The Body in the Casket
Page 24
EXCERPTS FROM HAVE FAITH IN YOUR KITCHEN
by Faith Sibley Fairchild with Katherine Hall Page
Fallen Angel Cocktail
(Adapted from London’s Savoy Hotel Bar)
4 ounces dry gin
½ ounce fresh lime juice
½ ounce white crème de menthe
1 dash Angostura bitters
Shake the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of lime or sprig of mint.
Put on a flapper headband or top hat and enjoy!
Serves 2.
Deviled Eggs
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
¼ cup mayonnaise (Preferably Hellmann’s or Duke’s)
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Paprika, smoked or plain, or Old Bay Seasoning (optional)
Halve the eggs lengthwise and scoop out the yolks. Mix with ¼ cup mayonnaise, mustard, a pinch of salt and dash of pepper for the traditional version. Combine and add more mayo if you like a softer filling. Pipe back into the shell or use a teaspoon to fill. Sprinkle with paprika, smoked or plain, or Old Bay.
Enjoy altering this basic recipe to whatever appeals to your taste buds. Some of the things to consider adding to the yolk/mayo mixture—either stirred in or on top when stuffed back—are: capers, crumbled crisp bacon, tiny shrimp, crab, deviled ham (deviled Deviled Eggs!), chopped chives, flavored mustards, wasabi, curry powder, chutney, and of course caviar!
Platters of deviled eggs are the first items to disappear at a party or a picnic. They are not difficult to make, but somehow we don’t make them for ourselves and they are always regarded as a treat. Variations of stuffed hard-boiled eggs go back to ancient Rome. Medieval cookbooks offered recipes that included adding raisins with sweet spices like cloves and cinnamon to the yolks. Why the dish is called “deviled” eggs likely refers to the process of “deviling,” a culinary term first mentioned in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century for foods that were highly seasoned or prepared with hot ingredients.
During the 1940s mayonnaise became de rigueur for real Deviled Eggs in the United States, but our Fannie Farmer, ahead of the culinary curve in so many ways, mentions mayo to bind the yolks in the 1896 version of the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook.
Himmel und Erde (Heaven and Earth)
2 ½ pounds Russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
3 apples, roughly 1 ½ pounds, peeled, cored, and cubed
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon honey
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes more.
Add the apples and continue to simmer until the potatoes are done (check with a sharp fork) and the apples soft.
Drain, reserving a little of the water. Put back on the heat and stir briefly to dry.
Add the butter and mash. Faith relies on her old-fashioned potato masher. Add the honey, lemon, salt, and pepper and stir vigorously for a fluffy result. If the mixture is too dry, add a bit of the water.
You may also serve the dish with crumbled crisp bacon and fried or caramelized onions on top. Granny Smiths or other tart apples give Himmel und Erde a nice sharpness, but any apples are fine. Nutmeg and thyme also give it a different sort of flavor as a change from the basic recipe. Garlic too.
Serves 4–6.
My friend Andrew Palmer, who is a wonderful cook, suggested this dish when I was asking for foods with some mention of heaven or hell in the name. A traditional German farm dish, it is a find. We’ve been having it as a side dish with pork, roasted chicken, and sausages. Cabbage in various forms has been a fine additional side.
Lobster Pasta Fra Diavolo
Two 1 ½ pound lobsters
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 (28-ounce) can peeled tomatoes (San Marzano, if possible)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
¼ cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 (16-ounce) package fresh or dry linguine
Steam the lobsters using your favorite method. You may also substitute shrimp, peeled and deveined, for lobster. When the lobster is done, remove the claw, knuckle, and tail meat. Use the body and all the shells to make stock if you wish. Devein the tails and cut all the meat into bite-size pieces, reserving the claws to decorate the top of the finished dish.
Sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil until soft. Crush the tomatoes in a bowl (an old-fashioned potato masher is perfect) and add to the onions and garlic along with the tomato paste, wine, salt, and pepper flakes.
Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently as the sauce thickens. While the sauce is simmering boil the water for the pasta. Cook the pasta according to the package directions, usually 8 to 10 minutes. Reserve a cup of the sauce. Drain the pasta and add it to the rest of the sauce, coating the linguine thoroughly. Add the lobster pieces and stir.
Transfer the pasta onto a large heated platter and decorate with the claws, pouring the cup of sauce on top. You may further add some chopped Italian parsley as well, but Faith is a purist and likes to see only lobster.
Serves 4–6 amply.
It is unclear where Fra Diavolo, “brother devil” style, originated, but most sources place it in New York’s Little Italy on or before the 1930s. Some insist that it was brought over here from Naples. Whatever the truth, it is a blessing!
Angel Food Cake
9 large eggs
1 ¼ cups cake flour
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
If necessary, move an oven rack to the lowest position. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Separate the eggs, being sure not to get any of the yolks in the whites, reserving the yolks for another use. Set the whites aside for a half hour while you sift the flour, sugar, and salt four times in a separate bowl.
Beat the egg whites until they form very stiff peaks. Add the cream of tartar and the vanilla and almond extracts when the peaks are close to stiff.
Slowly fold the sifted dry ingredients into the whites, about an eighth of a cup at a time.
Pour the batter into an ungreased tube pan, preferably the kind with a removable bottom.
Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until the top is golden brown.
Invert the cake (Faith does this on top of a full bottle of wine) and let cool for at least an hour. It’s still a good idea afterward to run a thin spatula around the edge.
A fruit compote or fruit sauce, especially a berry one, goes well with the cake. You may also use the yolks to make a custard sauce as well. And this cake is heavenly with just ice cream!
Serves a party!
Now, what else to do with the yolks? You can make hollandaise, mayonnaise, or béarnaise sauces. But you have just made a cake, so you might just save them (two days covered in the fridge) and add some to an omelet, frittata, especially a pasta one, or make a very rich spaghetti carbonara.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATHERINE HALL PAGE is the author of twenty-three previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first of which received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift was honored with the Agatha Award for best novel of 2006. Page also won an Agatha for her short story “The Would-Be Widower.” The recipient of the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement, she has been nominated for the Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark, the Maine Literary, and the Macavity Awards. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine with her husband.
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ALSO BY KATHERINE HALL PAGE
The Faith Fairchild Mysteries
The Body in the Wardrobe
The Body in the Birches
The Body in the Piazza
The Body in the Boudoir
The Body in the Gazebo
The Body in the Sleigh
The Body in the Gallery
The Body in the Ivy
The Body in the Snowdrift
The Body in the Attic
The Body in the Lighthouse
The Body in the Bonfire
The Body in the Moonlight
The Body in the Big Apple
The Body in the Bookcase
The Body in the Fjord
The Body in the Bog
The Body in the Basement
The Body in the Cast
The Body in the Vestibule
The Body in the Bouillon
The Body in the Kelp
The Body in the Belfry
Short Fiction
Small Plates
CREDITS
Cover photographs: © plainpicture/Marie Docher (gate); © plainpicture/BY (castle)
Title page spread photograph © by Ruud Morijn/Shutterstock, Inc.
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BODY IN THE CASKET. Copyright © 2017 by Katherine Hall Page. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Page, Katherine Hall, author.
Title: The body in the casket : a Faith Fairchild mystery / Katherine Hall Page.
Description: New York, NY : William Morrow, 2017. | Series: Faith Fairchild mysteries ; 24
Identifiers: LCCN 2017042258 (print) | LCCN 2017045133 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062439581 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062439567 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062439574 (mass market) | ISBN 9780062688071 (large print)
Subjects: LCSH: Fairchild, Faith (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Women in the food industry—Fiction. | Caterers and catering—Fiction. | Women detectives—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3566.A334 (ebook) | LCC PS3566.A334 B652 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042258
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Digital Edition DECEMBER 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-243958-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-243956-7
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