemmed)

Put vanilla, milk, cream, and half-and-half into a saucepan. Place over medium heat and stir occasionally until steaming.

In a bowl whisk the egg yolks and sugar together. Once the milk is hot begin ladling small amounts into the eggs while whisking.

After adding about 1/2 cup of the hot mixture to the eggs, pour the cream-egg mixture back into the pot and stir continuously while it thickens. Once the mixture starts steaming gently again, you can turn off the heat. Keep stirring for a few minutes.

Add the brie in chunks and stir vigorously to melt the cheese into the custard.  Add a dash of nutmeg.

Place the creamy mixture in a bowl, cover, and chill thoroughly, about 2 hours. Freeze in an ice cream maker per its instructions. [I use a Cuisinart. Mine requires 30 minutes of automatic stirring action.]

Five minutes before complete, add in the blueberries. Serve with blueberry sauce.

BLUEBERRY SAUCE

1/2 cup blueberries

1 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons sugar

Place all the ingredients in a pan and place over medium heat. 

Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Allow to cool and then refrigerate. Reheat gently if you want a warm sauce.

Do you eat ice cream, even in the winter?

* * * * * * *

The 4th in A Cheese Shop Mystery series: 

TO BRIE OR NOT TO BRIE
February 2013.

You can order the book HERE. 

Click this link to watch the TRAILER

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Also, you probably know by now about my alter ego,
DARYL WOOD GERBER...and her new series
A COOKBOOK NOOK MYSTERY series
debuts July 2013

"Like" Daryl's page on Facebook and "follow" Daryl on Twitter.

"She" doesn't say all the same things "Avery" does. Promise.

Say cheese!