by Barbara Ross
If frozen, thaw thoroughly.
Heat oven to 200 degrees.
Stir dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and stir. Fold in blueberries.
Melt butter on medium high heat in pan or on griddle. Spoon out pancake mix in ¼ cupfuls.
Flip pancakes when lightly browned on bottom. (Adjust heat, if necessary, to keep from burning.)
Put finished pancakes on ovenproof platter. Top with butter and keep in warm oven.
Serve with real maple syrup, or other syrup of your choice.
Mrs. Gus’s Blueberry Pie
Mrs. Gus is renowned for her pies, and rightly so. This is the blueberry.
Pie Crust
3½ cups flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1½ cups shortening, lard, or unsalted butter
1 egg, beaten lightly with a fork
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
¼-½ cups ice water, as needed
1 Tablespoon milk (to brush over finished pie before baking)
In food processor, using the metal blade, pulse flour and salt to combine. Add shortening and pulse until reaching the consistency of corn meal. Add egg, vinegar, and ¼ cup ice water. Pulse, adding additional ice water, if necessary, until ingredients barely come together in a dough ball. Turn out onto cutting board and pat together evenly into a large oblong. Divide into four pieces. You will need two for the pie. (You can freeze the other two for a later pie.) Refrigerate. Remove from fridge ten minutes before using.
Filling
5 cups Maine wild blueberries, fresh or frozen. (If frozen, thaw thoroughly.)
¾ cup sugar
juice of ½ lemon
cinnamon
1 Tablespoon butter
Roll out bottom crust of pie and put in pie plate. Add blueberries. Over the top put sugar, lemon juice, a dash of cinnamon, and add the butter in pats.
Roll out top crust and cover. Slit top. Brush with milk.
Bake at 425 degrees for ten minutes. Then lower oven temperature to 350 and bake 25 to 35 minutes more, until top is brown and fruit is bubbling.
Q: I notice there’s no tapioca, cornstarch, or other binding agent mentioned. Isn’t the pie all runny?
A: Yes, and it is delicious. Even better with ice cream.
Baked Camp Beans
These beans, made by Phil Johnson’s mother, are filling and hearty—perfect after a long day of physical work or play. Common to all the Wabanaki Confederacy tribes of Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, soldier beans were originally mixed with bear fat and maple syrup and cooked in clay pots buried with hot coals. They are the progenitors of New England’s famous baked beans. This recipe is adapted to make at home (as opposed to at camp).
1 pound soldier beans
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
3 thick slices slab bacon, chopped
3 thick slices salt pork, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 large celery stalk, diced, leaves chopped
1 carrot, diced
2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon dried basil
½ cup tomato sauce
½ cup molasses
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 quarts water
salt and pepper to taste
Soak beans for one hour. Heat oil in large saucepan. Render bacon and salt pork in oil for about three minutes. Add onion, celery, and carrot and sauté for another three-four minutes. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Turn down heat and simmer for one hour. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Put beans in a bean pot or covered casserole and cook in oven for four hours. (Alternative, after simmering, place in a slow cooker on high for four hours.) Check occasionally. Adjust seasonings. If you think it’s necessary, remove cover for last hour of cooking to thicken.
Camp-style Ground Beef
This hearty camp meal has the distinctive tarragon and cinnamon flavor common to French-Canadian cooking. Julia is knocked over by how good it tastes. It can be made with either ground beef or ground moose meat.
4 slices slab bacon
2 pounds ground beef
3 onions, chopped
4 large stalks celery including leaves, chopped
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup tomato sauce
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
Cook bacon until crisp and drain on paper towels. Using 1 Tablespoon bacon drippings, brown beef. Set aside in a bowl. Using another 1 Tablespoon bacon drippings, sauté onions, celery, and mushrooms together for six minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute or two. Add spices, tomato sauce, vinegar, reserved beef, and accumulated juices. Cook together for eight to ten minutes to allow flavors to meld. Either serve alongside baked beans or mix together with beans.
Lu’sknikn
Lu’sknikn is traditional Mi’kmaq bread. It is considered a bannock, which is a Scottish word that describes a round, flat, quick bread. You can think of it as being in the family of Irish soda bread.
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 Tablespoons baking powder
½ cup lard or shortening + additional for pan
¾ cup raisins or other dried fruit (optional)
2½ cups water
Stir together flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Using your hands or a pastry cutter, cut lard into the flour mix. Add dried fruit and stir to coat. Make a hole in center of the flour, add water, and stir. Heat a 10-inch cast iron skillet over medium heat and melt about a tablespoon of lard. Add half the dough to the pan and press out close to the sides of the pan. Using a knife, make a hole in the center to allow steam to escape. Cook for ten minutes, then turn using two spatulas if necessary. Cook for an additional ten minutes being careful not to burn. Check for doneness with a toothpick or a cake tester. Repeat with second half of dough.
Richelle’s Tomato Salad
Richelle Rose lives on the road giving tours throughout Maine. When she’s home, she craves simple, local food, and in the summer, that means tomato salad. The basic recipe is wonderful. Add in one or more of the options only if you happened to have the ingredient at hand or desire the taste. Because the flavor of this recipe depends so much on the taste and texture of the tomatoes, it should be made only when you have access to really good ones.
4 large tomatoes
1-2 cloves garlic
kosher salt
½ teaspoon dried oregano
Options
red onion, chopped or sliced
cucumber, seeded and diced
oregano, fresh
basil, fresh
8-12 ounces bocconcini (mozzarella bites) or other fresh mozzarella
Core tomatoes and slice into bite-sized chunks. Layer tomatoes in serving bowl, salting each layer with kosher salt. Mince garlic and toss with tomatoes. Add any other optional ingredients. Cover bowl and marinate at room temperature for 1-2 hours, stirring occasionally. May be served chilled or at room temperature. Also makes a wonderful fresh sauce for pasta. Serves 4.
Richelle’s Tuna and White Bean Salad
This is a light, fresh-tasting salad. When Richelle comes off a long road trip, she can put this dish together from items readily available in her pantry.
2 6-ounce cans light tuna packed in olive oil
½ medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Drain oil from tuna and put in bowl. Flake tuna with a fork. Add onion and garlic and stir with fork. Add beans and gently fold together. Dress with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Allow flavors to marinate at room temperature for thirty minutes to an hour. If refrigerated, best to allow to come to room tempe
rature before serving.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Those who know Maine history will recognize how much Gus’s rather eccentric and truncated version owes to The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier, by Colin Woodard (Penguin, 2004). If this novel has piqued your interest in Maine or history, or if you just enjoy beautifully written nonfiction, I cannot recommend this book enough.
The story of the Busman was inspired by the life of Reuben Ruby as told in The Hidden History of Maine, by Harry Gratwick (The History Press, 2010), the story of Jim Foley as told in The Lobster Coast (see above), and a photo of early bus service in Ocean Point found in The Boothbay Harbor Region, 1906-1960, by Harold B. Clifford (Wheelwright, 1961).
The line, “As far as he was concerned, terrorists and tourists were in the same boat, and hopefully it was sinking,” comes from the self-authored obituary of David McKown, which appeared in the Boothbay Register on October 25, 2012. For full-on Maine eccentricity, nothing beats reading the complete article. http://www.boothbayregister.com/article/david-mckown-dies-age-68/4895 .
There really is a Wild Blueberry Land in Columbia Falls, Maine and you should go there.
Thanks to Lisa and Chandra Hanscom of Welch Farms in Roque Bluffs, Maine who gave a wonderful tour of their blueberry farm and small processing operation, and who answered my many questions about the blueberry harvest. That’s another place you should visit the next time you travel Down East. http://uniquemainefarms.com/uniquemaine-farms.com/Welch_Blueberry_Farm.html .
David Brooks Stess has photographed the blueberry rakers in Maine for over twenty years. His 2013 exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art was the culmination of this work. The photos are hauntingly beautiful. http://blog.voxphotographs.com/2013/04/13/david-brooks-stess-what-23-years-looks-like.
And, as always, if this novel has left you with a craving for a real clambake on a private island in Maine, you should go to the Cabbage Island Clambakes. http://www.cabbageislandclambakes.com.
Thanks to Marilyn Mick and Carolyn Vandam, who explained the tour guide industry to me and made Richelle Rose come alive.
As always thanks to my wonderful agent, John Talbot, and to my editor, John Scognamiglio and the tremendous team at Kensington—so professional and a joy to work with.
My husband, Bill Carito, is the real cook in our family. He developed and tested all the recipes in the book (except the blueberry pie, which is one of my specialties and the potato salad which is a treasured family recipe). I only had to sit at the table with a fork in one hand and a pen in the other, writing down words like, tangy!
The Maine Crime Writers accepted me, even though I had only one mystery novel published and was new to Maine. They gave me the courage to write a mystery series set in Maine and I’m so glad they did. Thanks especially to Kate Flora, Lea Wait, Kaitlyn Dunnett and all the crew.
I don’t know where I’d be without my first readers, my writers group, Mark Ammons, Katherine Fast, Cheryl Marceau, and Leslie Wheeler. Also, in their guise as the editors at Level Best Books, Kathy, Mark, and Leslie let me out of a whole summer of editing and proofreading. Thank you, thank you. I could never have completed this novel without you.
I can’t imagine going on this journey alone, and I’ve been so lucky to have the support of the Wicked Cozy Authors, Jessie Crockett, Sherry Harris, Julie Hennrikus, Edith Maxwell, and Liz Mugavero. Sherry Harris has done triple duty as valued friend, cheerleader, and editor.
While I was writing Boiled Over, my mother faced her final illness and death. This book absolutely could not have been written without the support of my family—Bill Carito, Kate Carito, Rob and Sunny Carito, the fabulous Viola, who kept our spirits up, and most of all, my amazing brother, Rip Ross and his wife, Ann. Steady as a rock.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2014 by Barbara Ross
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8687-1
ISBN-10: 0-7582-8687-2
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: May 2014
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8688-8
eISBN-10: 0-7582-8688-0
First Kensington Electronic Edition: May 2014