Catriona seeks out her Dark Side.

RHYS BOWEN: By rights I should not like Catriona McPherson. After all, she has won the last three awards I've been nominated for. But she's the kind of person it's impossible not to like. She's full of fun, witty with that self deprecating humor of the Scots and she's a terrific writer (as well as a good cook) and she's here to tell us about her new and different venture. Welcome Catriona (and that's pronounced Katreena by the way)

CATRIONA MCPHERSON: It’s lovely to back at Jungle Reds again – thank you very much for having me. 

I’m celebrating the launch of a new book right now and it’s quite a departure. Not the celebrating – dearie me, no; I’ll celebrating Tuesday rolling round if I’ve got enough eggs to make a cake – but the book is something different.

Usually . . . I think, since the 8^th book in the series comes out in the UK next month, I can say usually . . . Usually, I write preposterous 1920s detective stories about upper-class amateur sleuth Dandy Gilver and her Dalmatian.  But the book I’m celebrating right now is AS SHE LEFT IT, a modern stand-alone.

 

So how different are they?

As She Left it is a wee bit darker.  Opal Jones, the protagonist, left home when she was twelve and we meet her as she returns, after her mother’s death, to the little terraced row house on the dead-end street where she grew up.  All her old neighbours are still in residence but ten years before the story opens something happened to change Mote Street: a child disappeared and, every day since,  shame, sorrow and layers of secrets have been pressing down on everyone who lives there.

But I need to say three things.  One, I’m a sucker for a happy ending.  Given the world we live in, I can’t understand anyone in charge of a fictional world who doesn’t write a happy ending!  Two, although I meant AS SHE LEFT IT to be very dark indeed, I was cracking jokes by page seven – I can’t help it.  And three, Opal’s job, picking and packing the online orders in a supermarket, gave lots of scope for light relief.  As a nosy besom, I’d love to do other people’s anonymous shopping.  The research I did for that bit of the book – thank you, Dumfries Tesco – was an eye-opener.

Here’s an excerpt.  Opal is at work on the hottest day of the summer:

Round in the warehouse, Dave and the supervisor from Wet Fish were dragging an open-front chiller on a trolley towards the flap doors.

‘This is one of the turkey chillers,’ Dave said.  ‘Email from Head Office.  It’s going to the front door for water.  We’ve to fill it with chipped ice and hand out bottled water.’

‘Whole bottles,’ said Wet Fish.  He was already in his white coat and trilby.  ‘Not samples.  Not plastic beakers like a tasting.’

‘Because we asked them,’ Dave said.  ‘Whole bottles.  For free.’

That was the start of the day’s madness.  The barbecue hordes came early.  Usually it was gone eleven before they started drifting in, sunburned and topless, filling deep trolleys with charcoal and Polish lager, but that day the first of them arrived before nine and some of the very first bought all of the ice, then the later ones wanted to know where the chipped ice in the open front chiller by the door had come from and why couldn’t they get some too.  And one of the assistant managers had to be beeped to come and explain that it wasn’t edible ice and couldn’t be used in drinks, but then Charlotte had a mother complaining that one of the girls giving out the water had said to her little boy that he could have a scoop of it in his empty slushy-cup and he’d eaten the lot. 

And there was no cream in the dairy drop at ten o’clock – none at all – double, single, whipping, clotted, even Chantilly – and the UHT and aerosol ran out and after that everyone who had picked up strawberries on a twofer started putting them back again, only hardly anyone bothered to go back and dump them with the rest of the strawberries; they just shoved them onto the nearest shelf and the store started to fill up with cartons of sweating strawberries and Kate and Rhianne, detailed to seek them out and bring them home couldn’t do it because the warehouse boys had brought out more and there was nowhere to put them, so they got stickered down and piled up in Reduced but that only started the whole strawberries-cream-no-cream-no-strawberries cycle all over again until, as Rhianne said:

“I’m starting to recognise some of these buggers.  This is the third time I’ve moved the carton with that big one like Santa’s nose.’

 

And here’s an easy and delicious summer recipe, good for any creamless strawberry glut.

Delia Smith’s Strawberry Granita

1lb strawberries

6oz sugar

1pt water

2 lemons

 

Hull the strawberries, rinse them and then (Delia says pat them dry.  If anyone can tell me (Catriona) why you would dry berries you’re about to add a pint of water to, I’d be very grateful.) Put them in a blender or processor.  Whizz them to a smooth purée.  Ad the sugar and blend again.  Add the water and the juice of the lemons, whizz one last time and then pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a large Tupperware (could use Ikea) container and cover.

Freeze for two hours, then fork the icy edges to the slushy middle and freeze again.  Re-fork after another hour.  One last hour, one last forking, and the granita should be crystalline and beautiful.  It’ll stay that way for three hours more (unless you have some kind of ninja freezer, I suppose) but will eventually transmute into a mammoth ice-pop.  If you’re having very close friends for dinner, you could pass it round for sucks but I’d be inclined to let it warm up a bit in the fridge and refluff before serving.

 

I’ll be giving away a signed copy of AS SHE LEFT IT to a commenter today - looking forward to hearing from you

RHYS: Thanks, Catriona. So glad you could stop by.  Don't forget to ask Catriona questions, Reds.