Lucy Burdette's Kitchen Publishes This Week!

LUCY BURDETTE: Long before I imagined I’d write a foodie mystery, I fell in love with Diane Mott Davidson’s series featuring caterer Goldie Schultz. Davidson didn't just dump descriptions onto her pages, food and cooking were woven into the pages to become part of her story. I always finished a book wishing I could have been friends with caterer Goldy, sitting in her kitchen, tasting her food. She and her detective husband Tom believed that serving good food demonstrated comfort and love. Plus, a lot of good detective work occurred while they cooked and ate.

 With fourteen books so far in my Key West series, each with recipes at the back of the book, I've had to do a lot of cooking to keep up with Hayley. I loved the idea of pulling them all together along with snippets from each book. Luckily for me, Crooked Lane Books agreed and LUCY BURDETTE'S KITCHEN will be out this week! To celebrate, I thought I would share the first recipe with you today: Key lime pie.

Key lime pie is the official dessert of the City of Key West, so naturally it makes frequent appearances in these mysteries. In the first book in the series, An Appetite for Murder, food critic Hayley Snow doesn’t actually make this pie but she becomes a suspect when her boss is murdered by key lime pie. She attempts to prove she couldn’t be the culprit. There are traces of pie found on the knife near the murder victim: She would never bake a bilious green colored confection like that.

The celebrated pie also looms large in the 10th book, The Key Lime Crime, when murder strikes down a pastry chef in a pie-baking contest. The trouble begins at the contest:

Off to the left of the stage, I saw a flash of movement. Before my brain could fully register what was coming, Claudette Parker marched to the display table and picked up the pie from the Key Lime Pie Company, the one that had been touted as extra-creamy, with whipped cream piped joyfully around the edges. She slammed it into David Sloan’s face. The pie tin slid off his nose and chin and clattered on the floor in a puddle of filling. Sloan’s eyes blinked like windshield wipers in heavy snow, working holes in the whipped cream. 

The pie pictured above came from the Old Town Bakery, made with whipped cream rather than meringue. Below is my recipe using meringue, but you can switch that out!

Ingredients for the crust

10 sheets of graham crackers, should measure 1 1/4 cups

5 tablespoons butter, melted

1/4 cup sugar

Whir the graham crackers in a food processor until they make fine crumbs. Mix in the sugar and the butter. Press the mixture using the back of a spoon into your nine or 10 inch pie plate. Nine is probably better as my pie was a little low. Bake the crust at 350 for 10 minutes until it starts to brown. Remove it from the oven and reduce the heat to 325.

Ingredients for the filling

1/2 cup key lime or lime juice, freshly squeezed

Four egg yolks

1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

2 teaspoons grated lime zest

Squeeze the limes until you have 1/2 cup of juice. (4-5 regular limes, more key limes.) Make sure to strain out the seeds. 

Whisk the egg yolks, then whisk in the sweetened condensed milk, lime juice, and lime zest.  

Add the filling to the pie crust and bake for six minutes. Remove from the oven and set this aside while you make your meringue.

Ingredients for the meringue

Four egg whites

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup sugar

One half teaspoon vanilla

Using a clean bowl and mixer, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until they hold soft peaks. Gradually beat in the sugar until the egg whites hold stiff peaks and appear shiny but not dry. Beat in the vanilla. 

Attach the meringue to the hot pie, beginning by adding globs all around the edge of the crust and smoothing them into a circle. (That's the  technical culinary term--add globs.) 

Then add remaining meringue to the center and smooth or shape into peaks as desired. Bake the pie for another 20 minutes. Cool on a rack. Refrigerate until serving.

And now serve yourself a nice piece of pie and start reading...

Lucy Burdette's Kitchen will be out in ebook format on Tuesday (July 23), and December in large print hardcover. I'm still working on convincing them we need the paperback! To celebrate, I'm giving away a dish towel printed with Lucy Burdette's roasted shrimp recipe. Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing!

Reds, have you ever made a recipe from the back of a novel? Which one?

Fictional Feasts

***Breaking news: Pat D is the winner of Edith Maxwell's book. Please contact her at Edithmax at gmail dot com to claim your prize!***

LUCY BURDETTE: I've got food on the brain lately, but what else is new? Especially after Rhys had us describing our favorite meals last week. Besides that, it's an occupational hazard of writing foodie mysteries, as you saw yesterday from Edith's post. And you'll see again on Sunday, when Leslie Budewitz visits to talk about her recent obsession with food-related memoirs.

But I realized as I cracked open Ruth Reichl's first novel, Delicious!, that I've always loved reading about food in fiction. Maybe it started consciously with Diane Mott Davidson's series about a Boulder caterer who can't help solving mysteries as she cooks. Davidson didn't just dump descriptions onto the pages, food works hard as part of her story. Here she is at the beginning of Catering to Nobody:

    "For the dessert shortcakes, I used an old trick: make giant scones. Another thing I'd learned in this business: involve the clients with the food. Make the spread good to look at, smell, touch, taste. Gauge action by needs. At a bridal shower, don't give the guests much to do with the food since they're already involved with the presents. But keeping people active at a wake was essential. Being busy, like working, allayed grief. By splitting cakes and heaping on berries and cream, the mourners could start to get their minds off death."

    Barbara O'Neal is another novelist who shows genius about writing food. Near the beginning of The Lost Recipe for Happiness, her chef character has just been fired by her lover/boss. She's been invited to breakfast by a handsome restaurant owner who's offered her a job. Where do you suppose this is heading:

     
"Elena speared a vivid red strawberry, a fruit at its prime, and fell into admiring it. The smooth red flesh, quilted with the tiniest seeds. It tasted slightly grainy, imbued with the sunlight of a summer morning. "Mmmm." She stabbed another and held it out to Julian. "Have a taste."

    Oh, there are so many other meals I've enjoyed on the page--have you read Jessica Sofer's Tomorrow There Will be Apricots? Or Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent? Or Jenny Shortridge's Eating Heaven? Or Erica Baumeister's The School of Essential Ingredients? Or Meredith Mileti's Aftertaste? Or Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of the Lemon Cake? I can't even begin to list all the fun culinary mysteries being written right now, but you'll find some wonderful choices at MysteryLoversKitchen.com.

    Reds, is there a special fictional meal that lingers on your palate? Or a foodie novel we must add to our pile? Or do all these calories on the page leave you cold?

(And by way, here's my favorite recipe for strawberry shortcake--obviously I've got that dish on the brain!)

What are you reading?

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm a little disgusted with myself this month because it feels like I'm reading at a snail's pace. Blame it on too much work or socializing or my very late discovery of Downton Abbey, but I've got a towering stack on my nightstand and I've barely made a dent. Right this minute, I'm devouring a book my friend Pat Kennedy loaned me called MY KOREAN DELI by Ben Ryder Howe. It's a story about his Korean wife and in-laws buying a deli in Brooklyn--he's a very, very funny and beautiful writer. And I'm also looking forward to Diana Abu-Jaber's newish novel, BIRDS OF PARADISE, along with Vanessa Diffenbaugh's THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS, our own Deborah Crombie's NO MARK UPON HER, and more books by Cleo Coyle, Miranda James, Avery Aames, and Diane Mott Davidson.

What are you reading and loving?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I'm so honored to a the moderator of the MWA symposium--so right now I'm reading all the nominees for Best First Novel! (That's a fun task, right?)
I must recommend DEFENDING JACOB, by William Landay. it's extraordinary. They're calling him the new Scott Turow, and I have to agree. And the amazing Carolyn Hart just sent me her new one, DEATH COMES SILENTLY. Whoo hoo.
Jonathan is reading Lisa Gardner's CATCH ME, and I can't even get his attention, he's so into it!

HALLIE EPHRON: I've been so flat out writing I've had no time to read. Once I turn it in, I shall luxuriate in other people's pages. I did read one book I loved -- same as Hank's, DEFENDING JACOB. And I loved the article in last week's New Yorker about training police dogs. (Roberta - did you read it??)

JAN BROGAN - I'm afraid my reading is all research-related. I am reading Captain Ahab Had a Wife by Lisa Norling and A Very Social Time (about antebellum New England) by Karen W. Hansen. They are both insightful and full of fascinating details, but not what you call page turners unless you are like me and totally fascinated with the era.

RHYS BOWEN: Like Hallie and Jan I'm in the throes of writing and find it impossible to read much when I'm working on a book. I've also had several books to blurb, which has taken up any reading time I have, but I've just picked up Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder and I'm really enjoying it. The writer has written a biography of Wilde and his wit sounds so genuine. AND it's in the right time period for the Molly book I'm writing.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Having delivered my latest masterpiece at the end of January I took the month of February to catch up on some reading - LOVED Gone by Mo Hayder, Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, The Confession by Charles Todd and The Saddlemaker's Wife by Earlene Fowler. Currently reading Swann's Last Song by Charles Salzberg and Catherine by Robert Massie.

I think I should retire and just read and garden from now on...
(PS It didn't hurt that I logged about 50 hours worth of flying time in
February!)

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Ro, you'd better not retire from writing! But the idea of having nothing to do but read is very appealing, I must admit.

At the moment I'm devouring Craig Ferguson's memoir, American on Purpose, which is just brilliant. Laugh-out-loud funny, scathingly honest, and very touching. And I guess I can say it's kinda/sorta research since I do have a Scottish character in my WIP... Just read Cara Black's Murder at the Lanterne Rouge, and The Confession by Charles Todd, both of which I loved. Oh, and my first Lauren Willig, The Orchid Affair--ditto. Huge fun!

Next up, Imperial Scandal by Teresa Grant, and Rhys Bowen's new Molly Murphy, Hush Now, Don't You Cry. Can't wait!

LUCY BURDETTE: Wowie, zowie, that's a list that could last us ten years. But tell us, what are you all reading these days? And why do you love it?