Spicy black bean salad with lime and cilantro #recipe #mystery #giveaway @AbbottMysteries

What is more refreshing than lime and cilantro? And they both go so well with black beans. If you know us, you know that we love our bean salads. They are especially good if you are trying to bring down the carbs and also great if you’re going gluten-free.  If you just want to increase the proportion of veggies to ‘other’ then they are for you. Plus, like the gift that keeps on giving, they are better the next day. Most of our bean or lentil salads are savory, but the lime and cilantro give this one an exotic taste, that is ramped up by the seasonings.   

I wanted it as a side for our annual writers get together at Lake of Bays, Ontario. I tested it at home and DH and I both loved it. At the writers’ get together, Linda and I were a team for dinner. Because of the lime and cilantro, this went well with the chicken skewers and peanut sauce.  I’ll post the chicken skewers and peanut sauce recipe in two weeks! Wait for it.  

 This black bean salad is very pretty and everyone liked it, although I did forget the avocado on day one.  I added that the second day for lunch and and one more ingredient.   It was a hit both days.

All in all, we find this recipe to be a keeper. I think you can mix and match veggies as long as you keep to the essential lime and cilantro ingredients.  Giveaway alert:  we’ll have a draw for a copy of The Hammett Hex (or substitute). All you have to do is spot the new ingredient in the second version and mention in a comment.  Get your detective chefs hats on and good luck!

All you need for Spicy Black Bean Salad with Lime and Cilantro

      1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed well

1 yellow bell pepper, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

2 medium cloves garlic, minced

      1 medium tomato, seeded and chopped

      2 green onions, sliced (white and green)

1 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon Sriracha

2 tablespoons sugar ( I usually use Splenda)

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon lime zest

Juice from 3 1/2 limes

3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro plus some for garnish

1 ripe avocado chopped

All you do is:

Rinse and drain beans.

Dice peppers, We're just showing the yellow here.

Seed and chop tomato.

Slice green onions.

Chop cilantro.  Not sure where that photo went!

Combine all veggies except for avocado in a large bowl and mix well. 

In a pitcher, combine oil, limes zest and juice, salt, sugar and Sriracha.  

 Please notice the size of Sriracha I had to buy to get the one tsp.  The avocado will give you a sense of proportion.  Have since found smaller containers, but you can expect to find Sriracha as an ingredient in many recipes to come.

Mix dressing into salad.  Cover and chill at least 30 minutes or even overnight. Right before serving, chop avocado, add to salad and fold gently, being careful not to squish the avocado..  Serve the salad at room temperature.

With the chicken and Linda's great veggie dish (coming soon!), it was a hit.  

Any suggestions for how to change this up (as they say).  You can see what I did, but what would you add or subtract from it?  

Here it is on day two, with an addition and the avocado.

 

Happy eating everyone!

Mystery Lovers Kitchen is celebrating it’s

7th anniversary!

7 years of recipes, books, and loads of fun.

As we begin our 8th year of the blog,

help us celebrate by entering our photo contest.

5 people will win a Mystery Lovers' Kitchen tote bag

and the 9 mysteries shown below - one from each of us!

Don't delay, enter today!

Here's how it goes:

1. Take a picture of any one OR MORE of our books (does not have to be one shown above) in the following categories:

a) with a cat

b) with a dog

c) having summer fun

d) in a library

e) in a bookstore

Whose books?

Why the 9 Mystery Lovers Kitchen authors, of course.

Krista Davis * Cleo Coyle *  Leslie Budewitz  

Daryl Wood Gerber * Lucy Burdette * Linda Wiken  

Sheila Connolly * Peg Cochran* Victoria Abbott

...do what you gotta do! There's a sweet prize at stake.

2. Submit your picture below.

Submission period ends midnight July 25th.

3. Share your entry (on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or else-wise,

we'll be flexible). 

We'll choose one winner in each category!

5 chances to win! Good luck!

In case you don't know, Victoria Abbott is a collaboration between  me, Mary Jane Maffini, and my daughter Victoria. Together we write the book collector mysteries.   We think that reading them is like taking a lovely trip to a mysterious place where books are everything and, yes, murder happens and great meals are served and some relatives are not to be trusted. Of course, justice prevails in the end and books are loved.

 

We like to think our book collector mysteries are fun, easy to read and surprising too. All five titles are available in print, e-book and audio format. Don't miss out.  You can get to meet Peachy (posing below) aka Walter the Pug.  Watch out for the Siamese cats - one is good and one will get you!

Baby Bok Choy With Shitake Mushrooms, Garlic, Ginger and Sesame #recipe #mystery #giveaway @AbbottMysteries

This is the last post in our Eat Your Rainbow Challenge!  We have enjoyed our veggie posts and this time we wanted to choose something a wee bit different and opted for baby bok choy because they’re just so cute and shitake mushrooms because they are so intriguingly odd looking and they’re actually grown in our community!  We think you could use ordinary button mushrooms too.  

We hated to cook the bok choy because they were a) adorable and b) obviously terrified. Oh well.

Make sure you post a comment today to be on the list for the draw for this fabulous veggie serving platter.  All previous commenters' names will be in the draw.

 We’ll be choosing soon!  Let us remind you that you must leave your email addy in your comment. Disguise it to fool the trolls, by all means, but we’ll need it to let you know.

And now back to our baby bok choy. They look so lively and full of nutrition. The taste is mild and delicious. What’s not to love?

Baby bok choy are very popular around here. I have bought at least a half-dozen packages of them intending to experiment and they have mysterious vanished into soup and omelets. (MJ says: I don’t know who the culprit is but it appears that I’m married to him.)  

 

This time, we managed.  There are lots of nice recipes about for sautéing this lovely veggie, but we were looking for something like the Asian marinade we make for our favorite baked salmon.  After a bit of experimentation, we toned down the amount of sesame oil to ½ tsp. It has quite a powerful flavor.

The results were a big hit. Although the recipe serves six as a side, there was just enough left for one.

MJ had to promise to make it often.  That was good news!  We  hope you will also like it. You can fiddle with the ingredients and proportions. Let us know what you think!

WE'RE SO OUT OF HERE!

Baby Bok Choy With Shitake Mushrooms, Garlic, Ginger and more

2 tablespoons Canola or other vegetable oil

2 tsp prepared chopped garlic (or two cloves fresh garlic minced)

1 tbsp prepared ginger (or one tablespoon grated fresh ginger)

2 tablespoons soy sauce (regular or low salt)

1 1/2 tsp maple syrup

½ tsp sesame oil

½ cup chicken stock

6 baby bok choy with ends trimmed, chopped

8 oz shitake mushrooms, ends trimmed and sliced

S & P to taste

What to do:

In a large frying pan, heat the oil until hot but not smoking. Canola is better than olive oil for high temperature frying. Sauté the garlic and ginger for about a minute.

Add the boy choy and mushrooms and cook for about five minutes.

Combine soy sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup and chicken stock in a small bowl.  Add to pan.  Bring to a boil and cook until liquid disappears.  It won’t take long!  Add S & P to taste. We found it salty enough as is.

This is a highly flavored dish and we chose to serve it with plain roast roast chicken and Arborio rice, so there wasn’t a lot of flavor competition. We loved it! It would also be very good with baked fish.

Do come by and let us know if you have any favorite seasonings for baby bok choy.  We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

If you are new to this blog, we’d like to point out that Victoria Abbott is a collaboration between the artist and photographer, Victoria Maffini, and her mother, Mary Jane, author of three other series.

Together, we write the award-winning Book Collector Mysteries. We love writing together and oddly enough, we have fun.

We like to think our book collector mysteries have lots of flavor and surprise too. All five titles are available in print, ebook and audio format. Don't miss out!

 .

Get in on more fun with  our email newsletter.  All you need to do to get on the list is ask us RIGHT HERE

We’re also on Facebook and love to hear from you.  Click to link to Mary Jane Maffini
and Victoria Abbott

Make sure you eat your veggies and don't forget to comment and leave your email addy to be in the draw. We're rooting for you!

Your Cheatin’ Heart: yummy chocolate-beet cupcakes #recipe #veggie #giveaway @AbbottMysteries

Well Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and here WE are with our on-going veggie challenge. What to do???

Don’t forget to leave a comment to be in the draw for the veggie platter shown below!

There's no way we'll give up on our challenge yet and yet, there’s something about that special day that calls out for chocolate treat with a special sweetie, family or friends. 

Could we cheat and have it all?  Although we’d never had one, we had heard of chocolate cakes with beets and that seemed to us to be just the right kind of compromise. To spur ourselves on, we raced out and bought some new gear.  

We waded through recipes and couldn’t find one that had everything we wanted (like that nearly full container of buttermilk) so we mixed and matched and made things up. Do you do that too?

At any rate, the results sounded alarming to the little mister, but even he had to agree the finished product was excellent. 

Chocolate-Beet Cupcakes

Ingredients: 
 
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour (We also experimented with a blend of flour and oat hull fiber and they were--surprisingly-just as good. You may not believe this and we understand.)

½ cup best quality cocoa: we used Penzey’s for a potent punch!

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

 ½ tsp salt

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup canola oil

1 extra-large egg, room temperature

1 14 oz can sliced or diced red beets, drained and pureed in food processor

1 ½ tsp good quality vanilla

1 1/2 tbsp cold coffee

2/3 cup buttermilk

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350 F

Grease the muffin pan or use liners. 

Sift flour with cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa, and salt into a large bowl.

Beat the sugar and oil until smooth. Beat in egg, pureed beets, vanilla and coffee.

Beat in 1/3 flour mixture, followed by half the buttermilk until just blended. Repeat: flour, buttermilk, flour. Do not overbeat.

Fill muffin cups to ¾.   We had enough batter left over to make a small cake in a ramekin.  It didn’t last long enough to take a photo. Gobble. Oh well.  

Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 25 minutes.  

Cool on a rack.  Don’t ice until completely cool, one of many things we’ve learned the hard way.

Ice with butter-cream icing or chocolate cream cheese icing or chocolate ganache whatever frosting you love.

These cupcakes are rich and moist but not overly sweet and that suited us perfectly.  We found that they were better the second day and that means we’ll make them ahead in future. We froze a few and they thawed and were still good in taste and texture. We chose to use a cake decorator tip and make a butter cream rosette rather than ice them all over. You must be true to your own self.  Nudge nudge wink wink.

We hope you’ll savor these as much as we did. Invite your friends, light a few candles and enjoy!

And in case you have forgotten who we are:  Victoria Abbott is a collaboration between me: the artist and photographer Victoria Maffini and other me:  Victoria’s mother, Mary Jane Maffini.

Together, we write the award-winning Book Collector Mysteries. We love writing together and oddly enough, we have fun.   

 

Want to see the books? Here they are!  All are available in print, e-book and audio.

  

  

Winner of the 2016 Bony Blithe Award!

Now hear this!

Get in on more fun with  our email newsletter.  All you need to do to get on the list is ask us RIGHT HERE

We’re also on Facebook and love to hear from you. Mary Jane Maffini
and Victoria Abbott

Don't be a stranger!  💘💘💘