PLEASE WELCOME OUR GUEST LINDA REILLY #GIVEAWAY

I'm excited to have my counterpart in cheese as our guest today! Linda Reilly is the author of several cozy mystery series, her current being the delectably delightful Grilled Cheese Mysteries.

Thank you, Korina Moss, for inviting me to do a guest post on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen. Your Cheese Shop mysteries are such a delight, and they’ve taught me more than I ever knew about one of my favorite foods—cheese!

In my Grilled Cheese Mystery series, Carly Hale has opened her dream restaurant—a grilled cheese eatery tucked in the heart of Balsam Dell, Vermont. Now that summer has arrived, fresh-picked local raspberries are available at nearly every farm stand, along with locally made raspberry jam. Carly’s grill cook and future chef, Grant Robinson, loves to experiment with cheese and bread combos when creating a new sandwich. He tried this one with Brie, but ultimately it was the cream cheese that worked best. The blend of smooth cream cheese and sweet raspberry jam makes this the perfect choice for jam lovers. And, as Grant says . . . it’s so simple, it’s sinful. This recipe is for one sandwich.

Grant’s Raspberry Sizzle

Ingredients

• 2 slices whole grain bread (sourdough works well, too)

• Salted butter (preferably softened)

• 1 to 2 tablespoons cream cheese (depending on your preference and the size of the bread)

• 2 tablespoons raspberry jam

Directions:

• Butter one side of each slice of bread evenly with the salted butter. (Try not to skimp on butter, as you want the sandwich to have that crispy, crunchy outside)

• On the un-buttered side of one slice, spread the cream cheese, then evenly spoon the jam over that.

• Place the other slice on top, butter side facing out. Press down gently so that the two slices stick together.

• Place in a skillet over medium or medium-low heat. Grill each side until browned to perfection and the cream cheese and jam are warm.

Enjoy this treat with a cup of your favorite tea, hot or iced, or any other beverage that makes you smile!

And since today is Father’s Day, I’d like to give a shoutout to my own dad, who passed away at the age of 91 in 2017. In his heyday, he was the best gardener in his small Massachusetts town. As he aged, he gave up planting pumpkins and corn, but he continued growing tomatoes, sweet onions, garlic, carrots, and a few other veggies I can’t remember. At the edge of his garden was a long row of raspberries that grew on their own every year. Dad spent a lot of time trimming them and fussing with them. Neighbors and friends knew they were always welcome to stop by for raspberries or anything else in his garden—so long as they were willing to pick their own. This photo of him in his garden is circa 1985.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and father figures out there, and to my own wonderful dad. Do you like to garden? What’s your favorite thing to plant?

Raised in a sleepy town in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, Linda Reilly is a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander and a lover of all things cheese. In addition to the Grilled Cheese mysteries, she is the author of the Deep Fried Mysteries (Berkley Prime Crime) and the Cat Lady Mysteries (Kensington Lyrical). She currently lives in southern New Hampshire with her two feline assistants, who frequently assist with editing by prancing over her laptop. When she’s not pounding away at her keyboard, she can usually be found prowling the shelves of a local bookstore or standing over the stove making a melty grilled cheese.

Linda Reilly - Web page and social media links:

https://www.lindareillyauthor.com

https://www.facebook.com/Lindasreillyauthor

https://www.instagram.com/lindasreillyauthor/

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/linda-reilly

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6588314.Linda_S_Reilly

Teaser for BRIE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR:

With the summer heat sizzling, grilled cheese restaurant owner Carly Hale is thrilled to have Ross Baxter delivering her sandwiches to local seniors. She’s never met a more polite or hardworking young man, and she brushes it off when one of her more difficult customers complains about him. But when Ross returns to the woman’s home to make another delivery and finds her dead body, the police immediately peg him as the prime suspect. Carly soon learns that the victim had an estranged stepson and stepdaughter, both of whom needed money to get their lives back on track. Worse still, in her younger days the dead woman had a reputation for preying on other women’s husbands, leaving broken marriages in her wake—and a list of suspects a mile long. But Ross’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, leaving Carly hungry for any clue she can dig up. Until she comes face-to-face with the killer, and realizes this time she may have bitten off more than she can chew . . .

GIVEAWAY!

 Linda is giving away a signed, printed copy of BRIE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR to one lucky person who comments below. (U.S. only) 

                              

SHORT-CUT CROQUE MONSIEUR (MR. CRUNCHY BITE) - @KORINAMOSSAUTHOR

 

Bonjour, Mr. Crunchy Bite!

KORINA MOSS: Hello, everybody! This is my first recipe post as a member of Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen. I thought it was only fitting that my inaugural post come from my debut culinary cozy, Cheddar Off Dead. Since I write the Cheese Shop Mystery series, you can expect to see cheesy recipes regularly, but not always. I don’t eat cheese as often as my cheesemonger protagonist Willa, although our love of cheese is one thing we have in common. Another thing we have in common is that we’re both single, so I’ve tailored this recipe for one person. (Of course, you can double, triple, or quadruple it, as desired.)

This short-cut version of croque monsieur is easier to make than to pronounce. I think this French sandwich would be more popular in America if we’d just call it by its English translation: Mr. Crunchy Bite.  The authentic croque monsieur requires a bechamel sauce, but with this short-cut, it's no more difficult to put together than your average American grilled cheese. And the best part is that the cheese is on the inside and the outside.

Croque Monsieur (Mr. Crunchy Bite)

Ingredients:

Butter for greasing baking dish

¼ cup Gruyére cheese, freshly shredded

2 slices of sturdy bread

3 TBL heavy cream

2-4 slices ham

Dijon mustard to taste

I rarely make things that have to be made exactly as the recipe calls for, so my motto is you do you. Gruyére is a mild Swiss cheese and melts well. If you’d like to use a different kind of Swiss or a different kind of cheese altogether, go for it. My advice would be to make sure to use one that melts well and is not pre-shredded. I’m not a cheese snob, but packaged pre-shredded cheese doesn’t melt as well and it usually doesn’t have as much flavor, either. You can also mix cheeses. As written, this makes a very mild sandwich, so if you like a little more punch, add a sharper cheese. I used spicy brown mustard, because that's what I had at home, but a really nice Dijon or sharp mustard would be even better. I used low sodium ham, but you can choose whichever kind you prefer. A black forest ham goes nicely. 

Directions: 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 

Butter the bottom of a baking dish.

Measure out the heavy cream into a cup or pitcher. 

Shred the cheese. 

Add it to the heavy cream. 

Mix. It’ll quickly turn into a spreadable paste. 

Put both pieces of bread in the pan. 

Spread half of the cheese/cream mixture on one piece and half on the other until you’ve used it all. It should cover both slices of bread. 

(The only reason the slices look different is because I added the leftover cheese I'd shredded to one of them.)

On top of one of the slices, add your ham and Dijon mustard. Then take the other slice and place it CHEESE SIDE UP on the ham. So now you have the cheese sauce on the inside of the sandwich and on the outside. 

Place baking dish in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. 

Turn the oven to broil, put the dish on the top rack and broil for several minutes, just until the top of the sandwich turns a golden brown. (Keep an eye on it!) It's meant to be crunchy on the outside (hence, its name) and softer on the inside. 

Carefully take out the sandwich, cut in half, and enjoy! Be sure to speak French for the rest of the day. Oui Oui! 

Merci Beaucoup, Mr. Crunchy Bite! 

Readers: What’s the fanciest way you've ever dressed up a grilled cheese sandwich? 

You can find this recipe in my Agatha Award-winning Cheese Shop Mystery, Cheddar Off Dead. Recipes are included at the end of each book.

KORINA MOSS is the author of the Cheese Shop Mystery series (St. Martin’s Press) set in the Sonoma Valley, including the Agatha Award winner for Best First Novel, CHEDDAR OFF DEAD and the most recently Agatha-nominated Best Contemporary Novel, CASE OF THE BLEUS. Cheese Shop Mystery #5, FONDUE OR DIE, releases on Oct 22nd. Her books have been featured in PARADE Magazine, Woman’s World, AARP, and Fresh Fiction. For the past several years, Korina has been on her own Eat, Pray, Love journey, but seems to have stalled at the Eat phase. To learn more and subscribe to her monthly #teamcheese newsletter, visit her website at korinamossauthor.com.  You can also find her on Instagram and Facebook.