Looking for a great holiday gift for the cozy mystery reader on your list? Don’t know what to buy, or what books have been read? Chances are they’ll find all of their favorite authors (including me!) in this cookbook, available in paperback and in Kindle.
Archives for category: culinary mystery
James Beard Foundation, 167 West 12th Street, exterior-byEileen-Miller
On Thursday night, October 30, at the James Beard Foundation in New York, Francesco Palmieri of the Orange Squirrel Restaurant prepared a dinner based on recipes from Mary and Vincent Price’s masterful cookbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965).
Francesco Palmieri, The Orange Squirrel Restaurant
In this magnificently designed and photographed book the Prices offer recipes from some of the finest restaurants in the world. (I wrote about it at length, and the Orange Squirrel, in an earlier blog–scroll down to see “The Book,” below, 7/27/14.)
Victoria Price, Vincent’s daughter, co-hosted the event and introduced the Vincent Price Signature Wine Collection. I planned to be there, and was looking forward to it. Instead I was home, sidelined by torn ligaments, eating soup for dinner. I am disappointed, but last Saturday night’s (Oct. 25) dinner at the Inn at Millrace Pond has softened the blow.
Entrance to Inn at Millrace Pond, Hope, NJ
Pumpkins lit with candles graced the entrance path
Jody Price, Vincent’s grandson, hosted the Inn’s third tribute dinner to Vincent Price. While we dined, he played inspired instrumental guitar. After dinner he talked about his memories of his grandfather, and gave an entertaining description of his father’s life in films, and as an art-lover and foodie. My favorite of his wonderful stories was the story of the time when his phone rang and a friend woke him up, shouting, “Hey, turn on your TV! You’re on the Simpsons!” It turned out that in the “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday” episode that was shown after the 1999 Super Bowl, the voice of Vincent Price tells Marge Simpson that his grandson, Jody, will bring her the missing feet from her celebrity craft kit.
Jody shows the crowd (my mother) Sally Murphy’s first edition copy of the cookbook.
Diners
Jody was joined during the question and answer period by Victoria, who arrived late after a long day at the Chiller Theater Toy, Model, and Film Expo where she met her father’s horror fans and gave a talk about his life. Jody’s brother Keir Price was at the dinner too. Victoria spoke of how, on the 21st anniversary of the day of her father’s death, he would have been pleased that the three of them were together, since for so many years their family was in different parts of the country and didn’t see each other often enough.
Jody and Victoria share a story.
The special prix fixe dinner ($49.) featured:
Choice of one appetizer, soup or salad:
Slow roasted butternut squash soup (an Inn specialty)
Crab stuffed avocado with wild mushrooms and almonds (page 360, from Hotel Hana-Maui, no prices given on the menu reproduced in the book—they must have supplied the ladies’ menu 🙂
Classic Caesar salad (page 185, from Harrods Food Hall, London)
Potato gnocchi with pancetta, shitake, oven-dried tomato and garlic spinach (page 394, from the Blue Fox, San Francisco, $2.00 on the menu reproduced in the book)
Choice of one entrée:
Pan seared scallop and shrimp risotto Milanese with sweet peas and roasted red peppers (shrimp risotto Milanese, page 103, from the Royal Daniele, Venice, $6.00 on the menu reproduced in the book)
Filet mignon au poivre with chive Yukon mash and baby carrots (an Inn specialty)
Chicken cordon bleu with wild mushroom supreme, chive Yukon mash and baby carrots (an Inn specialty)
Photo by Ian Horowitz
Choice of one dessert:
White chocolate macadamia crème brulee (page 163, The Ivy, London, with additions of the Inn’s chef, $4.00 on the menu reproduced in the book)
Cheese cake with seasonal berries an Grand Marnier (page 317, Bookbinder’s, Philadelphia, with additions of the Inn’s chef. Not on the Bookbinder’s menu reproduced in the book, which is very strange because Price says, in his head-note, “This is one of the best cheesecakes I’ve ever had anywhere. Its recipe has long been a secret at Bookbinder’s where it is their most popular dessert, and they were loath to divulge it. I’m glad they finally have…”)
Chocolate mousse cake with crème anglaise (an Inn specialty)
Apple lattice pie with bourbon glaze (an Inn specialty)
I savored the crab stuffed avocado with wild mushrooms and almonds. That is a recipe I will definitely try to emulate. For the entrée I had the filet mignon, potatoes and vegetables. I knew they wouldn’t be based on a recipe in the cookbook, but I knew I made the right choice when I tasted the melt-in-your-mouth filet. The Inn uses vegetables from nearby Tranquility Farm, and the carrots were among the tenderest I’ve tasted. For dessert I had the apple lattice pie. Since I am an avid apple pie baker, I couldn’t resist, and I was not disappointed. Those in my group who had the cheese cake said it was the best they ever tasted. Another recipe for me to take on! The rest of my family reported that every dish exceeded their expectations, especially the pan-seared scallop and shrimp risotto Milanese. We all found the quality of the meal and the lovely surroundings exceptional for the price. If it hadn’t been a special event, it still would have been well worth it.
My son, Ian Horowitz, at the entrance, next to the “Vincent Price Dinner, Tavern Full” sign.
The inn is simply lovely—we dined in the Grist Mill, built in 1769 by Moravian settlers and restored 20 years ago. Upstairs rooms have been decorated period style, 3 with canopy beds, all with beamed ceilings, and modern amenities including whirlpool tubs. The main floor holds the large dining room. We dined in the smaller tavern, downstairs, and the trip down the stairs was an adventure in itself!
Skeleton on stairs down to the tavern.
Love this!
The tavern also features beamed ceilings and a large stone fireplace.
During the dinner Price’s Edgar Allen Poe films were shown on two screens. “He once said that he might not have had the best career of all actors, but no one had as much fun as him,” Jody told us.
Wine cellar and grist mill wheel, outside the tavern entrance
I think Vincent would have loved the spider web strewn over the wine collection, next to the giant grist mill wheel. He would have been delighted by the pumpkin with his face carved in it. The talented, creative staff outdid themselves in their decorations.
Vincent Price pumpkin
Thank you, Jody, for hosting this event and sharing your family’s celebration. It was a pleasure, and a lot of fun, to honor Vincent Price’s life with you.
I was especially pleased that my mother, Sally Murphy, was able to meet the Price family, and that our family—two of my cousins (whose mother met Vincent Price in Bermuda with Mom), my husband, son and brother—were able to be there for this very special evening.
Victoria Price and Sally Murphy, holding the first editions Vincent Price inscribed in 1985 for Mom when she met him on a trip to Bermuda.
Victoria inscribes a copy of Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography, newly released in paperback, for Mom.
Although my family and I have been cooking from the cookbook since it was published, this was the first restaurant event we’ve attended that offered some of those recipes. Well done, chef!
For more information about the Inn at Millrace Pond, see http://www.innatmillracepond.com.
For more information about Vincent Price’s legacy, see http://www.vincentprice.com/
For news about all things related to the cookbook, and Victoria’s wonderful blog, see http://www.cookingvincent.com/
For information about the James Beard Foundation dinner, Vincent Price: legendary Gourmet, see http://www.jamesbeard.org/events/vincent-price-legendary-gourmet
The Vincent Price Collection II, a seven-film, four-disc Blu-ray set from Scream Factory, was released this month and includes House on Haunted Hill, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, The Raven (directed by Roger Corman, loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, stars Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff along with a young Jack Nicholson), The Comedy of Terrors, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Last Man on Earth and The Return of the Fly.
And of course, my book, Cinnamon Girl,a mystery set in a cookbook store, inspired by the cookbook and containing recipes from it and other treasured cookbooks, is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cinnamon-Girl-Village-Cooks-Mystery/dp/0989911012/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1414864593&sr=8-1&keywords=cinnamon+girl+horowitz
It’s finally cool to be smart. The television show Scorpion — another show about geniuses, this one packed full of them! — debuted on Monday night, and CBS re-ran the pilot episode last night. After the Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist, Sherlock Holmes, Person of Interest and Numbers, I was ready for more, and Scorpion delivered something different. The cool factor.
The idea of a group of geniuses — one a computer genius who is the 4th smartest person in the world, another a mechanical genius, a statistics genius and a psychological genius — teaming up with an “average woman” whose role is to humanize them (in turn they will help her understand her genius son) to work with Homeland Security to help save the world, while seeming pretty pat, is, in my view, inspirational.
I love that the show is based on Walter O’Brien, who wrote an algorithm that tracked motion on all the cameras within a two-mile radius of the Boston Marathon blast and helped find the bomber by demonstrating that his facial expression did not change after the bombs went off. The events in the beginning of the episode—his home in Ireland being raided by authorities after he hacked into NASA’s computer system at the age of 13—are true. He now runs the successful computer security firm, Scorpion Computer Services.
I hope they minimize the “we’re so smart we don’t tap into our emotions” vibe in later episodes. Sheldon Cooper gives us enough of that. Why can’t someone be super-smart, eccentric, march to the beat of a different drum, and also emotionally capable of warmth and love? Leonard Hofstadter can, so let’s see some of that, Scorpion writers.
The Scorpion gang are clearly cool nerds, and I hope that will resonate with teenagers. Solving world problems is a powerful theme on television, and there is no shortage of crime-fighters and problem-solvers. So many of those characters admirably work to save the world, but ultimately the action involves guns and violence. I mean you Homeland, NCIS and its spinoffs. It’s nice to see a show where the saving is done with brain power and not gun powder.
The pilot episode of Scorpion had one of the most exciting action chase scenes — involving an airplane flying over a Ferrarri — that I’ve ever seen, and it did not involve a gun. Cool. Smart. Non-violent. Successful. Kudos.
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A reader wrote and asked for a list of the cookbooks mentioned in Cinnamon Girl. Her wish is my command!
Vefa’s Kitchen by Vefa Alexiadou (2009)
Falling Off the Bone by Jean Anderson (2010)
The Cook Not Mad or Rational Cookery by Anonymous (1831)
All American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett (2005)
Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management by Mrs. Beeton (1861)
The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum (1988)
The Original Thai Cookbook by Jennifer Brennan (1981)
Meat: A Love Story by Susan Bourette (2008)
Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown (1971)
The Cake Mix Doctor by Ann Byrn (1999)
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child (1961, 1970)
Baking Illustrated by the Editors of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine (2004)
More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin (2000)
The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life by Pat Conroy (2004)
The Meat Club Cookbook: For Gals Who Love Their Meat! by Gemma DePalma, Vanessa Dina, Kristina Fuller and Caroline Hwang (2013)
[The Escoffier Cook Book and Guide to the Fine Art of Cookery] by Georges Auguste Escoffier (1972)
Monday Is Meat Loaf and Burgers and Pork Chops and Steaks and More (Everyday Cookbook Series, Time-Life) (1995)
The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (2007)
Unnamed cookbook by Bobby Flay
Barefoot Contessa cookbooks by Ina Garten
Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan (2010)
Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (2006)
Meat by Lobel Brothers (1971)
Luchow’s German Cookbook: The Story and the Favorite Dishes of America’s Most Famous German Restaurant by Jan Mitchell (1996)
New York Cookbook by Molly O’Neill (1992)
A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price (1965)
Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker (2006)
The Pleasure of Herbs by Phyllis Shaudys (1986)
The Madison Avenue Cookbook: For People Who Can’t Cook and Don’t Want Other People to Know It by Murray Tinkelman (1962)
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book by Alice B. Toklas (1954)
The Complete Round-the-World Meat Cookbook by Myra Waldo (1967)
My mother got a copy of Mary and Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes when it was published in 1965, and that book changed our lives. Seriously. My mother had a lot of cookbooks back then, but this was the one we cuddled up with in the afternoons after school. When I think of cozy, comforting moments from my childhood, that’s what comes to mind, Mom and me side by side on the couch, the book spread over our laps.
We studied every page carefully, and went back to our favorites over and over. We examined the menus of the restaurants, many famous, some not, that Mary and Vincent visited, and the recipes the restaurants shared with them. Indeed the book’s subtitle is Famous Specialties of the World’s Foremost Restaurants Adapted for the American Kitchen. Wonderful head-notes describe their visits to a given restaurant and their enjoyment of the food and company, as well as their later experiences making the recipes at home. Can’t you just picture Vincent Price clanging around with his copper pots, with that twinkle in his eyes and devilish grin, offering Mary a taste of New England Clam Chowder from Locke-Ober’s recipe?
This book was designed to be savored. It is such a beautiful book. The first printings featured a padded bronze-colored cover and matching ribbon bookmark. At the rear of the book there was a section for wine lists and personal recipes. I have seen this done in recent years, but the idea was new in 1965-era cookbooks. There may be equally artfully done cookbooks from that period or before, but I don’t recall any. Mom and I especially loved the magnificent photos of Vincent and Mary Price’s home filled with art. I can close my eyes are bring up every detail of the copper pots and tiles in their kitchen, which appear opposite the introduction, “An Invitation and a Promise.”
This is not the page from the book, but it is a photo of the kitchen that is pictured on that page. I do not have permission to publish text pages from the book.
Before Mom got the book, my knowledge of Vincent Price consisted of House on Haunted Hill, the horror film that my brother loved and I pretended to be brave enough to watch with my eyes open. Little did I know that Price made those films to feed his passions for art collecting, world travel and good food. When my mother and step-father went to restaurants in the book and brought home the menus to save in the pages of the book, they were channeling the lifestyle example set by Mary and Vincent in their travels.
Mom bought copies of the book for every birthday and wedding shower in the family in those years. Later, when it was out-of-print and I worked in the book business in New York, I grabbed every copy I ever found in bookstores all over, just to have extras on hand for us to share with future converts. We each try to have a “good” copy and a “working” copy, but sometimes the “good” copy gets given away. Then the chase is on to replace it.
My mother was an equally big fan of Vincent Price’s autobiography, I Like What I Know, which describes his experiences as an art collector as well as his adventures as an actor.
Whenever Mom would take children in the family to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, she would first take them to visit her favorite painting, Vermeer’s A Girl Resting. When Vincent Price curated a selection of art reproductions for Sears, he included that painting, to her delight. Of course Mom bought it, and it held pride of place over the piano.
Mom had the pleasure of meeting Vincent Price on a mystery cruise to Bermuda in 1985.He was pleased that she brought several of his books, including I Like What I Know—required reading in our art and food-loving family—for his autograph. Their meeting happened to occur on her birthday.
Sally Murphy and Vincent Price, October 2, 1985.
They discussed the well-known Native American art collection at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, where my mother volunteered for many years. That was a birthday Mom will never forget.
My mother usually had the book open on the kitchen table, and taught me to cook from it. It includes Sardi’s Meat Sauce (page 285), a natural for my New Yorker mother. I know no other, and it is my go-to sauce from scratch. When we were expecting a tornado to make land one time when I was in Florida, after we filled the tub with water and taped up the windows, I baked a cake and made a big batch of Sardi’s sauce and spaghetti to get us through the storm. We stayed up all night and feasted. One year when I didn’t return home from college for Thanksgiving, I made the French Chocolate Ice Cream (page 441) for a large group as we dined on old doors held up with cement blocks in a drafty loft. It wasn’t traditional apple pie for dessert, and we fancied ourselves rebels (it was the 70s), so we liked it more.
When I met my husband of course I showed him the book. He noticed that the Lasserre Restaurant was included, and through his eyes I was charmed anew by the menu which featured bare-bottomed cherubs in chef’s hats attending the Rotisseur and tripping and falling as one ran in carrying a duck twice his size, knocking over another cherubic chef carrying a platter of vegetables. My husband had lived in Paris as a child, and his parents had enjoyed dining at Lasserre. Soon after our honeymoon, as new brides are wont to do, I made Soupe À L’Oignon (page 46) for him, because I knew it to be a favorite. It was my only failed recipe from the book.
I could go on. But then there’s the banana nut bread. Mom and I tried it one wintry day after school and never looked back. I have been baking it for forever. One year I made a loaf as a Christmas gift for each person in my company’s editorial department. Many of us have our go-to recipes to bring places, and this is one of my favorites.
My son prefers it without the walnuts, and that’s okay. No matter how busy I am, if we have bananas in the house, I cannot refuse a request from him. As long as he smothers it with cream cheese as the head-note to the recipe prescribes, it is as Vincent says, “ambrosia”—and who can turn down that prospect.
When I decided to write a mystery novel, there was no question that I would set it in a cookbook shop. Inspired by the fact that Vincent and Mary collected recipes from beloved restaurants in the book, I included “Recipes from Treasured Cookbooks” in Cinnamon Girl: A Village Cooks Mystery as openers to many of the chapters. The characters discuss the book at dinner one night:
“The great part about it,” Sally joined in, excitedly, “is that Vincent and Mary went home and prepared the recipes themselves. It is not just a collection of recipes from landmark restaurants all over the world. Anyone could have done that. This is a collection of those recipes gathered on wonderful occasions and then later cooked at home, with Vincent’s anecdotes and stories included with each one. On the title page it says ‘Famous specialties of the world’s foremost restaurants adapted for the home kitchen.’”
Ian laughed. “How did you remember that?”
“Because I’ve looked at that page hundreds of times!”Cinnamon Girl, pages 114-115
And two of them go on to make the banana nut bread.
When we held the book launch for Cinnamon Girl last October, I gave away a gift basket containing the book and the tools needed to make the banana nut bread,
which we also served at the party.
I was very happy when Victoria Price gave me permission to include the banana nut bread recipe in Cinnamon Girl. When I conceived the book I selected recipes from cookbooks I loved that connected with the activity in each chapter. It took months to get the permissions from all of the sources, but Victoria was wonderfully gracious in her response (so was Dorie Greenspan).
In March, when Victoria was passing through on a cross-country road trip, she invited me to lunch at the Orange Squirrel, a restaurant that features annual Vincent Price dinners on Halloween. When I walked in and saw a stack of cookbooks and other books piled on the end of the table, I knew I was with kindred spirits, folks like me who dined with books on the table and an interest in sharing them with each other. Victoria brought a copy of the book with her on her road trip for everyone to sign.
Elaine and Francesco Palmieri signing Victoria Price’s copy of the book during our lunch.
We had one of those lunches where the conversation went to a level of intensity immediately, and stayed there. Those who know me would be surprised to know that for much of it I was at a loss for words.
Francesco, Victoria and me at the Orange Squirrel, his restaurant in Bloomfield, NJ.
Victoria wrote a blog about our get-together, “A Perfect Lunch.”
http://www.cookingvincent.com/blog/2014/3/11/a-perfect-lunch
She invited Francesco, his wife Elaine and me to a “Vincent Price Inspired Evening” which began with cocktails and a slide presentation of Vincent’s life by Victoria at the Viacom building, followed by a dinner party she was hosting at Sardi’s the next night.
Elaine, Francesco and me in front of Sardi’s.
Victoria described the evening with great warmth and love, as a hostess her Dad would have been proud of:
http://www.cookingvincent.com/blog/2014/3/13/new-york-dinner-at-sardis
I have never made the dessert Sardi’s is famous for, Boccone Doce (Sweet Mouthful) (page 254). But that night I took one bite and thought it was the best dessert I’ve ever tasted. The 1965 menu in the book lists it for 85 cents! I am trying to get up the nerve to make it, and will let you know when I do. Maybe for my birthday.
For me, cookbooks represent an invitation to much more than good food and healthy eating. They are a promise of happy times, a challenge to create traditions. As a cookbook that does all that and much more, A Treasury of Great Recipes will always lead the pack. BookFinder.com lists it as the fifth most-sought-after hardest-to-find out-of-print book. If you find one somewhere, grab it. I eagerly await the 50th anniversary edition, and encourage you to reserve one here:
Because Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories pervade pop culture and are taught in middle school they are considered by some to be among the lower rungs of the literary canon. That’s a shame. He was the first major American writer to attempt to make a living at writing, and he invented the detective story genre. Some of my favorite writers and thinkers dismissed Edgar Allan Poe. Yeats and Huxley both reportedly called him “vulgar” and upon reading “The Raven” Emerson said, “I see nothing in it.” But Arthur Conan Doyle got him. He said, “Each [of Poe’s detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed….Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” Poe originated the detective genre in his short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” with the character C. Auguste Dupin who solved crimes in Paris before the word “detective” had been coined.
Edgar Allan Poe invented some of the major characteristics we know and love in mysteries today—the bumbling police sergeant representing the by-the-book authority figure as opposed to the creative, eccentric but analytically brilliant detective, the first-person narrative by a friend (Watson to Holmes), and the gathering of the suspects together to announce the identity of the murderer that we love so much when Poirot calls everyone to the drawing room.
I don’t advocate marrying one’s 13 year old cousin, but I have been deeply moved by Poe’s love poems to his wife Virginia, especially one written after her death, probably his most famous poem, Annabel Lee. I read this poem for the first time when I was a young romantic pre-teen. In fact, my mother brought me to visit Poe’s Cottage in the Bronx for my twelfth birthday.
At that age the over-the-top portrayal of his love for her (“But we loved with a love that was more than love”) thrilled me. The idea that he missed her so deeply that “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side/ Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,/ In her sepulchre there by the sea—/ In her tomb by the sounding sea.” Was her tomb really next to the sea? Did he really go and lie down next to it at night? Whether he did or not, this stirred my imagination, they were like Romeo and Juliet. Then, it seemed sweet and romantic, but in my youth I didn’t fully comprehend his suffering. As an adult I do, and I am slightly embarrassed by his angst displayed so openly. But I still love the poem.
I saw the Annabel Lee original manuscript on display when my family visited the Edgar Allen Poe exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York a few months ago.
As we stood before it, I tormented my teenage son by reading it aloud to him (I knew most of it from memory). Embarrassed, he eyed a man standing next to us within earshot. The man saw what was going on and said, to our surprise and my delight, “My mother used to recite that poem to me all the time when I was young. I loved it.”
In one of the displays at the Morgan I saw a sample of Poe’s signature. I had never examined it closely before, but this time I noticed the circular curls in the way he wrote the letter “E” and rejoiced at the realization that Peter Lo Ricco, who designed the cover for Cinnamon Girl, my mystery novel, unwittingly channeled Poe in his choice of font. I think we’ll keep that font for the Annabel Publishing logo. Yes, the company was named after the poem. And after a beloved cat who was named after the poem.
It is the day before Thanksgiving. Home cooks all over the United States are waking up this morning wondering if they should go ahead and make that new dish they are thinking of, or stick with the tried and true. It’s hard to break tradition on Thanksgiving. Turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, apple and pumpkin pie are the essentials. In some areas of the country, green been casserole is a must, although I have never eaten it and don’t know anyone who makes it. Given the number of television commercials for the ingredients, you’d think that it is as ubiquitous on the American Thanksgiving table as the turkey!
Other musts for many—sweet potato whatever (casserole with marshmallows? another never tried dish in my world), and something made from corn. I honor the corn tradition because of its historic connection to the pilgrims. Sometimes I serve corn (I heat up a can of corn- yikes, I admitted it!) but most years I make cornbread. I’ll be baking it today. Once I used Mary Steenbergen’s Corn Spoon Pudding recipe from the cookbook Potluck at Midnight Farm. It was tasty, but people didn’t like the corn kernels in it. Once, when we lived in a house with a double oven, I made cornbread in a cast iron skillet and served it right from the skillet. That was cool.
There is a recipe for Moroccan carrots that often graces our Thanksgiving table. I am not making it this year, but my sister and her boyfriend are making it, in Florida. I am glad they are. This year I am making plain carrots. I will be using the almonds found in the Moroccan carrots recipe in a new dish, Alton Brown’s green beans with almonds and pomegranate seeds. A colleague saw the recipe in a People magazine he read at the dentist’s office, and shared it with me. This will be a break from tradition this year — one new dish. The pomegranate seeds will be our homage to Jewish tradition, since this year Hannukah and Thanksgiving coincide.
I always serve hot and cold cider. Hot cider with cinnamon sticks to warm up guests when they arrive. Sam Sifton, in his delightful little book Thanksgiving, says (pp. 8-9):
“Put plainly, we are going to cook Thanksgiving correctly.
And what exactly does that mean? It means there is going to be a turkey, and side dishes and dressing to go with it, and plenty of gravy as well. There is going to be a proper dinner table even if it turns out to be a slab of plywood over some milk crates, covered by a sheet. There are going to be proper place settings for each person and glasses for water and wine. There are going to be candles. There will be dessert.
It means there will not be salad at meal’s end, or appetizers at its beginning. Please understand that from the very beginning. There can be a soup course at Thanksgiving if you wish, some delicate oyster bisque or creamy squash to guard against the chill of advancing winter. But you should not be filling a Thanksgiving guests’s stomach with onion tarts or nuts or corn chips or wee little amuses bouches in advance of a trencherman’s feast of turkey with four sides, the whole thing covered with gravy. Appetizers may promote the appetite of those who order and consume them in restaurants. At Thanksgiving, through, appetizers take up valuable stomach space. They are insulting to your own hard work.”
I agree with you, Sam, but I can’t quite bring myself to put NOTHING out. It’s usually an hour or so between the time guests arrive and dinner is served, and our guests travel 45 minutes or more to get to our house. So I put out nuts, carrots and hummus, crackers, sometimes chips. Chocolate covered cranberries in the silver candy dishes. And hot cider with cinnamon sticks of course. Since the publication of Cinnamon Girl, I have been noticing more and more foods and recipes involving cinnamon. I found a goat cheese log covered in apple and cinnamon at Trader Joe’s that we’re going to have. We taste-tested it when we had company last weekend, and found it delicious.
For me, the biggest break from tradition this year will be having flowers on the table. Usually I make a fruit centerpiece based on 18th century American tradition, using a mold I bought at a Williamsburg, Virginia shop. Sometimes I use apples, sometimes oranges, sometimes both. Our house was built in the 1750s, so I do this to honor the colonial history of the house. This year I am a bit under the weather, and have decided to forgo this project to lighten my load a bit. I have the flowers ready to go, and they are lovely. But I’m already regretting the decision. I don’t know how important the centerpiece is to the others, but I know it is important to me. We’ll see how I feel the day after Thanksgiving.
A mystery for cookbook lovers!
While she is busy getting ready for her annual cooking contest/author event at her cookbook and cookware store, Bonnie Emerson, daughter of a former U.S. president, finds the body of a woman near a stream on her property. When Bonnie’s tires are slashed, her father hires a private security company. When she is shot at, he calls in the Secret Service and the author’s agent threatens to cancel her appearance. But it could be worse. If Cookbooktoberfest goes on with a killer on the loose, they might all be in danger.
Cookbooktoberfest and the lives of Bonnie and her family are all in jeopardy unless Bonnie can — with or without the Secret Service — find the killer.
Filled with cooking and cookbook lore, Cinnamon Girl is the first in a series of VILLAGE COOKS mysteries.
Cinnamon Girl: A Village Cooks Mystery by Valerie Horowitz
ISBN 978-0-9899110-1-6. Paperback. $11.95
A life-long cookbook lover, Valerie Horowitz has always worked with books. She has sold out-of-print and rare books, was manager of a bookstore in New York’s Greenwich Village and held various marketing and editorial positions at trade and professional publishers. Currently she is the managing editor of a scholarly publishing company. She is an associate member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, and belongs to Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. She lives in a house built in the 1750s with her husband, son, and cat in the bucolic northwestern New Jersey farm and horse country where Cinnamon Girl takes place. You can find her online at her Facebook author page: http://www.Facebook.com/ValerieHorowitzAuthorPage
We held the Book Launch party for my first culinary cozy mystery, Cinnamon Girl: A Village Cooks Mystery at Sweet Spot Bake Shoppe (winner of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars) in Chester, NJ on October 27, 2013. The book is set in a cookbook/cookware store in a fictional Morris County, NJ town, and Sweet Spot Bake Shoppe was the perfect party “spot.”
What an event it turned out to be! There were over 80 people — I know there were at least that many because we ran out of chairs!
Because it was Halloween weekend, and what’s Halloween without Vincent Price?—we gave away a gift basket containing Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes and all of the makings for his recipe for banana nut bread, which is featured in the book. Cinnamon Girl includes quotes and recipes from treasured cookbooks in every chapter.
We served light refreshments based on the book, including the banana nut bread.
I gave a short reading and answered questions.
And signed lots of books!
I gave a gift of cinnamon sticks with each book.
Love this basket of cinnamon sticks. Just imagine one in a cup of hot cider!
After many years as a book editor, I am delighted to have published my first book. I am humbled and thrilled to have been able to share this day with so many. Thank you everyone for your interest and support.
It was a beautiful day, and everyone had a great time!
Valerie Horowitz 