Dessert with Ganache!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had a wonderful writerly get-together in Portland over the past few days. Charles Salzberg, honorary Red Jenny Milchman and I did a packed-to-the-rafters gig Thursday at Longfellow Books, one of our area's great indy bookstores. (The crowd was even more amazing when you consider they had to walk there through windchills of -15.) The next night, we hit an oyster bar with Charles' hosts, writer/blogger Brynne Betz and her partner John. It was a great dinner, sitting at picnic tables with kids and spouses, trading around traditional New England fare tapas-style.

But the best part of the evening was afterwards, at John and Brynne's house. Brynne had baked a dessert buffet to die for: coconut-covered carrot cake, dark chocolate layer cake with mocha frosting, and best of all? Homemade peppermint patties. I did the usual, "Oh, I'll just have a little slice," but after the first bite of carrot cake, I would have stabbed anyone who got between me and my plate. I was going to have a ladylike taste of one peppermint patty; I wound up eating five. My family's gratitude (or our grunts of pleasure as we wolfed down her baking) touched our hostess's heart, and she sent us home with two enormous slabs of cake and several patties, which, sad to say, didn't last very long.

I don't know if I have the patience to hand-dip each patty into a chocolate bath, but I do have a recipe that has all the basics of peppermint patties in an easy-to-make form. And, in honor of our own Lucy's upcoming Murder with Ganache, this delicious dessert uses - you guessed it - chocolate ganache!

Peppermint Patty Pie

1 graham cracker crust

3 c confectioners sugar
2 1/2 T butter
1/4 t vanilla extract
1 t peppermint oil or 1 T peppermint extract (you can also put in peppermint schnapps to taste along with the oil or extract. The oil give it a very sharp, pungent mint flavor.)
3 T whipping cream

8 oz or 1 1/2 c dark chocolate chips (I like Ghiradelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate ones)
3/4 c whipping cream
1/4 c sugar

Cream together the confectioner's sugar, butter, vanilla extract and peppermint, adding the cream last. If you use a mixer, you can get it nice and smooth; if you're lazy like me, do it with a spoon. Is your family really going to complain about some lumps? It should have a paste-like consistency. 

On a baking cloth/wax paper/parchment, roll the filling into a circle sized to fit your crust. Put it in the crust (you will probably need to poke it here and there to make it fit well,) then chill in the frig while you make the ganache.
 
 
For the ganache: put the chocolate, cream and sugar in a double boiler (you don't have to have a fancy one; I literally use one pot inside another) and heat at medium until the chocolate melts. Whisk it silky-smooth, then remove it from the stove and let it cool for about fifteen minutes.



Take the crust + filling from the frig and pour the ganache over it. Replace in the frig for another half hour or until you can't stand the wait any more and you have to eat it. 

While you're enjoying your Peppermint Patty Pie, be sure to head over to Goodreads and enter the contest to get a copy of Lucy's Murder with Ganache. And at Lucy's Facebook page, you can enter to win a $25 bookstore gift card and a bundle of cozy mysteries!  

Fantasy Island...and city, and boat, and train...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  Except for Lucy's Wednesday visit from Key West, it's been all cold weather all the time here at JRW. And even Lucy was talking about a scene that takes place on a cold gray day on the water! Well, the heck with that. Now is the time to  crank that under-the-desk heater, pull out your back issues of TRAVEL + LEISURE magazine, and start planning your imaginary getaway to the sun.

Since I'm not going to be able to take a real vacation until after I've paid off the last tuition bill, I let myself go whole hog on my fantasy trips. Five-star luxury hotels? Sure! Concierge tours? You bet! Stay an extra week? Oh, all right. Needless to say, since it's been all arctic air for the past few weeks, my imaginary trips lean heavily to warm spots. "So, Julia," I hear you saying, "Where would you go if you won the lottery tomorrow?" I'm glad you asked.
If we're taking a family vacation with two college students and 13-year-old Youngest, there's only one place that will thrill us all: New Zealand. Of course, we'll all travel via Air New Zealand's Premiere Business Class (the seats lay flat so you can sleep!) I was happy to discover the average temperature in Christchurch in February is 70 degrees F, dropping down to a comfortable 52 at night. Perfect weather for hiking, kayaking, exploring glaciers and taking in the sites where LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT were filmed. 
 
While I go to the museums in Auckland and the art galleries in Wellington, Ross and the girls can go whale or penguin watching and The Boy can try bungy jumping off the Auckland Harbor bridge. We'll stay in farm bed and breakfasts and luxury hotels and stuff ourselves on lamb and seafood.

True, I may never get any closer to this trip than having a slideshow of NZ scenes on my desktop, but it's nice to dream. How about you, Reds? Where are you fantasy holidays located?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Yes, NZ is on my list!  My brother and sister-in-law are there now, on their live-aboard sailboat.  And that African luxury safari. And the Orient Express from London to Istanbul.  All first class, all the way, if we're allowed to fantasize....  And how about a luxury cruise around the Mediterranean?

Ever since I researched the English waterways for Water Like a Stone, I've wanted to take a narrowboat holiday.  But I think I need a lackey to work the locks...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Paris, Paris, Paris. No-holds-barred, anything you want Paris. With behind the scenes,and museums and fashions and food and shopping and total immersion French. Merci!.

And of course,the Orient Express! How it used to be, right?  With tea and staterooms.

And then maybe no-hold-barred Florence. With behind the scenes,and museums and fashions and food and shopping and total immersion Italian. Grazie! 




JULIA: Hank, I'm sure you know this, but one of the routes the Venice-Simplon Orient Express takes is Paris to Venice. Talk about getting there being half the fun... and of course, there's no baggage limit on the Orient Express, so you can shop 'til you drop in both cities.

RHYS BOWEN: I only have one major item on my bucket list and that's an African Safari. Still trying to persuade John that lions will not bite off his toes as he sleeps. I also wanted to do a narrowboat holiday, Debs, but we decided the locks were too much work. But I can always be lured back to Paris, and Venice and I am doing a really nice cruise this summer in the Mediterranean, so no complaints. 

JULIA: Rhys, Ross and I went on a seventeen day safari back in '98 and it was amazing. No lions came and nibbled our toes (they are actually supremely lazy and avoid humans when they can) but an elephant did stroll over and look into the open-air shower where I was washing up!

How about you, dear readers? Where would you go if time and treasure were no object? 

 

Vortex, Shmortex

“Pirio Kasparov is an alluring heroine. She’s sharp-witted, hell-bent on finding the truth, and her narrative voice is laced with surly sexiness. Pirio’s baldly honest, slightly melancholic reflections and Elo’s use of extreme natural settings will have strong appeal for Scandinavian crime fans. An impressive debut with surprising literary depth.”

                                                       —Booklist (starred) on NORTH OF BOSTON

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Three things 
about Siberia.
  (I’ve never written that sentence before, so that makes 
it four things.)

1. When we were kids, it was the ultimate threat. My mother would say—“Keep doing that, kiddo, and it’s SIBERIA for you.”  We weren’t quite sure what or where that was, 
but it sounded bad.

2. In college, I was big on the game of Risk.  Yakutsk was a very good territory to get, and so was Irkutsk. Apparently, who knew, they are in Siberia.

3. I know this because of Elisabeth Elo, a fellow Bostonian whose astonishing new book NORTH OF BOSTON is brand new and getting fabulous reviews all around.  She has
 been to Siberia! (I guess she must have defied her mother….) and she says all this talk about the polar vortex?  Well, what’s Russian for “pooh-pooh”?    

And we think we’ve got it bad… 

                by Elisabeth Elo, author of North of Boston

Right now it’s 6:08 pm on January 21, and it’s snowing pretty hard here in Boston.  Commuters are driving home on slippery streets, trying to get there before the blizzard that’s roaring up the coast actually hits.  There’s a traffic back-up outside my window, and the temperature is a brisk 10*F.  Ah, Boston, you’re my home! 

So what do Bostonians do on a night like tonight?  They complain.  Most likely, we’ll wake up tomorrow to a winter wonderland of bright white virgin snow -- a soft, sparkling landscape that would be the perfect setting for a beautiful love story (such as Love Story).  But we’ll still complain.  Most of us will have the day off from work or school – and what will we do?  Complain.  Out sledding with our kids, we’ll complain.  With our feet up before a cozy fire, we’ll complain.  Why?  Because we like to. 

It’s sort of fun.  We’re Bostonians after all.  We’re tough, and we want everyone to know it.   So we won’t talk about gorgeous landscapes or sledding with our kids.  We’ll talk about downed tree limbs and blackouts and cars stuck in slushy drifts and huge sheets of snow sliding off slanted roofs onto parked cars below, shattering their windshields and almost killing nearby pedestrians.  Yup.  That’s how we talk up here in Beantown.  

It’s Man against Nature in these parts.

Which brings me to Siberia.

In Yakutsk, a city I visited this summer, the average January temperature is -40*F.  If you throw boiling water out your window, it freezes before it hits the pavement. 
A dull fog (frozen water vapor) often blankets the earth.  If you turn off your car, the fuel freezes within minutes, so cars must be kept running twenty-four hours a day or kept in a heated garage, which hardly anyone has. 

On the good side, the women all have fur coats.  I do not grudge them this as they are probably the only people in the world who actually need them. 

(Our neon-colored synthetic parkas with all the snaps, zippers, and pockets are a just a joke to them.) 

Oh, and the children aren’t kept home from school until the temperature falls to below -50*F.

So one day this past August I happened to find myself in a small village called Cherkeh, which is about a five-hour ride via “taxi” 
(this is a euphemism for a rusted-out van with no shock absorbers in which many people are crammed) from Yakutsk, which is itself quite far away from anything.  

Cherkeh is pretty much inaccessible during the winter months, and because I was feeling some fear and awe imagining what the winter there must be like,   

I asked an approximately 80-year-old Sakha man named Dimitri what it was like to live in Cherkeh in the---  

And before I could even finish the sentence, he looked at me with some disgust and barked, “What do you think we do?  We go the store, we make dinner, we visit friends.  Did you think we stayed in our houses all winter long?” 

That’s when I had an epiphany. 

It came to me that Boston actually isn’t the center of the universe, that a blizzard is just another type of weather, that kids have every right to play outside until their cheeks are pink and their wool mittens are frozen stiff because they’ve been happily sucking snow off them, and that one person’s frigid ten degrees is someone else’s springtime. 

You might be wondering why I went to Siberia.  (I don’t blame you for this.)  It was to do research for the novel I’m writing, so far untitled.  If everything goes as planned, my debut suspense novel, North of Boston, will be published 31 hours from now (now being 7:06 pm on 1/21/2014).  It’s very exciting, of course, to think that North of Boston will soon be on bookstore shelves.  But my attention keeps straying to the new novel that’s on my desk, the one taking place partly in Siberia. 

Luckily, the season isn’t winter.

My tough-talking Boston protagonist isn’t tough enough for that! 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Now I am truly embarrassed that I am typing this with a blanket over my lap and wearing fingerless gloves.Wimp.

Anyway! The fabulous Elisabeth is giving away a copy of NORTH OF BOSTON to one lucky commenter (no PO boxes and US only, please...)  So, Reds, what's the coldest weather you've ever been in?

*********************

  Suspense Magazine wrote in their rave review of NORTH OF BOSTON: “There are gritty, hardcore mysteries and then there are gritty, witty mysteries that bring excellent humor, in-depth storytelling, and truly descriptive scenes together in a combination that makes you wish that the novel was playing out on the big screen. This particular debut is the latter; an amazing page-turner that brings Pirio Kasparov, an extremely witty girl from Boston, onto the literary scene… This is non-stop action; a debut read that’s highly recommended to all suspense mavens out there. Enjoy!” 

Elo grew up in Boston and went to Brown University.  She worked as an editor, an advertising copywriter, a high-tech project manager, and a halfway house counselor before getting a PhD in American Literature at Brandeis University.  Since then, she’s taught writing at Harvard, Tufts, and the evening school of Boston College.  She is already hard at work on the second book starring the NORTH OF BOSTON ensemble cast.  Below is more information on the book, and be sure to check out www.elisabethelo.com