New Year's Unresolutions

I have been seeing flashes across the Internet suggesting that making New Year's resolutions is passé. Apparently, it's akin to hanging a sign around your neck saying "geezer." For one thing, resolutions are considered clichés and it’s better just to take life as it comes.

One life guru recommended substituting personal mantras that are less vague and have more room for flexibility. Such as: "I choose happiness" and "Today is going to be a great day." My favorite is "I will be healthy" which just gives me the mental image of some smiling innocent being dead after he gets hit by a bus.

My personal choice this year is to make some unresolutions suggested by recent reads.

Gain weight. I learned in Rick Gualtieri’s Bill the Vampire series that it's mostly good-looking thin types who are chosen to be turned into the undead. Bill is a pudgy computer nerd who wears glasses and has no luck with women at all, but he is ever hopeful when the best-looking girl he has ever seen comes on to him. Little does he know what is in store for him. But funnily enough, it is the girl (a vampire by the way) and her crew who have a shock coming. This book is hilarious and leads the way to several other vampire Bill adventures.

Don't volunteer to help others. Sookie Stackhouse, in Charlaine Harris's Dead Ever After, has made it a habit to help other people––and just consider what's been going on in her life. After everything she has done to help Eric Northman and crew, they turn a cold shoulder on her. When she is accused of a shocking murder, she finds that a girl's best friend is a dog.

Start smoking and drinking. The only way to ratchet down the building tension in Michael Gruber's Tropic of Night is to have something to do with your hands. Jimmy Paz is a Cuban-American with a gruesome murder case on his hands. A young pregnant woman has been murdered, and unspeakable things have been done to the baby. Jane Doe is an anthropologist living in the shadows under an assumed name, but she knows the real motive behind the killing. It is related to African magic and many more drastic deaths are to come. I found the book exciting and complex, with dollops of mumbo-jumbo.

Stay home instead of taking an interesting trip. In Mapuche, by Caryl Férey, there is a view of the Argentina of the present, which has flashes of all the atrocities that have gone on since the 1950s. One critic found the book riveting, horrifying and more. My view was that it showed the worst of human nature, and some of the good things, but not enough to ever compel me to visit the area. The Mapuche were indigenous to the southern South American continent. Many Argentines and Chileans have Mapuche ancestry and this was what initially drew me to the story.

Get to work late. In The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett, it seems that if Amy Gallup had just elected not to show up to teach a writing class at her local community college, her life would have been much better. Gallup was published once at 22, with critical praise, but never again.

Now her former life is gone and she is a reclusive widow, with a daily mantra of Kill Me Now. This semester's class is full of the usual writer wannabes, but it also includes one sick puppy who could be any of the students. The problems start with prank phone calls, but end in murder. Amy is shaken out her doldrums, as she uses all her skills to unmask the villain.  

Don’t take vacation days. In A Grave Waiting, Jill Downie's Detective Inspector Ed Moretti is coming back from vacation with still a few days owed him, when he gets called back to work. This is the second outing for Moretti and his partner, Detective Sgt. Liz Falla. The location is the Channel Island of Guernsey, a place at one time believed to be back of beyond. Now a center of high finance and banking because of its favorable tax laws, Guernsey has left the days of greenhouses, flowers and produce behind.

Moretti and Falla are called to a luxury yacht to look into the murder of a wealthy man. Mr. Masterson was a financier, and there's more to his murder than meets the eye. One thing that is not clear is why Masterson decided to come to the island in the first place and, secondly, who of the many people who had motives to kill him did the deed. The detective duo makes an excellent partnership, and the plot of the story is engrossing.

Don’t make appointments with doctors who are going to tell you what you don't want to hear, most important considering Unresolutions #1 and #3. Max Tyger, a PI and part-time adjunct college professor in Darlington, Connecticut, went to the doctor because he had trouble choking on food and the diagnosis he got was hard to swallow––esophageal cancer, which required both chemotherapy and radiation.

In This One Day, by K. A. Delaney, Max is at this low point in his life that includes a lack of health insurance and the loss of his girlfriend Helen, which he attributes to a birth defect—his lousy personality. But Helen comes to him with the case of a high school boy who has disappeared. The art teacher at a prestigious private school wants to hire him to find the boy, even though his parents have not reported him missing.

Fighting fatigue, desperation and loss of dignity, Max takes the case primarily because he owes reparation to a boy from one of his college courses whom he could have helped if he had recognized there was a problem sooner. The loss of this boy haunts him. He wants to take the advice from another chemo partner to live just one day and try to do something good during the course of it.

Avoid having fun. Vish Puri, a most private investigator, solves The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, by Tarquin Hall. An Indian scientist, well known as a debunker who exposes fraudulent gurus, is somehow murdered by a manifestation of the goddess Kali when she plunges a sword into his chest. Puri is more clear-sighted than the other investigators, and he and his team of undercover operatives—Facecream, Tubelight, and Flush—will not stop until they know how the magic was performed.

Read books with cute punning titles. Since I usually avoid these books, I thought it would make a change for me and I do enjoy series, so Rosemary and Crime (Piper Prescott series, Book 1) by Gail Oust fit the bill. Piper Prescott, a recent divorcée estranged from her youngest daughter, is adding some spice to her life by opening her own business in a small town in Georgia. Spice it Up! as it is called, is prepared for its opening day until a star attraction, a chef with a maniacal temper, is murdered.

Since Piper is finding herself in the frame, she takes the investigation into her own hands. Naturally, the killer decides that Piper is in the way and opts to eliminate her as well. Even after a few near-death experiences that might have been avoided with the use of a cell phone near at hand, Piper continues to leave hers here and there, mostly uncharged as well. This unresolution may be stricken from my list.

Recipe for Murder

I'm supremely untalented in arts and crafts. I can't sew a straight line; in life drawing class, my version of a reclining human form looked like a displaced sea lion; my attempts to learn how to knit were so laughably futile I decided I'd have better luck using the knitting needles as chopsticks. My failures in this sphere are probably part of what caused my lack of interest in craftsy mysteries.

I'm not bad at cooking and baking, so I perk up more at mysteries that feature food. Not so much the ones with cute, culinary titles and lots of recipes in them, though. I prefer books that integrate a lot of good food in the characters' lives and make me want to dash out to a restaurant or into the kitchen to put the pots and pans to work.

Crèpes Suzette

Naturally, the French and Italians specialize in making the reader drool all over the page. Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret regularly eats traditional dishes, like fois gras with truffles, tripe á la Caen, coq au vin, onion soup and crèpes Suzette––and there's more where that came from when he's at home. Madame Maigret is characterized as a good, plain cook, but her meals sound delicious to me––and they attract Maigret home for lunch quite often. There is even a book of her dishes, collected by Robert J. Courtine and titled Madame Maigret's Recipes. The book is out of print, but can be located.

Marseilles café

Even in a gritty, noir series like Jean-Claude Izzo's Marseilles trilogy, protagonist Fabio Montale takes time out from investigations to enjoy the city's bars, music and, yes, food.  Of course, it has a more Mediterranean flair than your Parisian cooking, but that's not a bad thing; not with dishes like spaghetti with basil and garlic, baked anchovy purée, and fricassée with clams.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's not just amoré, it's a regular night in a book featuring Donna Leon's Inspector Brunetti, Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano or Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen. Maybe my favorite meal description is in Camilleri's The Smell of the Night, when Montalbano stops in at a tiny trattoria recommended to him. It doesn't look like much of a place to him, but he's ravenous and decides to give it a try. The proprietor tells him they have burning pirciati that evening if he feels up to it. Montalbano doesn't want to give the man the satisfaction of asking how the dish is prepared, and he certainly feels he's "up to it," whatever that means, so burning pirciati it is. When the dish arrives, it smells wonderful, and Montalbano immediately digs in––only to feel as if his mouth has burst into flames that are only barely subdued by his drowning them in an entire glass of wine.

Pirciati (not sure if it's burning, though!)

Montalbano decides he must know what is in the dish, and the proprietor tells him: "Olive oil, half an onion, two cloves of garlic, two salted anchovies, a teaspoon of fine capers, black olives, tomatoes, basil, half a pimento, salt, Pecorino cheese, and black pepper." Battling the sweat pouring down his forehead, Montalbano devours the whole dish and grabs bread to mop up the juices, "[p]unctuating his forkfuls with gulps of wine and alternating extreme agony and unbearable pleasure." He refuses a second course, and the now-respectful proprietor is understanding, since he comments that "[t]he problem with burning pirciati is that you don't get your taste buds back until the next day."

Braised wild turkey

Closer to home, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe is at least as famous a gourmand as he is a detective. He keeps a full-time chef, Fritz, at his brownstone, and with Fritz's cooking, there is no wonder the detective weighs, as his colleague Archie Goodwin tells us, one-seventh of a ton. You won't be surprised to learn that The Nero Wolfe Cookbook was published–––and, unlike Madame Maigret's Recipes, this book is still in print. Georgette Spelvin is devoted to Nero Wolfe (and even more to Archie), and I have challenged her to write about the objects of her devotion here. In hopes that she'll be more likely to comply, I won't say any more about Nero Wolfe, Archie or Fritz's cooking.

Steak frites

Regular readers of Read Me Deadly know how dedicated I am to Louise Penny's Armand Gamache/Three Pines series. If I could enter the world Penny creates, I'd head straight for Olivier's bistro in Three Pines. The croissants sound like they're of Parisian quality, but Olivier doesn't make them; he buys them from the bakery down the block. So, much as I love croissants, especially pain au chocolat, what I'd show up for would be Olivier's impressive sandwich creations and, most of all, the steak frites. Come to think of it, Martin Walker's Bruno Courrèges makes a pretty mean steak, too. What I know about steak is a little secret I learned from the folks at America's Test Kitchen. Here it is, from the May & June 2007 Cook's Illustrated magazine:

Pan-Seared Thick-Cut Strip Steaks (for four)

2 boneless strip steaks, 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 inches thick (about 1 pound each)
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 275 degrees. Pat steaks dry with paper towels. Cut each steak in half vertically to create four 8-ounce steaks. Season steaks liberally with salt and pepper. Using hands, gently shape the steaks into uniform thickness. Place steaks on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet; transfer baking sheet to oven. Cook until instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally into center of steaks registers 90-95 degrees for rare to medium-rare, 20-25 minutes; or 100-105 degrees for medium, 25-30 minutes.
2. Heat oil in 12-inch heavy-bottomed skillet over high heat until smoking. Place steaks in skillet and sear until well-browned and crusty, 1-1/2 to 2 minutes, lifting once halfway through to redistribute fat underneath each steak. Reduce heat if food begins to burn. Using tongs, turn steaks and cook until well-browned on the other side, 2 to 2-1/2 minutes. Transfer steaks to clean rack and reduce heat under pan to medium. Use tongs to stand two steaks on their sides. Holding steaks together, return to pan and hold them with the tongs so that you can sear all the edges until browned, about 1-1/2 minutes. Repeat with remaining 2 steaks.
3. Return steaks to wire rack and let rest, loosely tented with foil, for about 10 minutes. If desired, make a steak sauce in the now-empty skillet; e.g., red wine and mushroom pan sauce.

Delhi street food vendor

A couple of weeks ago, I listened to the audiobook of Tarquin Hall's The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken.  The protagonist of Hall's mystery series is Delhi private detective Vish Puri. When I tell you that his nickname is Chubby, you begin to understand that food is something Vish takes very, very seriously. As he zips around Delhi, he makes detours to all his favorite street vendors. In just this one short book, he eats at least a dozen meals that will have you looking up airfares to India, or at least plotting an immediate visit to the nearest good Indian restaurant. Half of these dishes I've never heard of, like poori, rajma chawal, papdi, channa batura and bedmi aloo, but that doesn't mean I wasn't ravenous for them.

Butter chicken over rice

What I didn't know about the book is that in its printed form, it includes some recipes at the end. On audio, you don't even get a hint of that. While I was reading about Vish devouring butter chicken at a cricket banquet, all I could think about was how much I wanted some. I didn't care that it killed a guest at the banquet. I just remembered the butter chicken at Amber India in Mountain View, California. When I worked in Palo Alto, a group of us would go there for their lunch buffet every couple of weeks. It may have been a buffet, but I only had eyes for the butter chicken. I don't know what recipe Tarquin Hall put in his book, but here's the Amber India recipe that was printed in the San Francisco Chronicle some years ago:

Butter Chicken from Amber India

Main ingredients

3 pounds chicken (2 half-breasts, 2 thighs, 2 legs), skinned
Juice of one lemon
1 tablespoon hot red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 cups unflavored yogurt
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1-1/2 teaspoons garlic paste
1-1/2 teaspoons ginger paste
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon salt

Sauce ingredients

1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground red chile
Pinch garam masala
Pinch mace
Pinch nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
2 cups canned tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cups water, or more as needed
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons ground fenugreek
Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Make 3 parallel cuts on top of each piece of chicken. Place the chicken in a resealable bag.
2. Combine the lemon juice, red pepper flakes and salt; pour over the chicken. Seal the bag and refrigerate 30 minutes.
3. Combine the yogurt and cream in a bowl; blend well.
4. Mix together the garlic paste, ginger paste, coriander, cumin, garam masala and salt. Add to the yogurt mixture, blending thoroughly.
5. When the chicken has marinated for 30 minutes, remove it from the refrigerator, open the bag and pour in the yogurt mixture. Reseal the bag and refrigerate overnight.
6. Next day, to make the sauce, combine the ginger, ground red chile, garam masala, mace, nutmeg, white pepper and brown sugar in a small bowl.
7. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, the spice/sugar blend and water. Simmer, stirring frequently, for 20 minutes.
8. Add more water if the mixture gets too dry.
9. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
10. Remove the chicken from the marinade; discard the marinade.
11. Arrange the chicken pieces in a baking pan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Bake for 30 minutes.
12. Let the chicken cool until you can handle it; then remove the meat from the bones and discard the bones.
13. Add the chicken meat, the cream and fenugreek to the sauce. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Add salt to taste and serve over rice.

Serves four.  Nutrition information per serving: 325 calories (not including the rice), 28 grams protein, 8 grams carbohydrates, 20 grams fat (10 grams saturated fat), 1 gram fiber.

Swedish cream wafers

If you want to read mysteries that won't make you hungry, I would recommend most Nordic mysteries. The food usually sounds dreary at best, dreadful at worst. Sheep's head or fermented shark fin, anyone? If the food isn't frighteningly grotesque, it's just sad, like Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander and her regular diet of frozen pizzas. I always feel so sorry for the Nordic books' characters that I want to make them some Swedish cream wafers; simple cookies so good that I haven't made them in decades because I will eat the entire batch all by myself. I have no idea where I got this recipe. I just have my handwritten index card from at least 30 years ago.

Swedish Cream Wafers

Wafer ingredients

1 cup salted butter (at room temperature, so it's soft)
1/3 cup thick cream
2 cups sifted flour
Granulated sugar for coating the wafers

Filling ingredients

1/4 cup salted butter (at room temperature, so it's soft)
3/4 cup sifted confectioner's sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla (or lemon extract if you prefer)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the wafer ingredients and refrigerate the dough for at least an hour, until it is cold. Using one-third of the wafer dough at a time, keeping the rest cold, roll out the dough 1/8 of an inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut the dough with 1-1/2 inch round cookie cutter (flour the cutter so it doesn't stick), coat both sides of each wafer with granulated sugar, prick with a fork four times. 

Bake the wafers for 7-9 minutes, until a light golden. Do not brown. Let cool.

While the wafers are baking and cooling, mix the filling ingredients until the filling is smooth. Once the wafers are completely cooled, spread the flat side of a wafer with the filling and lightly press the flat side of another wafer against the filling to make a filled cookie. Repeat with the rest of the wafers and filling.

Would you like to tell us some of your recipes and the books that inspire you to make them?