Topped Chef A Key West Food Critic Mystery (30 page)

1 cup water (optional)

1
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pounds fresh cod cut into 2-inch chunks

Add the crushed tomatoes to the Chunky Basil Sauce along with the onions, zucchini, olives, wine, and stock. Bring to a slow boil, then reduce heat and simmer until zucchini is soft. Add water to the desired thickness. At this point the soup can sit overnight (and the flavors usually improve) or longer, if chilled.

To serve:

Heat the soup to serving temperature and add the cod chunks. The cod will cook quickly so test every few minutes. When the cod is done, remove the chunks with a slotted spoon and place in the serving bowls. Ladle soup over the fish and top with a toasted baguette crouton.

Lime Cupcakes with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

Henri Stentzel made these for the wedding challenge portion of the reality TV competition. This was adapted from a Buttersweet Bakery recipe in
Bon Appetit
but Hayley tweaked it to be less sweet, with fewer ingredients, and no food coloring. They are so light and delicious and they freeze beautifully! (As I found out when I had the date wrong for a potluck party and arrived two weeks early….)

Cupcakes

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

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teaspoon salt

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teaspoon baking soda

1 stick butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2
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tablespoons fresh lime juice (2 to 3 limes, depending on size)
^*

1 tablespoon finely grated lime peel

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cup buttermilk

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line a cupcake or muffin pan with paper liners. Sift first four ingredients together in a medium bowl. In another large bowl, beat the butter with a mixer until smooth. Add sugar and beat well. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the lime juice and lime
peel. Add dry ingredients and buttermilk alternately to the butter/sugar/egg mixture in three stages. Divide the batter between twelve cupcake liners. Bake 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took 22 minutes—check with a toothpick to see if they are done. And don’t overcook or they will come out dry!) Cool ten minutes and then remove from the pan and cool completely.

Icing

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened

1 stick butter, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon finely grated lime peel (zest of about 2 limes, depending on size)

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teaspoon vanilla

Beat all the ingredients together until soft. Then frost the cupcakes—this is a very generous helping of rich icing. If you like less frosting, you can reduce the amount of cream cheese and butter, or freeze the excess for another use. Refrigerate the frosted cupcakes if not serving immediately, but then serve at room temperature.

Lucy Burdette’s Go-Anywhere Granola

Ingredients

4 cups rolled oats

1 cup slivered almonds

1 cup broken pecan pieces

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cup shredded unsweetened coconut

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cup, plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

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cup, plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup (use the real stuff!)

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cup vegetable oil (I use canola)

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teaspoon salt

1 cup dried cherries (or raisins if you like them better)

Preheat the oven to 250ºF. Mix oats, almonds, pecans, sugar, and coconut in a bowl. Combine syrup, oil and salt, and then mix into the grains and nuts. Now comes the only time-consuming part: spread the uncooked granola on baking trays. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stopping every 15 minutes to stir the mixture so it browns evenly. Cool and add cherries or raisins. Store in an airtight container, but don’t expect it to last very long. It also freezes well. Serve with milk or yogurt.

Lucy Burdette’s One-Bowl Chocolate Cake

When it came time to pick a pen name for my new Key West food critic series, I didn’t hesitate. I chose my maternal grandmother’s name, Lucille Burdette, aka Lucy. I don’t know if she was ever called Lucy, as she died when I was only five or six. But I do have a few oil paintings that she did and a few memories of her as a sweet, warm grandmother.

I imagine that she might have been a good cook, as my mother and both of her sisters loved to get together for dinners and holiday meals. And recently, when sorting madly through my messy (ulp!) drawer of recipes, I found a recipe for chocolate cake from Nana, aka Lucille Burdette. I tried the cake out on two confirmed chocoholics. They both had seconds.

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cup Crisco (I am not a fan, so I use a stick of butter)

1 cup sugar

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cup Hershey’s cocoa

1 egg

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cup sour milk (or sweet, with 1 tablespooon vinegar added)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

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cups all-purpose flour

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teaspoon salt

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cup boiling water

My grandmother’s instructions were as follows: Put all ingredients into bowl and mix. Bake as usual.

Here’s my interpretation: Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Beat softened butter and sugar until well combined. Add the other ingredients one at a time, mixing after each. Grease a bundt pan, add the batter, and bake for about 30 minutes until cake springs back when touched. Cool for ten minutes and then invert onto a cake plate.

Sift powdered sugar over the top when completely cool and serve with ice cream!

^*
Note about squeezing limes or lemons: Did you know that the jaw is one of the strongest parts of the body? If you are willing to taste the tartness of the lime and lemon skins, the most effective way to squeeze juice out of a fruit is to cut it in half and chomp down—juice will release into bowl.

Read on for a sneak peek
at the next Key West Food Critic Mystery.
Coming in early 2014 from Obsidian!

1

I’m in an open relationship with salt and butter.

—Michele Catalano

Faster than a speeding KitchenAid mixer, I scraped the freshly squeezed lime juice and zested lime peel into the bowl and beat the batter to a creamy pale green. Inside the oven, the first set of cupcakes rose gracefully, releasing their sweet citrus fragrance into the tiny galley of our houseboat.

Then my cell phone bleated: Jim Snow. AKA Dad.

My father isn’t big on phone conversations. My father isn’t big on conversations, period. Clients, he has to butter up because he needs something from them. But I could count on the fingers of one hand the times we’d chatted since my near-arrest for murder last fall.

So when his name flashed on the screen, I set down the whisk, abandoning the “do not answer” policy I’d adopted in order to survive the week leading up to my best friend Connie’s wedding. Something had to be wrong.

“Hi, Dad. What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful, when wary was what I felt.

“Good news, Hayley Snow!” he said with the faux heartiness he reserved for business associates. And using my full name, which he reserved for times I’d gotten into trouble. “The whole family’s coming to the wedding.”

I whooshed out a breath of relief—he was just lagging a beat and a half behind his wife. “I know. Allison RSVP’d weeks ago. You’re all set with a corner suite at the Casa Marina. You’ll love everything but the bill.” My stepmother, Allison, was organized to a fault. She had to be as a chemist, though why that didn’t translate into an ability to follow a simple recipe was beyond me. Hopeless in the kitchen, my mom always said, when she couldn’t restrain herself from an edgy comment.

The oven timer began to ding. I donned a red silicone mitten, pulled the cupcakes out, and slid them onto the stovetop.

“The whole family,” my father repeated. “Rory’s coming too.”

“Rory’s coming?”

My fifteen-year-old stepbrother. To be honest, I was already stressed about the upcoming week, visualizing how I might handle the family dynamics between my mother and her new boyfriend, whom I hadn’t met except on Skype, and my father and stepmother. Not to mention juggling a high-strung bride while baking two
hundred cupcakes for her wedding reception. A surly, pimply teenage boy would not, no way, be an asset.

“I was hoping you could find him a place to sleep. Otherwise he’ll end up on the couch in our sitting room.” Dad’s voice rolled out ominously, like the music from
Jaws
. I was pretty certain he didn’t care much for Rory either—only he didn’t have the luxury of saying so.

“I don’t think I can, Dad. You guys are arriving today. It’s spring break. The hotels in Key West have been sold out for months. I might be able to get a bead on a bunk in a youth hostel. But between us, I think that’s asking for trouble.”

He cleared his throat. “Might there be room on your houseboat? I know he’d love to have some special time with you.”

“No can do,” I said briskly. Rory and I had never lived together long enough to bond like sister and brother. After my parents’ divorce, I spent only alternate weekends and Wednesdays with Dad. And the weekends dwindled further once he remarried and moved two towns away.

“Think Airstream trailer on the high seas. The smallest model. Between me, Miss Gloria, two cats, wedding favors, and hundreds of cupcakes, we don’t have room to spit.” Was I being uncharitable? I looked around at the common spaces of our tiny houseboat, the counters in the galley covered with cupcakes, cupcake batter, zested limes, dirty pots and pans, and Evinrude, my gray tiger cat, eyeing it all from a stool beside the stove.

My father fell silent, which made me feel awful. “What about Eric Altman? Didn’t your mother stay in his guest room in January?”

I groaned. How did he even know this? When I moved down to Key West from New Jersey last fall, I’d assured my old friend Eric I would only ask this kind of favor in case of emergency. He’d insisted on hosting mom, because she’d been so kind to him when he was a troubled teen. It wasn’t fair to foist Rory on him.

But then I pictured messy, grumpy Rory camped out on our single couch not five feet from the room where I’d be desperate to sleep. This was definitely an emergency.

At exactly that moment, Miss Gloria’s black kitten, Sparky, launched himself up onto the stool beside the stove, chasing Evinrude onto the counter. The two cats sprinted across two trays of pale green cupcakes waiting for icing, tipping them up perpendicular to the counter. They crashed onto the floor and splattered into a million pieces. “Shoo!” I shrieked. The bowl of green batter rocked and then tilted, dumping its contents down the front of the stove.

“Gotta go right now,” I said to my father. “I’ll ask Eric.”

I hung up the phone and lunged for the cats. Evinrude slipped through my fingers and vanished down the hall.
“Et tu, Brute?”
I yelled after him.

2

And somewhere, a soufflé has just fallen.

—Charlotte Druckman

I swept up the shards of cupcake, mourning their perfect texture and delicate green color. As I dumped them into the trash, Evinrude peered around the corner into the kitchen, his gray ears and white whiskers twitching.

“Bad kitty,” I said. “You’re supposed to be helping, not making things worse. That’s what pets are supposed to do.” He trotted over and wound his lithe striped body in figure eights around my legs, purring as loudly as the engine that had given him his name. I snatched him up and rubbed my cheek on his head, then set him back down on the banquette against the wall of our little galley kitchen. My smartphone buzzed, clattering across the kitchen table, onto the floor, and into the Key lime cupcake batter.