Pesto Turkey Meatball Soup #Recipe Peg Cochran/Margaret Loudon

 

 

This recipe is from Martha Stewart but with a few tweaks.  I used gluten free panko for the meatballs.  My grocery store didn't have fresh basil so unfortunately I had to eliminate it. I also had some spinach I wanted to finish up so I used that instead of escarole.  My meatballs were a bit too large to cook off the stove in the hot broth in 8 minutes.  I simmered them a bit to be sure they would be done.  You don't want to pack the meatballs too tightly, on the other hand, if they aren't packed tightly enough, they will fall apart.  Be very gentle when dropping them into the broth. It's best to drop them in one at a time with a large spoon.  We enjoyed this with some crusty bread on the side. And although it's "spring" this is perfect to warm you up on those odd chilly days that are no doubt still ahead!

12 ounces ground turkey (I used 1 lb. because that’s what came in the package)

3 tablespoons pesto, plus more for serving

6 tablespoons panko breadcrumbs (gluten free is fine)

1 lightly beaten egg

3 tablespoons grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving

¾ teaspoon kosher salt (or to taste)

½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper, plus more for serving

1 smashed and peeled garlic clove

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

2 sprigs fresh basil

1 cup chopped Escarole

 

In a large bowl, combine turkey, pesto, panko, egg, cheese, salt and pepper.  Mix lightly--just until combined.

 

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate while you continue with recipe.

Heat garlic clove over medium-high heat until fragrant.  Add chicken broth and basil.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer partially covered for 10 minutes. Remove garlic and basil.

Meanwhile, form turkey mixture into small meatballs. Carefully add to broth, remove pot from heat and let sit for 8 minutes covered or until meatballs are done. If your meatballs are large, you may need to simmer them for a bit first.

Add escarole (or spinach) and serve with extra cheese and pepper and drizzled with pesto. 

 

The Open Book Series

When murder taints writer-in-residence Penelope Parish’s charming British bookshop, she must follow the clues to catch a killer before tempers boil over.

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

 

Family fireworks lead to murder in the new Cranberry Cove Mystery from USA Today bestselling author Peg Cochran!

The Fourth of July always means endless celebrations in Cranberry Cove, and this year Monica and Greg have the added pleasure of spending it with Monica’s college roommate, Kelly Cargill. When they join Kelly and her family to watch the fireworks, it’s all very exciting—until the elderly matriarch of the family dies on the spot. Then evidence comes to light that she was poisoned, and Monica promises to do what she can to catch the culprit.

Just about everyone in Kelly’s family wanted to get their hands on what was sure to be a sizable inheritance. But Monica also discovers that one of them was trying to hide a messy love affair the older woman had discovered, and that the victim’s caretaker may have wanted revenge for enduring years of mistreatment. And just as more secrets surface and the clues begin to fall into place, Monica realizes that as she’s closing in on the killer, the killer is closing in on her . . .

Includes a mouthwatering cookie recipe!

 

Cranberry Cove #10 coming Summer 2024!

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

 

My article on the Enduring Appeal of Cozy Mysteries  

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Pesto to Freeze #recipe by Maya Corrigan

At the height of summer, when our garden produces lots of basil, we make batches of pesto to use immediately and to freeze. Basil pesto lasts a long time in the freezer without losing flavor. Though pesto is available in a jar at the supermarket, making it yourself means you can experiment with the ingredients and adjust them to your taste.

Pesto History

The basil puree known as pesto has been popular for centuries in Italy's Liguria region, where Genoa is, and in France's Provence, where it's called pistou. I add fresh or frozen pesto, not just to pasta, but also to vegetable soup, using the recipe for Soupe au Pistou from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. 

According to food historian Harold McGee (On Food and Cooking), pesto was hardly known in the United States until the 1970s. I first tasted it at a friend's house in the 1970s. Shortly after that I clipped the recipe for "Blender Pesto" shown below from a newspaper.  In the 1970s, when blenders were popular, food processors were a recent invention that cost a good deal more ($175 vs $35 for the most expensive blender). It was another two decades before I had a food processor and switched to making pesto with it. 

The scribbles on the recipe show how I've cut down on the salt and the oil and increased the amount of nuts. If you have no health issues related to fat or salt, try the quantities in the original recipe which makes enough for a pound of pasta. We usually make four times as much so that we have plenty to freeze. That's the quantity in the photos below. The final, barely readable sentence tells you to omit the cheese if you freeze the pesto. The cheese then goes on last, as a topping just before eating.

Most of the time I add parsley, as in the recipe I clipped, but I didn't have any on hand. It's not noticeable by its absence. In the 1970s pine nuts weren't widely available in supermarkets so I often used walnuts instead. Almost any kind of nut can go into pesto with slight flavor differences in the final sauce.

Whether you're using freshly made pesto or defrosted frozen pesto, scoop out as much as you need to combine with the pasta. Since I use less oil than the recipe calls for, I add additional liquid--some of the water in which the pasta was cooked. 

Mix the pesto with the pasta and then add any garnishes you'd like to make the dish more colorful. 

What's your favorite sauce for pasta?

📚

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit a mystery fan fest in the latest Five-Ingredient Mystery

Val and Granddad attend a mystery fan fest that features a bake-off between contestants playing the roles of cooks to fictional sleuths. As Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef, Granddad competes against Sherlock Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson, played by Cynthia Sweet. Granddad blames her for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook newspaper column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. When she’s found dead in her hotel room with a whistling teakettle next to her, he and Val sort through the festival-goers to find the one with the biggest beef against Ms. Not-So-Sweet.

• Visit my website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a culinary mystery story. 
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Pesto Chicken from @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway

 MADDIE here, with a quick and easy summer dinner recipe. I've been making al pesto sauce from my great-uncle Jimmy Henderson's recipe since I was in college, and I shared that recipe here last summer. What better thing to whip up when the basil and garlic are both ready in the garden or at your local farm stand?

I just made a fresh batch of pesto and decided to marinate some chicken thighs before grilling. They came out so good, I wanted to let you know how I did it.

Pesto Chicken

Alert readers will note I forgot to include the lemon, salt, and pepper in the photo!

Ingredients

2 pounds boneless chicken thighs, trimmed of excess fat

2 tablespoons pesto

1 tablespoon lemon juice

¼ cup olive oil

2 tablespoons sherry

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Directions

Combine ingredients.

Marinate thighs for at least four hours covered in the refrigerator, turning hourly. 

Grill on both sides, basting with excess marinade. Serve with corn or potato salad and a green salad. You can also make kebabs using the same marinade. Enjoy!

Readers: What's your favorite way to grill - or eat - chicken in the summer? I'll send one commenter an ARC of Murder at the Lobstah Shack!

My most recent book is  A Changing Light, our seventh Quaker Midwife Mystery! If you want a signed copy endorsed to you, please order from my local indy bookstore, Jabberwocky Books.

The next book to come out is Country Store Mystery #9. No Grater Crime comes out in August and is up for preorder!

Murder at the Lobstah Shack is also up for preorder!

We hope you'll visit Edith and Maddie on our web site, sign up for our monthly newsletter, visit us on social media, and check our all our books and short stories.

Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) is a talented amateur chef and holds a PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha Award-winning and bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction. She lives with her beau north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.

Garlicky Beans, Broccoli, and Pesto #recipe from @MysteryMacRae

 

This dish comes together quickly with a minimum of fuss or cooking time for a satisfying meal on a hot summer night. It’s another recipe that’s easy to make your own with substitutions and adjustments. Serve it alone or with nice whole grain bread.

Garlicky Beans, Broccoli, and Pesto

Adapted from The Washington Post

Ingredients

1 cup of your favorite pesto

1 head broccoli (about 1 ½ pounds), thick stalks removed

Boiling water (use your tea kettle)

1 tablespoon olive oil

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 15-ounce can chickpeas

2 8.5-ounce cans lima beans

18 small tomatoes, halved

1 small yellow squash or zucchini (4 to 7 ounces)

1 tablespoon plain Greek yogurt

2 teaspoons lemon zest

½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

¼ teaspoon pepper, plus more to taste

 

pesto

broccoli, tomatoes, garlic, lemon zest, squash

beans, olive oil, yogurt

Directions

Cut broccoli into bite-size pieces (the smaller, the better). Put broccoli in saucepan and cover with boiling water. Let stand 2 to 3 minutes, to blanch, until crisp-tender, then drain.

In large skillet, over medium heat, heat oil until shimmering. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant and begins to soften, about 2 minutes. 

Stir in broccoli, beans, and tomatoes and cook, stirring, until warmed through, about 2 minutes.

Stir in pesto, squash, yogurt, zest, salt, and pepper, until warmed through, about 2 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve warm.

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990 and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

 

Soupe au Pistou aka Pesto Soup

LESLIE: It’s summer time, and the veggies are thick in the garden patch and on the tables at the Farmer’s Market. While we think of soup as winter food, this one – a sort of summer minestrone – is perfect for a July evening.

The recipe is based on one I found in The French Country Table by Laura Washburn, which I found at Book Passage in the Ferry Terminal building in San Francisco. Washburn falls in that long line of modern cookbook authors strongly influenced by Julia Child, though her recipes fall more on the bistro than the gourmet end of the French table. And they always turn out – they look like the photos and are well-written, but that hasn’t stopped me from making a few changes!

Washburn's notes say traditional Provençal cooks insist on Gouda because the soup was invented by Italian workers building the railway above Nice and used the Gouda which was plentiful in the port. Nonetheless, she calls for Gouda or Parmesan, and we’ve used only Parmesan.

In my opinion, canned beans are a pantry staple, though we do choose low-sodium varieties. Like most soups, the flavor improves if you can make this a few hours ahead and let it rest before serving. If not, you’ll still love it—and the leftovers will be terrific!

I’ve included Washburn’s pesto recipe, but will confess I very often use a spoonful or two of commercial pesto. And I didn’t bother blanching and skinning the tomatoes. The ghosts of Julia Child or those Italian railway workers haven’t come to haunt me yet, so I think the substitutions are safe.

Be French or Italian, and serve this with a loaf of crunch country bread and a crisp white wine.

Bon Appetit, as Madame Child would have said, and Madame Washburn would likely agree!

Soupe au pistou

Active prep and cooking time: about 1 hour.

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 small fennel bulb, quartered, cored, and chopped
2 zucchini, chopped
8 ounces new or small white potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
2 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
2 quarts vegetable or chicken stock
a sprig of thyme
2 cups (roughly 1-15 ounce can) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups (roughly 1-15 ounce can) kidney beans, drained and rinsed
coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 ounces green beans, cut in 1" pieces
2 ounces spaghetti, broken into pieces
1-1/2 cups grated cheese (aged Gouda or Parmesan)

basil leaves for garnish (optional)
more cheese for garnish (optional)
seasoned croutons for garnish (optional) (I made my own by tossing cubed bread with oil and dried herbs and toasting in the oven about 10 minutes)

Pistou 

4-6 garlic cloves 

½ to 1 cup of fresh basil leaves 

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or kettle. Add the onion, fennel, and zucchini and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until browned. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, stock, and thyme. Bring to a boil and simmer about 10 minutes.

Add the cannellini and kidney beans and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Add the green beans and spaghetti and simmer about 10 minutes more, until the pasta is tender (al dente). Cover and remove from heat; let stand at least an hour and reheat, or serve at room temperature.

Just before serving, make the pistou. Put garlic, basil, and oil in a small food processor and process until well-blended. Add more oil if needed; you want a fairly thin pistou.

Top each bowl with a spoon of pistou or pesto, a basil leaf or two, and croutons if you’ve got them. Pass the bowl of cheese and enjoy! 

"Budewitz's finely drawn characters, sharp ear for dialogue, and well-paced puzzle make Jewel Bay a destination for every cozy fan." --- Kirkus Reviews

From the cover of AS THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CRUMBLES, Food Lovers' Village Mystery #5 (Midnight Ink, June 2018, available in trade paper, e-book, and audio):  

In Jewel Bay---Montana's Christmas Village---all is merry and bright. At Murphy’s Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily’s turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin.

When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he’s been robbed, fingers point to Merrily—until she’s found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer—and keep herself in one piece—in time for a special Christmas Eve?

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries—and the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction. A past president of Sisters in Crime, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by my website and join the mailing list for my seasonal newsletter. And join me on Facebook where I announce lots of giveaways from my cozy writer friends.