Recipes

I love to cook and I love to write.  I have enhanced my novels by including many scenes of family get-togethers, which naturally includes eating.  It has been suggested that I should write a cookbook of these dishes.  I’m afraid that will take too much time away from my future novels.  However, I am happy to share.  Although I frequently provide a description of all of the ingredients that make up the delicacies in my novels, I do not include measurements.  Over the next several months I will post recipes, with ingredients, measurements, preparation instructions, oven temperature and timing.

Here are some excerpts to whet your appetite:

From Finding a Soul Mate

• Dinner started with chicken soup and salad with a light dressing. The main course consisted of poached salmon filet, a Sephardic-style casserole of lamb and apricots seasoned with honey, coriander and ginger, a spinach soufflé, plus lamb and vegetable-stuffed red onions.
• I made lunch for them by poaching a piece of sushi fresh blue fin tuna.  I quickly made it into tuna salad with some finely chopped celery, shallots, and homemade walnut oil mayo, which I plated over a spring mix salad.

From The Couples

• He filmed a sauté pan with olive oil and added finely chopped onion and garlic. He then ground the leftover lamb and added it to the onion and garlic mixture. When it was cooked, he added chopped parsley, thyme, rosemary, white wine, and chicken stock. Then he cubed an eggplant and sautéed it until it was just tender, mixing it into the lamb.  Michael hollowed out some tomatoes and added the fragrant lamb and eggplant mixture. He dusted the tops of the stuffed tomatoes with bread crumbs and put them under a broiler for a few minutes.
• That night Anna prepared a lovely dinner for the two couples, consisting of a spring salad mix with cranberries, walnuts, crumbled grilled salmon, lightly dressed with honey vinaigrette dressing. The main course was Rainier cherry and apricot stuffed pork chops, roasted Walla Walla onions, and fresh steamed asparagus.

From Finding Each Other

• They were served her famous chili, and because Aunt Joan knew that Holly liked to cook she took time explaining all the ingredients she used. “I made  it with of a mixture of half ground beef, half ground Italian sausage, onion, garlic, Pasilla, red and green peppers, fine-ground dried poblano peppers, adobo spice, plus the incredibly aromatic and flavorful New Mexico chili powder blend from the World Spice shop near Pike’s Market in Seattle. A touch of Smoked Tabasco sauce was added at the end, to balance the flavors and enhance the smoky essence of the dried poblano peppers. I found I can use the Tabasco to replace most of the salt, and I love the smoky flavor it imparts.”
• “Shelly is making sambusas,” Gary told him. “She learned how from a Nigerian friend. They consist of a spring roll wrapper with ground beef inside. The ground beef is seasoned with cumin, cardamom, white pepper and a dash of smoked Tabasco. You add chopped onions and scallions to the meat mixture, and since we had peas for dinner last night, Shelly probably added some of them to the filling for a little color as well. You form them into triangles and then deep fry them.”

From Growing Together

• They enjoyed  a delicious going-away breakfast of Belgian waffles with fruit toppings, scrambled eggs, and chorizo sausage prepared by Michelle Kaplan.
• Megan and he served cold beet borscht with sour cream and warm brisket sandwiches. They put out three kinds of mustard, a stone ground to a fine texture, a coarse ground with horseradish, and a third flavored with Tabasco sauce.
• “Miss Cohen and I made the brisket,” Olivia excitedly told them as they sat down to eat. “I helped mix the spices and rubbed them into the meat, and then put the onions and carrots on top, and then I put a whole lot of garlic on top of everything! Then we baked the brisket all night. It was a lot of hard work.”
• She took the largest soup pan she could find, filled it with clean-looking snow, and placed it on the stove. While the snow was melting she got out the flour and made dumplings to cook on top of the stew. She took some of the melted snow and put it in a pitcher, crushing a large handful of blueberries into it…She looked around the cabin and found a cupboard with spices and flavorings… In a bowl, she used a wooden spoon to mix butter with sugar and flour and began beating them until they were smooth… She added an egg and other dry ingredients, and beat them into the mixture as well as her sore arm would allow…She found a pan with a tight-fitting lid, in which she placed a measure of the freeze-dried stew along with water. She tasted it and added a pinch of powdered garlic, powdered onion, and three dashes of Tabasco sauce. When the stew was getting warm, she added some extra water, and once the mixture was hot, placed the dumplings on top.
• Stew was served again with dumplings, and this time accompanied by cornbread with dried tomatoes, which Carrie re-hydrated  chopped and seasoned with smoke-flavored Tabasco.

There are many more where these came from.  Enjoy the books!  Enjoy the food!