The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

May 5, 2020May 5, 2020 ~ foodinbooks ~ 9 Comments

If you’re like me and you’re as drawn to a book’s title and cover as you are the contents of the book itself, then you’ll love this one. Grady Hendrix has a knack for writing about horror against the most banal, ordinary, American backgrounds. I think of him as the literary version of the Duffer Brothers in the sense that he, like they’ve done with Stranger Things, is able to take the best tropes of horror and not only turn them upside down but put them against a backdrop of ordinary, everyday life in a timeframe so familiar to us because most of us grew up then and can recognize the cultural and societal expectations of the time.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is both satire and horror and it balances perfectly between the two. Patricia is a housewife in the mid-90s living in Charleston, in a very exclusive neighborhood called Pierates Cruze. She’s the average Southern belle turned wife/mom/daughter-in-law. Her husband is a doctor and works all the time; her two kids are teenagers and are perfectly horrible; she caretakes for her elderly, senile mother-in-law and of course, she has her group of friends who are equally boring, wealthy and proper……except they really aren’t. Well, they never are, are they?

Their original book club fizzles out due to the sheer boringness of the books chosen by the first book club head, so Patricia, Kitty, Grace, Maryellen and Slick form their own book club in which they read true crime and horror and any manner of horrendous novels. So when James Harris moves in next door in all his scary, sexy glory and Patricia starts experiencing and seeing some very weird and frightening things, she is in the right mindset for horror. James claims to be the nephew of the awful old woman who suffers a psychotic episode and attacks Patricia, their house is overrun with vicious rats who – and this scene is not for the faint of heart (I skimmed it) – attack Patricia’s mother-in-law so viciously that she dies, and with this and some other gruesome goings-on, Patricia begins to strongly suspect the new neighbor is a vampire.

Though the horror is intense and quite gross at times, for me the true horror was how easily Patricia is made to feel like she is crazy, how she is ostracized within her own group of friends, how her husband subjugates her, and how easy it is for her to doubt herself and question her own sanity when she knows what she has seen and when she tries to get people to realize what is going on. That was more monstrous than any vampire – that absolute lack of self-worth, lack of self-esteem, lack of any true resources of one’s own. I kept wanting to shake her and smack her upside the head to get her to realize that she did not have to allow herself to be treated the way she was.

I like a good twist on a horror trope as much as the next girl, and Hendrix delivers. He is in that same modern group of horror novelists such as Paul Tremblay, Jason Arnopp and F.G. Cottam – and I have blogged all of them previously – who run with the horror tropes of vampires, ghosts, haunted houses, werewolves, demonic possession, home invasion and the occult – and give them new life by completely presenting them in unexpected ways. Hendrix kicks ass with this updated edition of Dracula. This vampire is meaner, grosser, way more visceral and so much more loathsome than the Count himself ever could be. This vampire still controls the mean creatures of the earth – bats, rats, bugs. This vampire is still dangerously sexy and able to entice its victims and he still needs to be invited over the threshold to enter a home……all little grace notes that I appreciated. But this vampire is the most vicious I’ve run across in modern literature and Hendrix is one hell of a visceral writer. Don’t read this while you’re eating……which I realize is ironic, considering the point of my blog. 🙂 Just don’t. Trust me on this.

And of course, being set in the South, there is food. Lots of food, and exactly the type of food you’d expect from upper-class, wealthy Southern housewives – Boston cream pie, peach pie, any variety of casseroles, a crab boil, a massive amount of cocktails, Swedish meatballs, and of course, the inevitable party finger food consisting of crudités, ham biscuits, pimiento cheese sandwiches and my favorite, cheese straws. You can’t have a party in the Deep South and not have cheese straws. You’d get thrown out of Tara like Scarlett O’Hara, my dear!

The party spilled from the living room into the dining room, where it swirled in a circle around a table overflowing with miniature ham biscuits, cheese straws, pimento cheese sandwiches, and a tray of crudités that would be thrown out untouched tomorrow morning…….

This is the method for Southern-style cheese straws I used, based on the recipe by the late, great Edna Lewis, who is one of the great African-American chefs of the last 100 years and whose classic cookbook Taste of Country Cooking is one of my favorites.

INGREDIENTS
1 and 2/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or more to taste
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into pieces
2 and 1/2 cups extra-sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely grated
2 tablespoons water

METHOD
Sift the flour, mustard, salt and cayenne into a medium bowl.

Using your most awesome red Kitchen Aid with the paddle attachment, beat together the cheese and butter on low until well blended.

Gradually mix in the flour mixture until completely incorporated, then add the water and beat for another few minutes until the dough comes together.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times, then roll it out into a rough rectangle on a parchment sheet-covered baking tray, and chill about half an hour.

Heat the oven to 425F, and trim the dough edges, cut in half, then again into strips roughly 6 inches by 1/4″, but don’t get out the ruler. Just long, skinny strips will work.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until they’re golden-brown, crisp, and you can smell the cheese. Let cool and enjoy with soup, salad, or as a snack with your evening cocktail. Any Southern belle would surely approve!

Food in Films – My Big Fat Greek Wedding

March 24, 2020 ~ foodinbooks ~ 30 Comments

I haven’t felt much like posting over the past few weeks. The ongoing coronavirus situation continues to scare me, even though I am doing all the recommended things the CDC has instructed: social distancing, frequently washing my hands, covering my cough, cleaning and disinfecting frequently-used items and surfaces, checking on elderly neighbors, and trying not to panic but instead be prepared. I have limited my reading of the news to the simple facts of new cases, what to expect from our Governor in terms of closures and service limitations, and I am cooking like a madwoman to feed my elderly neighbor who is blind, my grandmother who is 95 and in fragile health, and other family members who are also self-quarantined…..and to keep myself calm. I am also watching quite a lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and in fact, last night decided to rewatch a film I hadn’t seen in years and didn’t find terribly funny at the time – My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Well, hell. It’s hilarious! I don’t know what was wrong with me when I first saw it but on second viewing I literally snarfed wine as I watched the shenanigans of her loud, obnoxious, and loving Greek family. If you haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is this: Toula Portokalos is a frumpy, 30-year old woman living at home with her very traditional Greek family. Her father, Gus, is uber-proud of their Greek heritage, having their house painted in the blue-and-white colors of the Greek flag. He and his wife Maria own the Greek restaurant Dancing Zorba’s, where Toula works as a waitress. One day, she sees Ian Miller and falls for him, though she is so socially awkward that her attempts to talk to him fall somewhat flat. She soon starts to stretch her wings by taking computer classes, which in turn help her confidence to the point where she gets a haircut and a makeover, buys new clothes, and convinces her father to have her work at her Aunt Voula’s travel agency. She meets Ian again, they fall in love and he proposes. But…….no one in her Greek family has ever married a non-Greek, so bringing this outsider into the family has some complications.

The fact that Gus goes around with a bottle of Windex claiming it as a cure-all for any and all health issues took me back to my great-grandfather Reymundo who fixed anything and everything with duct tape and baling wire, and my great-grandmother Antonia who sprinkled holy water on everything as her own cure-all. The scene where Toula’s brother and cousins keep teaching Ian inappropriate phrases in Greek knowing he doesn’t understand brought back memories of my own male cousins totally messing with one of my female cousins’s future husband. Aunt Voula’s horror at finding out Ian is a vegetarian brought back memories of me introducing a college friend (and vegan) to my grandmother and her offering him beans and chile – that were cooked with pork. 🙂

I suppose part of the humor of this film is the familiarity. So many of us come from large, loud, “ethnic” (for lack of a better way to put it) families that are like this. My own paternal side of the family lived in what we call the “compound,” with three family houses next to one another on the same three family-owned acres and as kids, we’d run between all three, visiting our great-grandparents, our aunt and uncle and then back to our grandparent’s house. The familiarity of how the Portokalos family is portrayed was as comforting as it was funny, which is what we all need in this very nerve-wracking time. Comfort and humor go a long way toward calming and settling the soul.

Possibly the funniest moment in a movie filled with laugh-out-loud moments is when Ian’s very reserved, Caucasian parents come to meet Toula’s parents – and the rest of their enormous Greek family – after the engagement, and Ian’s mother brings a Bundt cake. Maria and Gus have never seen a Bundt cake before, and the ensuing language culture clash is beyond funny!

So of course I had to make a Bun-Bo-Bunk-Bonk-Bundt cake! I have my grandmother’s Bundt cake pan that she used to make all of our birthday cakes every year, and my favorite being her traditional rum cake with pecans and a sugar glaze, I decided to recreate that. DISCLAIMER: I am not one to EVER use a cake mix from a box, but in the spirit of tradition and comfort, I followed my Nana Jean’s recipe to the letter and it involved a yellow cake mix. (sigh) Don’t judge me.

INGREDIENTS
1 box of yellow cake mix
1 packet vanilla instant pudding mix
4 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1 cup golden rum
1 generous cup chopped pecans

For the sugar glaze:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup golden rum

METHOD
Heat the oven to 325F and spray your Bundt cake pan with baking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the cake mix, the pudding mix, the eggs, the oil, the rum, and the nuts.

Pour into the Bundt pan and bake for an hour.

Let the cake cool while you make the glaze. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add in the water and sugar, stirring constantly. Don’t leave it as the sugar burns very easily. Boil for about 5 minutes, stirring all the while, until it thickens, then add the rum.

Drizzle over the Bundt cake.

If you so happen to have one, garnish with a lovely potful of flowers! Just like Mama Maria!

Food in Films – Coco

November 4, 2019November 5, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 37 Comments

El Dia de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead in English – is a Mexican holiday that celebrates the spirits of our beloved dead. It is far more complex than that, but who among us can’t relate to having lost a loved one, missing them, and wanting to honor their spirits? I know I do. Having lost both my parents, most of my beloved grandparents including my Nana Jean who raised me and who I loved more than any human on this earth, my first love just a few months back, as well as my sweet pug baby Sparky, I can well understand and relate to the themes in the film Coco.

Death is part of life. That is an unarguable fact. How death itself is seen, however, and how it is conceptualized, is as varied as the cultures across the world. The concept of El Dia de los Muertos as we understand it currently comes predominantly from Mexico, and has its roots in ancient sun worship by the Aztecs as well as Catholic rituals brought from Spain by the conquistadores, as evidenced by the fact that El Dia de los Muertos is celebrated on All Saints and All Souls Days on the Catholic calendar. Obviously, this is a very simplified version of the meaning of the day, but I could write 50 blog posts about the meaning of death and the cultural concept and constructs of El Dia de los Muertos, and that isn’t happening. Anyway, the overall idea is to honor the dead by celebrating them with food, drink, music, and parties, since death is considered only another part of life and on this day, the dead come back to celebrate with us.

Coco embodies this concept so beautifully. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that me, a grown woman, had a major ugly cry at the end of this film, so closely did it hit me in the heart, both when Mama Coco remembers and engages with the world again, and when her spirit is reunited with her father. I loved my grandmother, Nana Jean, so very much and losing her was like losing a limb. I think when you lose someone you love so much that a part of your heart dies along with them. In this case, she was my rock, my security, my mother in every possible way, my source of advice, my teacher, my mentor. So the idea of a grandmother, locked in her own senility and her own memories of loss, and the wonderful journey of Miguel, the main character, who wants to become a musician very badly, really hit home. He is forbidden to pursue his music due to his great-great grandfather (a musician as well) having supposedly abandoned his family when young and turning the family against music.

Miguel lives with his shoemaker family, including his elderly great-grandmother Mama Coco, who has lost most of her memory and sits in a wheelchair. On El Dia de los Muertos, the family makes an altar with photos of their beloved dead relatives, marigold wreaths, food and drink that the dead loved, candles, and many other items. (This is actually my permanent altar that I keep year-round so it gives you an idea of what they can look like.)

Miguel accidentally takes a photo of his great-great grandmother and tears it, seeing a torn-off part of the photo that leads him into his next great adventure. He needs a guitar for a music competition so he heads over to the enormous crypt of Ernesto de la Cruz, Mexico’s most famous musician, and whom Miguel believes to be his long-lost dead great-great grandfather, where he takes Ernesto’s iconic guitar and subsequently enters the Land of the Dead. Being that it is right around El Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, November 1, the dead are allowed to visit for the day and see the altars and ofrendas their families make for them. He meets up with Hector, another long-dead musician who offers to show him around the Land of the Dead, and they get into many hilarious scrapes and funny adventures. Of course, if you have any kind of brain at all, you figure out pretty quickly that Hector is really Miguel’s great-great grandfather.

The most touching part of the film is when Miguel returns from the Land of the Dead with the song that Mama Coco learned from her father and is the only thing she really still remembers. She and Miguel sing it and her memory returns. It is so incredibly beautiful. The entire film is visually stunning, in addition to tugging at your heartstrings, and I particularly loved how respectful of the Mexican culture it really is. In this time of such ugliness and hatred toward those of Mexican background and ethnicity, the joy and beauty and love demonstrated in this film gives me hope.

Pan de los muertos – bread of the dead – is a dense, orange-flavored cake made each year and set on altars in honor of the dead, who are believed to come back just that one day to visit their families, enjoy offerings made in their honor, and enjoy food and drink of the living for one night. Traditionally it is made in the shape of a skull and crossbones, though I’ve seen in made in the shape of coffins, graveyards, crosses and skeletons, and I think nowadays you could make your pan de los muertos in any shape you desire. I made mine in a skull-shaped cake pan and used it as part of my altar I have every year with photos of my Nana, my parents, and others I have loved and lost.

INGREDIENTS
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup full-fat milk, room temperature
1/2 cup lukewarm water
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 packages active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons anise extract (you can use anise seeds but I hate them because they get stuck in my teeth)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons orange extract
1/2 cup sugar
Zest of 3 clementines
4 eggs, room temperature

For the orange glaze:
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups grated clementine zest
1/2 cup orange juice

METHOD
Over medium heat, warm the butter, milk and water until the butter melts. Don’t let it burn.

In the mixing bowl of your most awesome red Kitchen Aid mixer, combine 1/2 cup of the flour, the yeast, the salt, and the sugar.

Slowly beat in the warm milk, the orange, vanilla and anise extracts, and orange zest until well mixed.

Add eggs, one at a time, mixing through.

Slowly add in another 1 cup of flour, and continue adding flour until you have a soft, but not sticky dough, then turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead for at least 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Add a bit of warm water if the dough seems dry. Form the dough into a ball.

Wrap in plastic, cover with a tea towel, and leave to rise in a warm area until it doubles in size, probably around 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350F, unwrap the dough and push it into your skull pan, pressing so that it fills in all the nooks and crannies. Bake for 30 minutes and remove from oven to cool.

In another saucepan over medium heat, combine the rest of the sugar, the orange zest and the orange juice until it just boils and the sugar dissolves. Whisk to stir but don’t leave because the sugar burns easily. Remove from heat so it thickens.

Turn the bread out onto a platter that shows off the skull shape, and brush the orange glaze all over it so it’s glossy and shiny. Decorate with marigolds if you so desire.

Lay on your altar and eat a slice while remembering those you love who have passed on, knowing that they, too, will be enjoying the sweet bread while they are here visiting.

The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs

October 21, 2019October 21, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 6 Comments

I thought it would be fun to blog about books I loved as a kid that also scared the crap out of me. I clean out books on a fairly regular basis because I buy so many of them, and I donate many to Little Free Libraries around my city. So while cleaning out my books the other day, I came across a stack of children’s and young adult books I’d kept for years and had some pleasant nostalgia when I saw The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs. It features the character Johnny Dixon, a young boy who lives with his grandparents in Duston Heights, Massachusetts, in the 1950s. He’s a bookworm, kind of nerdy, loves to read and loves radio drama, and loves chocolate. Well, we can all relate to that!

Johnny is befriended by Professor Roderick Childermass, who is a hilarious character. He reenacts famous sea battles with plastic ships in his bathroom, is a professor of history who is extremely opinionated, plays chess like a wizard, and makes a mean chocolate cake. Naturally, he and Johnny become pals, which is fortunate because when Johnny discovers a mysterious book and a blue figurine in the cellar of his church that once belonged to the evil priest Father Remigius Baart, the curse comes back to haunt Johnny. A blue ushabti figurine – ushabti are small figures found in ancient Egyptian tombs with mummies usually representing servants expected to do certain agricultural labors required of the deceased in the land of the dead – contains the actual curse and when Johnny takes both the book and the figurine, all hell breaks loose.

Ancient-Egyptian-arts-the-Shabtis-and-boxes-of-Tutankhamun — An example of ushabti figurines.

My edition also features the unique artwork of Edward Gorey, who I absolutely adore! Anyway, this book was a wonderful nostalgic trip down memory lane for me, taking me back to the days when I would sneak books under the covers and read by flashlight after my mom and stepdad had gone to bed and I was supposed to be asleep. I think I always particularly loved the friendship between Johnny and Professor Childermass, because I always was in search of an adult who would treat me as a peer and not a a kid, and these two definitely bond as friends over chess and chocolate. This is one of my favorite passages:

Johnny excused himself and went across the street. He had a great time that evening. The professor was a crafty and merciless chess player. He was every bit as good as Johnny was, and maybe even a bit better. As for the cake….well, Johnny had theories about chocolate cake. He felt that the cake part of the cake was just an interruption between the layers of frosting. As it turned out, the professor’s opinions about cake were similar to Johnny’s. The cake he served had three or four thin layers and the rest was a huge amount of good, dark, thick, fudgy frosting. And he served second helpings, too.

In honor my sister’s birthday, I tried my hand at a four-tier, old-fashioned chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, with focus on the ganache frosting. I decorated it for Halloween, in honor of this high holy season of horror!

INGREDIENTS FOR THE GANACHE FROSTING
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups dark chocolate chips, 70% cocoa solids
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Amaretto

METHOD
Make your cake tiers with whatever chocolate cake recipe you have to hand. Make sure they are completely cool before frosting them.

In a metal saucepan, heat the heavy cream until small bubbles just start to form around the sides and you see steam rising. Don’t overheat the cream or it will curdle. Turn off the heat immediately.

Pour in the chocolate chips and make sure they are covered by the hot cream. Add the almond extract, the vanilla extract and the Amaretto. Cover and let sit for 15 minutes.

Remove the lid, and whisk the mixture for 5 minutes. You’ll see the chocolate ganache start to amalgamate as you continue to stir, thickening into a luscious frosting.

One layer at a time, frost the top of each cake layer and stack them on a cake stand, until you have this magnificent layer cake. Proceed to frost the cake top and sides.

Decorate however you want. I tried to find little blue mummies but could not, so I just went full on Halloween instead. The result? Cute, kitschy, and ultimately delicious!

Just look at those fudgy layers! Johnny Dixon would be proud!

Rio Grande Fall by Rudolfo Anaya

October 7, 2019October 7, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 14 Comments

If you’ve been following my blog since it started, you’ll know of my deep and abiding love for the literary works of Rudolfo Anaya. A native of my home state of New Mexico, he was one of the first writers to gain national and worldwide attention for his books set here in the Land of Enchantment. His writings embody the experience of growing up Hispanic in New Mexico, growing up in a small town with not very much money, growing up in a world that is rapidly changing from agricultural to industrial, growing up in a world that straddles both the corporeal and the spiritual.

Rio Grande Fall walks this line between the material world and that of the spirits that surround us here in our beautiful, dysfunctional but always magical state of New Mexico. The second in a series of four books by Anaya titled on the seasons of the year and all following the story of Elfego “Sonny” Baca, a private investigator with quite the track record of cracking cases and hooking up with women, this book continues the story from the first book Zia Summer, in which Sonny is tracking a cult leader and murderer called Raven, who is what we call a brujo here – a witch working dark magic.

The charm of these books is that they exemplify life in New Mexico as told from the point of view of a native resident, not a transplant, and that’s why I can relate so much to the books of Anaya. He doesn’t promote the same tired literary tropes about the Southwest that so many non-native writers do. I love our Native American culture but my God, it’s been done to death in books and TV and movies. I like the focus on the other people who make up the beautiful and varied tapestry that is the people of our state – this Hispanics who are descended from Spanish soldiers and indigenous women of Mexico whose whose unique history, genetics, religion and culture have made us the hard-working, fun-loving, resilient, difficult and amazing raza we are today.

Sonny Baca lives in the North Valley in Albuquerque, in the shadow of massive cottonwood trees, in proximity to his beloved elderly neighbor Don Eliseo and Don Eliseo’s friends Don Toto and Doña Concha. For those of you not familiar with New Mexico culture, the title of “Don” or “Doña” is honorary, given to an elder whose knowledge, influence and connections made he or she a powerful member of the community. Similar to how Vito Corleone was referred to as “Don Corleone” in the Godfather books and movies, so here you have that same concept.

Don Eliseo is a powerful influence in Sonny’s life, representing the light side of his soul as Raven represents the dark, negative energy that is also part of Sonny’s makeup. And Sonny’s connection with his elderly neighbors also emphasizes the respect, love and honor the majority of New Mexico Hispanics hold for their senior citizens. They are the ones with our history, our story, and our souls and when they are gone, a major piece of our cultural identity goes with them.

This scene is classic New Mexico in the autumn, when people are roasting green chile outside, drinking beer or wine, and essentially turning it into a party.

Don Eliseo and his two friends were busy in the front yard when Sonny drove up. He and Doña Concha and Don Toto were roasting a basketful of green chile that Don Eliseo grew in his field by the house. Don Eliseo slowly and methodically placed the shapely green peppers on the grill, turned each one with care, and when the thin skin was brown and roasted, he picked up the chile and tossed it in a pan. Don Toto’s job was to make sure the just-roasted chiles were kept covered with a wet towel and steaming, thus making the skin easier to peel off. He also kept the wineglasses full of his own vintage, a North Valley wine that came from vines his family had cultivated since the seventeenth century.

Fall is chile season here in New Mexico, and the smell of it roasting at farmers markets, growers markets and grocery stores is an integral part of the changing of the season. In fact, October is also when the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta takes place, so oftentimes you’ll be out walking or opening your door to greet the morning, and be hit with a gorgeous scent of roasting green chile while watching hot-air balloons float serenely overhead against a backdrop of the stunningly blue New Mexico sky……..and you will know that autumn has arrived. Green chile is marvelously versatile, and I thought I’d make a classic fall dish of chicken pot pie and add that spicy twist of roasted green chile and other traditional fall vegetables, in homage to Sonny Baca and Don Eliseo, who would surely approve.

INGREDIENTS
Two good-quality, store-bought pie crusts (you can make your own but why give yourself more work?)
5 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter
1 green zucchini, cubed
1 red bell pepper, deseeded and cubed
1 can corn, drained and rinsed
2 generous tablespoons dried garlic powder
5 New Mexico green chile peppers, preferably Big Jim
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup full-fat milk
1/2 cup chicken broth
Salt and pepper to taste

METHOD
Heat the oven to 425F, and poach the chicken thighs in water or store-bought chicken broth, then cool and shred. Set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the oil and butter, sprinkle over the garlic powder, and saute the squash and bell pepper about 10 minutes.

Add the corn and stir until warm, then pour into the bowl with the shredded chicken and mix well. Set aside and save the oil in the skillet.

If you have a gas stove, turn on the two front hobs and lay two chiles on top of each. The idea is to roast and blister them on each side, turning frequently until the entire chile is blackened and roasted. Use tongs so you don’t burn your fingers. NOTE: this is a very old-school method of roasting green chile. Most people do it in the oven under the broiler, on an outdoor grill, or in a toaster oven, but I like to live dangerously and do it the way my grandfather taught me – stovetop!

Turn the chiles as you roast them, so that each side gets blackened and that spicy smell wafts out at you. Put into a large plastic bag, seal it and cover with a tea towel. The idea here is that the skins will steam off. Leave for up to 20 minutes.

Remove the chile from the plastic bag, slide off the skins, then cut off the stems and remove as many seeds as possible.

Chop up the roasted chile, season with salt and garlic powder, and mix with the chicken and vegetables. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed.

Heat some butter in the same skillet you used for the vegetables, and when melted, add the flour and stir until it melts into the butter and browns a bit. Gradually add the milk and keep whisking, to form a roux. Simmer over medium heat until it thickens.

Lay out one of the pie crusts and add in the chicken-vegetable-chile mixture, then pour over the hot roux.

Cover with the other pie crust, crimping the edges to sea, and cutting some slits in the top for steam to escape.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the pie crust gets golden brown and you can smell all those wonderful savory scents. Allow to cool 10-15 minutes before cutting into it and enjoying your slice of New Mexico heaven on a plate!

Food in Films – Amélie

August 24, 2019August 29, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 25 Comments

I decided to do a little something different for this blog post. Many people have suggested different recipes or dishes to me that they saw in a film version of a movie, and I loved the idea but wanted to stick with my original concept of creating food either directly mentioned in a book or inspired by a book. However, my dear friend Jade gave me some delicious fresh plums from her tree, and I happened to reorganize my DVD collection over the weekend and came across one of my most favorite films of all time, Amélie. Or as it is titled in French, “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain.”

I love love love this movie beyond most any other film I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot because I love films as much as I love books. Set in the beautiful Montmartre area of Paris, Amelie is a lovely young lady who has lived very much in her own little world since childhood, a world that started out with teddy bear-shaped clouds, imaginary friends, and that childhood egomania where you believe that your actions affect things like world wars, sports outcomes, natural disasters, etc. This strange world was created as a result of being raised as an only child by two very neurotic parents, and this has essentially made her, even as an adult, stay enclosed and cocooned in this magical, if lonely, life she’s invented for herself.

A chance discovery of a child’s treasure hidden for years in her apartment that she is successfully able to return to its owner causes a chain reaction of events, both in the lives of those around her as well as herself. She starts doing small deeds of goodwill for other people but in some amazingly unusual ways, like taking a blind man through a visual tour of Montmartre, romantically connecting two regulars at the cafe where she is a waitress, putting together “fake” posthumous letters for the grieving widow whose husband abandoned her, taking her father’s garden gnome and having him send photos of himself traveling the world to inspire her widowed father to get out and experience the world, and my personal favorite, befriending her unusual neighbor who cannot leave his apartment due to a very odd medical condition that makes his bones so frail that the slightest bump will injure him.

Amelie is a very personal film for me, because I can so much relate to her character. I live very much in my own mind most of the time, and it can be hard to connect romantically, perhaps because I’ve been so hurt. I know we all have been hurt by love, and other people seem to have such an easy time reconnecting after relationship break-ups. Sometimes I feel like a freak because I’ve had such a hard time. It would be wonderful to meet someone and connect with them, but at the same time, I don’t want to be with someone just to be with someone. I want a special connection with someone, and if that’s not meant to be, that’s ok, but I also don’t want to settle for someone I don’t truly have special feelings for. As my Nana Jean used to say in Spanish “mejor sola que mala acompañada.” Better alone than in bad company.

I think Amélie is somewhat the same. She is such an unusual and unique creature that she needs to find someone as unusual and unique as she is. When she meets Nino Quicampoix……well, “meets” is maybe not the word for it. She sees him collecting torn-up photos from underneath photo booths in metro centers and finds this so oddly charming that she immediately concocts an entire story for his life and why he collects the photos. When she finds his scrapbook of all these photos put back together, she goes on a quest to find him and return it to him, wanting to meet him but at the same time so frightened to meet him in person and engage with him in real life that she creates these elaborate intersections where their paths cross but they never really connect due to her fear of him not liking her as she is. I can relate to that so very much that it’s almost frightening.

So there were two food’n’flix moments I thought of recreating. The first is early in the film when the narrator is talking about Amelie’s love of small pleasures, such as dipping her hand into a barrel of dried beans, finding shapes in clouds, and breaking a crème brûlée with a spoon (and which is a very underrated pleasure!) The other is at the end, when Nino comes to find her baking a plum cake in her apartment and imagining their life together. It’s such a sweetly beautiful moment when she finally lets him in and he kisses her, after all of her own self-doubts and fear of connection to another person. I opted to go with the plum cake due to having been given a large bag of them fresh from my friend Jade’s tree, and the fact that I don’t have a torch to make the requisite crust on a crème brûlée….and who the hell makes a crème brûlée without a crust you can break with a spoon? Not this girl! So a luscious plum cake, spiced with crushed cardamom and made tenderly delicious with some vanilla Greek yogurt was what it had to be.

INGREDIENTS
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon crushed cardamom pods mixed into 1 cup vanilla Greek yogurt
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound plums, pitted and quartered

METHOD
Heat the oven to 375F and mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a bowl.

In the bowl of your most awesome red Kitchen Aid mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy.

Add the egg and vanilla and mix on low.

Gradually add in the flour mixture, mixing slowly, and alternate with a spoonful of the cardamom-spiked vanilla yogurt until all is smooth and combined. The batter will be thick, and that is what you want.

Butter a 9-inch springform baking pan and pour in the thick batter, smoothing with a spatula.

Arrange the sliced plums on top, skin-side up, in a circle so that they cover most of the batter, and sprinkle over the remaining two tablespoons of sugar.

Bake for 60 minutes, checking at the 45 minute mark, or until golden brown on top. Make sure the center has set and completely baked, then let cool, and serve with a dollop of whipped cream and a smidgen of whimsical romance. Vive la France!

Lisette’s List by Susan Vreeland

August 12, 2019August 12, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 25 Comments

I went into this book expecting a nice, escapist type of read as I recovered from minor outpatient surgery this past weekend. It was recommended by two friends of mine as a book filled with art and food and set in France, and both of them were sure I’d love it. I minored in Art History and of course, I am a foodie par excellence and love travel, so I gave it a whirl. When you’re recuperating from any medical procedure, minor or major, you don’t really want anything too heavy or deep.

(sigh) That being said, Lisette’s List was boring. I’m sorry, I hate to slam on books and writers because God knows, I am not an author. The author of this book, Susan Vreeland, had previously written a wonderful novel called Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which told the story of a Dutch painting and its owners starting in modern times and going back through when it was painted, in a series of interconnected short tales. It was beautifully written and moved along brilliantly. This book? Not so much.

The basic premise is a young woman, Lisette, who moves with her husband Andre, to a small town in Provence to help care for Andre’s ailing grandfather Pascal in the late 1930s. Pascal, before he dies, gradually teaches Lisette about painting and colors and life. Sounds nice, right? It’s not. Dull. Andre goes off to fight the Nazis and of course, dies. Before he went off to fight, he hid away some family paintings worth millions. The rest of book is the tale of Lisette moving away from Provence, following her “list” that she had put together with Pascal of all the things she wanted to do with her life, including finding those family paintings before the Nazis get their nasty little hands on them.

The book had a lot of promise, and the basic premise could have been done so much better. And of course, the lavish descriptions of rural French country towns, the art itself and the luscious food so typical of Provence and southern France were really the redeeming parts of the book. But the main character, Lisette, doesn’t ever really develop much as a character and in fact, makes some decisions which are downright annoyingly stupid. I mean, if you’re savvy enough to go off on your own throughout southern France in search of valuable family paintings, you’re surely smart enough to figure out who is your enemy. Anyhoo…..

Like I said, the food descriptions were wonderful and in some cases, mouth-watering. There were any number of food passages I could have reenacted, but this particular dish sounded both intriguing and perfect for the current late summer bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes that are on jewel-like, glowing display at every grower’s market. I was lucky enough to have purchased a large bag of organic heirlooms last week and decided to put them to delicious use.

Soon, Odette’s daughter, Sandrine, whose brother Michel, would come home someday, and Madame Pinatel, the mayor’s wife, came to pay their respects. Then Melanie brought two jars of canned cherries from their trees and a bag of raisins. Aloys Biron, the butcher, brought a large salami. Most unexpectedly, Madame Bonnelly, a stout woman with thick arms whom I had never met, brought a gratin d’aubergines, an eggplant-and-tomato pie garnished with breadcrumbs.

I have a love-hate relationship with eggplant, but the idea of a tomato pie sounded luscious, so I did a little culinary research and came up with this method which is a combination of Elise Bauer’s recipe from Simply Recipes and a long-remembered recipe from Southern Living I read about a few years ago.

INGREDIENTS:
1 and 1/4 cups unbleached flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes
4 tablespoons ice-cold water
1 pound heirloom tomatoes, preferably fresh and organic
4 cloves garlic
1 shallot
1 cup of mixed shredded cheeses. I used sharp cheddar, pepperjack and Gruyere
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 cup shaved Parmesan cheese

METHOD:
For the piecrust:

Combine the flour with a teaspoon of salt, and gradually mix in the butter one small cube at a time. Add the water a bit at a time until the dough comes together in your Kitchen Aid and forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and freeze overnight.

For the filling:

Slice the tomatoes, lie them out on some parchment paper, and sprinkle over salt and garlic powder. Leave to drain overnight.

Mix together all the cheeses except for the Parmesan, then mince the garlic and add it to the cheese mixture.

Add in the mayonnaise and the Greek yogurt and stir to mix well.

Finely mince the shallot.

Heat the oven to 350F and roll out your cold piecrust to roughly 12 inches diameter, then press into a pie pan.

Blind-bake the crust for 15 minutes, remove and prick the bottom of the crust a few times, and bake another 10 minutes. Sprinkle the shallots into the bottom.

Spoon over the cheese-mayo-yogurt mixture and spread across so that it cover the pie base and shallot-garlic mix.

Lay the tomatoes in overlapping circles over the cheese mixture, and sprinkle the Parmesan over the top.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the Parm is nicely golden brown. Apply to your face.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

July 1, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 15 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I have an incredibly developed sense of smell. Annoyingly so at times, because I can pick out the scent of body odor from 50 feet away. My sister always tells me I have the “nose from hell” and there are times when it feels like hell to be able to smell so intensely. However, the flip side is that I can also smell wonderful, heavenly scents from miles off, like someone brewing fresh coffee, the scent of someone baking a few streets away, the difference in wine bouquets (and if the wine has turned and become oxidized) and many other smells that make up daily life.

If you think about scent, it’s perhaps the most immediate and visceral when it comes to memory association. I smell certain scents, certain perfumes or colognes, and I am immediately transported to certain places in my past. Smell can be considered a type of defense mechanism when it comes to food because if we can’t visually determine if something is “off,” one good whiff of it can keep us from food poisoning. So can you imagine either not having any sense of smell, or in this case, having the most intense sense of smell ever?

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is the anti-hero of this book, born in a fishmonger’s market in Paris in the mid 1700s. (Can you get more French than that?) He is ordinary in every way other than the fact that he has no scent to him whatsoever but he has an abnormally developed sense of smell, so intense in fact that he is able to discern the individual scents of people as well as objects. He becomes a perfumer, working for various powerful people as he develops his own obsession in creating the ultimate scent.

The kicker? He must kill the people who emit the scents that he finds so enticing and irresistible. Of course, they mainly tend to be young virgins because their scent is so pure to him that he must have it. So begins his career as a murderer in tandem with creating perfumes to sell to the public. His scent obsession is creepily psychosexual as he deeply inhales every single part of the women he kills, including their genitalia.

Grenouille is so talented at creating scents that he is able to create the scent of anonymity, so that he is able to navigate the world around him, picking out the scents of virginal young women and murdering them to keep their scent, without being noticed. He is eventually so inconspicuous that people who normally wouldn’t give away their own breath have no problem giving him everything he needs or wants.

Once they caught a whiff of him, the market women filled his pockets with nuts and dried pears because he seemed to them so hungry and helpless. And the butcher’s wife, an implacably callous old hag if there ever was one, let him pick……

Of course, Grenouille gets his come-uppance in the end, after he’s arrested and purposely emits a scent he’s created that not only makes everyone adore him and have a major orgy in the streets outside his prison cell, but in the end, he is literally consumed by his scent. I won’t go into detail but it’s pretty intense and fairly visceral. This pear and walnut tart should provide a nice offset to his ultimate end.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1 cup toasted walnuts, divided
Pinch of sea salt
7 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1 and 1/4 cups flour plus two tablespoons
2 eggs, one separated out by yolk and white
2 tablespoons softened butter
1/4 cup brandy or orange liqueur
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 medium sized Bosc pears

METHOD
Mix half the sugar, half the toasted walnuts and salt in a food chopper and process until you have a flour-like texture.

In the bowl of your most awesome red Kitchen Aid and using the pastry hook attachment, add the flour, the sugar-walnut mixture, and mix together, gradually adding in one butter cube at a time until a rubbly dough forms.

Add in the yolks and mix again, scraping the sides as needed, until a ball of dough forms. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate until you’re ready to use it.

Heat the oven to 400F and press the dough into each mini tart pan. Mine are non-stick with removable bottoms, which makes life so much easier.

Line each tart crust with foil and add some lentils or beans or baking weights to each and blind-bake for 15 minutes, then let cool. (NOTE: Don’t forget to line with foil like I did, dummy that I am. I spent 15 minutes picking lentils out of the blind-baked crust. Yes, I’m a moron at times.)

Mix together the other half of the walnuts and sugar in the food chopper, until you have a coarse texture, then add in the butter, egg, flour, and salt and mix again until smooth.

Slice the pears lengthwise and put in a large bowl with the sugar, brandy and lemon juice for about 15-20 minutes, until the pears start to release their juice. Drain.

Spread the walnut filling into each tart pan.

Arrange sliced pears over the walnut filling in each pan so they overlap. As I’ve said before, I am the world’s worst cake decorator and we can include tarts in that category. But hey, at least you know mine are homemade, right?

Put a small sprig of rosemary on each tart, arrange the tarts on a baking sheet and bake until golden, around 30 minutes.

Once completely cool, push each tart out of the pan from the bottom and serve. The smell of toasted nuts and baked pears spiked with rosemary is out of this world, and likely would invoke the murderous instincts of Grenouille.

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

June 11, 2019June 11, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 30 Comments

No doubt many people saw the mediocre movie made from this book Corelli’s Mandolin, beautifully filmed but as usual, not nearly as compelling as the book, which is written in lively, colorful prose from the viewpoint of several unique characters. These unique individuals include the main female character Pellagia, a traditionally raised Greek daughter who dutifully cooks for her father and becomes engaged to the local stud but then flips convention on its head with her later choices; Dr. Iannis, her father, who has his head in the clouds, who cures wild animals as well as human beings and whose inner monologues kept me vastly amused and entertained; and of course, the titular character himself, Captain Antonio Corelli. It was a wonderful read, but also very depressing and sad…..kind of like life itself. Set on the gorgeous island of Cephallonia during World War II, the heartbreak of war is brought vividly to life in this place that has remained timeless until now. I suppose it goes to show that the horror of war leaves no place and no one untouched.

Being set in Greece, of course the food depictions are luscious, with descriptions of wonderful octopus, mezedakia, which are little finger-type foods served like appetizers, dolmades, spinach pies in miniature, and my favorite, the passage below, set during the feast of the local saint, St. Gerasimos.

“Outside, the pilgrims unloaded animals laden with feta, melons, cooked fowl, and Cephallonian meat pie, shared it with their neighbours and composed epigrammatic couplets at each other’s expense.”

How can you not love a book that uses the word “epigrammatic” in the same sentence as such a delectable food passage? Anyhoo, kreatopita is the traditional meat pie eaten on Cephallonia, and can contain ground beef, feta cheese, onions, oregano and assorted other ingredients such as potatoes, rice, garlic, or tomatoes. The idea, I gather, is that each Greek cook has their own individual version of this recipe, and that is what true home cooking is all about. Having the skills to cook something and add tweaks or twists that make it truly your own, and which is part of the joy of this blog for me. It’s the ultimate in creativity, and I did it again here with the Cephallonian meat pie, using a base recipe from the marvelous blog site Lemon and Olives, with some added tweaks of my own.

INGREDIENTS
16-20 sheets of phyllo dough, thawed and covered with damp towel
1 cup melted butter
1 lb. good-quality ground beef, preferably organic
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 red onion, finely chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely minced
Fresh oregano, fresh mint and fresh dill – use dried if fresh are not available but use less
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 cup of good, drinkable red wine.
1 cup of crumbled feta cheese
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 1/2 cups of frozen green peas

METHOD
Preheat the oven to 365F. In a skillet under a medium burner, add the olive oil and saute the onion and garlic for about 10 minutes, adding a bit of sea salt for flavoring and to keep the onion from burning. Add the ground beef to the onions and garlic in the pan, and brown for about 10-15 minutes, stirring to break up the meat.

Chop the equivalent of a 1/2 cup each of the fresh oregano, mint and dill. In another bowl, crumble up the feta cheese with your hands, and add the fresh herbs to this mixture. Fresh herbs really allow the flavors to come through, so if you use dried, use 1/2 tablespoon of each. Stir to mix and let the flavors mix together while you attend to the still-cooking meat.

Add the tomato paste and the wine and the beef and stir again. Lower the heat to medium low and let the red wine reduce, stirring occasionally. Add in the peas and stir again, so that the heat of the skillet will help them defrost. The scent of the meat, the wine, the peas and the herbs will rise up and hit your nasal passages like a dream. Delicious!

You want the liquid reduced to nothing, so as not to make the phyllo dough soggy, so once the liquid is all gone, remove the meat mixture from the heat and let it cool for about 10-15 minutes. Once cooled, add the crumbled feta and herb mixture, mix well, and leave while you prepare the phyllo dough pie base.

In whatever type of baking pan you have – I used a buttered disposable baking pan – lay one sheet of phyllo dough and brush it with melted butter. Lay another sheet of phyllo and brush with butter again. Continue in this vein until you have 8-10 sheets of phyllo layered on top of each other, each layer covered with butter. You need to do this fairly quickly, as the phyllo dough dries out easily. If you cover the dough sheets with a damp towel, this should help, but don’t take too long at this stage.

On this buttery surface, add your meat-feta-pea mixture and spread everything out so that it evenly covers the dough. Add another sheet of phyllo dough on top of the meat mixture, brush with butter, and repeat until you have a topping of 8 more phyllo sheets to cover the meat.

Poke a few holes in the top of the dough and pop that bad boy into the oven to bake for 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. You’ll be able to smell everything baking and your mouth will probably water so much that you’ll need a swig of wine to help. Remove from the oven, let cool slightly and eat with joy in your heart! Opa!

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

May 20, 2019 ~ foodinbooks ~ 9 Comments

I ran across this weird and engaging book of short stories at a yard sale a few weekends back, and of course, the unusual title Vampires in the Lemon Grove caught my eye. Well, as a former Goth chick who loves all things dark, supernatural, creepy and eerie, anything with “vampire” in the title is likely going to be something I immediately want to investigate.

A book of eight short stories featuring elements of the bizarre, weird and supernatural, but in very unexpected way, the title tale features a very unusual and supernatural (though not frighteningly so) story of a marriage between two ancient vampires, Clyde and Magreb, who have found themselves living their rather mundane marital life in a lemon grove in Sorrento, Italy, where Clyde sits on a bench, watches the tourists go by and ogles the Bay of Naples, befriends a strange Goth chick and ponders the life he and Magreb have led to this point.

In many ways, the supernatural element of their being vampires is secondary, as their marriage mirrors any in modern times, questioning if that person still loves you after so many years together, the nature of love vs. companionship, and finding new and unique things – in this case, different drinks to slake their thirst – as a sort of parallel to their marriage in which they seek the new and the unusual to keep them engaged and entertained even as they alternately turn away from, and back towards, each other.

You see, these two blood-drinking vampires have globe-trotted and traversed the continent, sucking the juice straight from the apple, sipping mint tea, cherry Coke floats, jacka’s milk, and in Clyde’s words, a thousand beverages that claim to have magical, thirst-quenching properties, in an effort to sate their never-ending lust for drinking blood. Oddly enough, when they find themselves drinking a pitcher of tart lemonade in the grove of Santa Francesca in Sorrento, once a Jesuit stronghold and now a touristy, overpriced lemon grove, they decide that lemons will be their tipple of choice going forward. So they proceed to settle in Sorrento and suck dry a good half-dozen lemons each per day.

Honestly though, I only read the eponymous first story and the meandering prose lost me after awhile. I enjoyed reading about the vampiric evolution of a marriage and the luscious lemon groves of Amalfi but Russell, though a beautiful handler of the English language, really doesn’t know how to end a story and Vampires in the Lemon Grove ended on a very annoying and vague note of……what? Are they now bats? Will they fly away? Will Clyde now become the spirit of the young Goth girl? WTH, I asked myself?

The saving grace is Russell’s ability to bring the description of those magical lemon groves along the Amalfi Coast vividly to life. It’s nearly enough to make you wish you were there, lying in that blazing coastal heat, watching the impossible blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Naples, a glass of wine in one hand and the other hand trailing in the salty water and the heady scent of those uniquely tart-sweet lemons. I considered making some type of lemon cocktail designed to be gently sucked from a straw in homage of these two odd vampires, but instead decided on a dessert, and gave Meyer lemon pie a whirl. Meyer lemons are as close to a true Amalfi lemon as you can get without actually hopping flight to Sorrento, and since this is the season for Meyer lemons, it seemed like the perfect marriage……..and no vampires to be found.

INGREDIENTS
1 all-butter pre-made frozen pie crust
4 Meyer lemons and 1 regular lemon
2 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 tablespoon orange extract
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
Zest of 1 Meyer lemon
3 tablespoons fresh mint

METHOD
Heat the oven to 350F and blind-bake the frozen pie crust for 15 minutes. Set aside to cool, and using a reamer or juicer, begin to juice the lemons into a bowl. They are very seedy so try to extract the seeds first if possible.

In the mixing bowl of your most awesome red Kitchen Aid, add the three egg yolks and the vanilla.

Add the lemon juice, the condensed milk and the salt, and mix well on medium for up to five minutes, until a you get a thickened, slightly golden, creamy texture.

Pour the lemony mixture into the cooled pie crust and bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool for another 15 minutes, then refrigerate overnight.

Pour the heavy cream into the now-clean mixing bowl of your red Kitchen Aid using the whisk attachment, and mix for 7-8 minutes, until the cream forms thick peaks. Add the sugar,the lemon juice and the lemon zest and whip again.

Spread the lemony cream over the top of the chilled pie.

Garnish with freshly chopped mint, and dive right in. Don’t save any for those pesky, lemon-sucking vampires!

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