Murder With Ganache: A Key West Food Critic Mystery

by Burdette, Lucy

  2 tablespoons sugar

  4 tablespoons butter, melted (½ stick)

  Whir the crackers to fine crumbs—in your food processor is easiest. Stir in the sugar and melted butter and combine well.

  Press the crumb mixture into a pie pan (mine is 10 inches) and tap it firmly up the sides of the pan into a crust, using your fingers, the back of a spoon, or a water glass. Bake the crust for 15 minutes at 350°F and let it cool.

  Filling

  1½ lbs. strawberries (I would not bother to make this unless it’s strawberry season)

  4 oz. cream cheese, softened

  2 cups whipping cream

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  ½ cup powdered sugar

  Wash, hull, and slice the strawberries, and then set them aside.

  In one bowl, whip the cream cheese. In another, whip the cream and the vanilla until stiff. Whip the sugar into the cream. Gradually mix the cream cheese into the whipped cream until it’s all nicely combined. (You may cut back on the sugar if you prefer the dessert even less sweet—and depending on how ripe your strawberries are.)

  In the chocolate crust, alternate layers of strawberries with layers of whipped cream twice, ending with a third layer of strawberries, artistically arranged.

  Chill thoroughly. Serve and sit back to watch your guests swoon.

  Lime Cupcakes with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

  Yes, you saw this recipe in Topped Chef. Henri Stentzel made these for the wedding challenge portion of the reality TV competition. But they were so good that Connie requested them for her wedding reception in Murder with Ganache. The recipe is adapted from a Buttersweet Bakery recipe in Bon Appétit, 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

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  8 tablespoons butter, softened (1 stick)

  1 cup sugar

  2 large eggs

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

  1 tablespoon finely grated lime zest

  ¾ cup buttermilk

  To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a cupcake or muffin pan with paper liners. Sift the first four ingredients together in a medium bowl. In a 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 zest. Add dry (sifted) 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 10 minutes and then remove from the pan and cool completely.

  Icing

  1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened

  8 tablespoons butter, softened (1 stick)

  1 cup powdered sugar

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

  ½ 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.

  Chocolate Bars with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

  Hayley’s mother, Janet, baked chocolate bars with chocolate ganache frosting to celebrate Rory’s recovery. She has yet to share the recipe. But chocolate ganache, which can be drizzled on anything, including wedding cake, is basically two ingredients—heavy cream and good-quality chocolate—and sometimes a dab of butter. And happily for all of us, my friend Pat Kerens shared her family’s recipe, which sounds very much like the treats that Janet Snow baked—rich and delicious!

  Chocolate Bars

  4 oz. good-quality unsweetened chocolate, chopped

  ½ cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces (1 stick)

  1 cup white sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  2 eggs

  ¾ cup flour

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter an 8-inch square pan. Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Remove pan from heat and stir in the sugar. Whisk in the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the flour and salt. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake 25 minutes. Cool.

  Ganache Frosting

  3 oz. good-quality semisweet chocolate, chopped

  1/3 cup heavy cream

  1 tablespoon unsalted butter

  Melt the chocolate, cream, and butter over low heat in a double boiler. Remove from the heat, cool, and then pour on the chocolate bars. Cut into squares and serve. Store in the refrigerator or freezer.

  Read on for a sneak peek at the next Key West Food Critic Mystery,

  coming in December 2014 from Obsidian.

  Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

  —H. Jackson Brown, Jr., The Complete Life’s Little Instruction Book

  My cell phone bleated from the deck outside, where I’d left it to avoid procrastinating via text messages, Facebook updates, or simply lounging in the glorious December sunshine with the resident cats and watching the world go by. The biggest interview of my career as a food critic was scheduled for this afternoon and I wanted—no, needed—to be ready.

  Miss Gloria, my adorable senior citizen houseboat-mate, hollered from her rocking chair overlooking the water. “It’s your mother. Shall I answer?”

  “Mind telling her I’ll call back in an hour?”

  Miss Gloria would relish the opportunity to chat with her anyway, and maybe her intercession would slash my time on the phone with Mom in half when I returned the call. I adore my mother, honest. But it had still been a shock when she announced she’d rented a place in Key West for the winter season. Wouldn’t it be so much fun to spend Christmas in paradise together? And New Year’s … and Martin Luther King Day … and Valentine’s Day? You get the picture. Mom had followed Diana Nyad’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Key West with rapt attention. When Diana overcame sharks, jellyfish, rough water, and advancing age to complete her 103-mile swim on her fifth try, at age sixty-four, Mom took it to heart.

  “Diana says we should never give up,” she announced on the phone a couple of months ago. “Why not be bold, be fiercely bold, and go out and chase your dreams?”

  “Why not? You should go for your dream too,” I remember telling my mother. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m thinking of coming to Key West for the winter!”

  Oh brother. My big solo adventure had turned into How I Met Your Mother.

  Half an hour after the phone call, Miss Gloria and our two cats padded inside to report on their conversation with Mom. I stroked my boy, Evinrude, from ears to tail, his fur warm from basking in the sun.

  “She’s hoping we can swing by in half an hour to look at her condo and have a little lunch,” Miss Gloria said. “Sam is flying in later tonight, so this may be her best shot at ‘girls-only’ time for a while. And then she starts her job at Small Chef at Large on Monday. Jennifer’s already assigned her to head up a couple of the Christmas parties they’re catering.”

  Exhibit two: my mother’s new job at Small Chef. You had to give her credit for having sheer brass guts. How long had it taken me to land my position as food critic at Key Zest? A couple of months at least. And lots of groveling and dozens of sample restaurant reviews. Key West is chockablock with talented, overqualified folks who swarm to every decent job opening like roaches to crumbs. And yet my mother had landed a position with the premier caterer in town after meeting her once, at my best friend Connie’s wedding reception last spring.
And she’d only been here a week, and she was already best friends with half the Conchs on the island.

  “Give me fifteen minutes to finish this up, and we’ll go,” I told Miss Gloria. I tweaked the list of questions to ask Edel Waugh when we met later, then changed out of my sweats and into a pair of slim-fitting black jeans and a red swing shirt, which drew the eye away from the waistline and matched my sneakers. Christmas was the one time of year when I broke my own rule about not wearing red because it clashed with my auburn hair. Miss Gloria was waiting for me on the deck, wearing the first in a deep rotation of Christmas sweatshirts, this one spangly with sequins and glitter-dusted reindeer.

  “You look so cute!” we said at the same time.

  We locked the cats up in the houseboat—things get a little dicier on the island during the high season with an uptick in partying visitors and in the homeless population—and headed down the dock to the parking lot where I keep my scooter. Miss Gloria began to sing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” as she fastened on her pink helmet and swung her leg over the bike. We puttered down Southard Street to the end of the island, Miss G pointing out which Conch houses had been newly decorated for the season. The specialty here of course is white lights wound around the trunks of palm trees. Who could be grumpy on a day like this?

  Ten minutes later, we rolled past the wrought iron gates and the guardhouse that mark the entrance to the Truman Annex complex and took a right onto Emma Street, the last lane before the Navy’s harbor, aka the Mole. My mother could not have afforded a seasonal rental in this neighborhood, except that her boyfriend, Sam, had gotten excited about a winter getaway and bankrolled a nice house just blocks from my ex Chad Lutz’s condo. When the gates closed at six p.m., there was only one way out of the neighborhood; it would be hard to avoid him. If I wasn’t already inured to running into Lutz the Putz, I would be by Easter, when Mom headed north.

  Mom came bursting out of the front door onto her new home’s wide wooden porch and hugged us both. “My two favorite ladies,” she yelped. “I’ve made chicken salad and cupcakes. And I have all afternoon to visit. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour and we can eat out by the pool.”

  “I can’t stay long,” I told her. “I have an interview set up with the chef at the Bistro on the Bight.”

  “The new restaurant opening on the harbor?” Mom asked. “I read about it in the Citizen. I am dying to meet her. Any chance— ”

  “Sorry, Mom.” I cut her off and grinned. “I am happy to share a lot of things with you, but not my job.”

  I’m the food critic for the Key West style magazine, Key Zest. It’s complicated because we have only four people on staff. One of them, co-owner Ava Faulkner, despises me and would happily can me at the first opportunity. And another, editor Wally Beile, makes my heartstrings and other body parts twang in a most unprofessional way.

  “I don’t think bringing my mother along would give the appearance that I know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s okay, honey,” she said. “I don’t have time anyway.” Then she gripped my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “I swear, Hayley Catherine Snow, I will not cramp your style while I’m here.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’m sure there’s room for two Snow women on this island.” I wasn’t sure, really, but I was going to try hard to make it work. Because the truth was, she was my biggest fan, and a lot of fun besides. And, let’s face it, utterly out of my control.

  • • •

  As you might expect from our island’s near-Caribbean status, Key West restaurants tend to be casual, with wide plank floors, doors thrown open to the outdoors, and waiters with tattoos, cutoffs, and weathered faces. Bistro on the Bight had not adopted this trend. The designers had set the eatery apart with clean, spare decor heavy on stainless steel and copper trim. Orchids bloomed on every table, and I noticed no funky odors—almost unavoidable in a humid climate when a place had been around a while. I jotted a few notes on my phone and waved to the server, who had emerged from a swinging door that I figured must lead to the kitchen. He was clean-shaven and dressed in a full-body white apron with all black underneath, as though he might have just flown in from New York City.

  “I have an appointment with Ms. Waugh. I’m Hayley Snow.”

  “The chef is expecting you,” the server said, and led me to a table for two in the far corner of the room near the kitchen. “Can I bring you a beverage?”

  “No, thanks,” I said, pointing to the BPA-free water bottle clipped to the side of my backpack. I was still swimming from a second glass of my mother’s Arnold Palmer—half lemonade, half iced tea—one of the drinks in the running for her Southern Christmas party menu. “I’d love to look at the menu while I’m waiting, though.”

  He crossed the room to the hostess stand and returned with a crisp linen folder. “She’ll be with you shortly.”

  As he exited through the swinging door, I heard a husky voice from the kitchen. “This is not rocket science. You need to prepare it exactly as I showed you yesterday. Our customers don’t want a new adventure every time they order a dish—they want what they loved last time and the time before. Exactly as the recipe is written. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, chef,” chorused a few voices.

  I began to peruse the pristine pages of the menu, immediately drawn to the shrimp salad with fennel and orange and a roasted chicken with pommes aligot, a recipe featuring potatoes mashed with heavy cream, garlic, and cheese. My mouth began to water even though I’d just eaten.

  The kitchen door swung open again, banging against the shiny wood trim on the wall. A petite woman with a pink face, rosebud lips, and curls of black hair escaping from her toque barreled over to my table. She thrust her hand at me and, when I took it, squeezed it like a lemon pinched in a vise.

  “Edel Waugh,” she said. “You must be Ms. Snow. I appreciate you taking the time to write the feature.”

  “Delighted to meet you,” I said. “I have some questions prepared, if that’s okay.” I had the sense that this small, fierce woman would roll right over me if I didn’t take the lead. She nodded, sat down across from me, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You have developed two very successful restaurants in New York. Why not stick with what you’ve already got humming? Why Key West?”

  She flashed a quick grin, rubbed a finger over her chin, which had a spot of something on it—grease? Gravy? Though I couldn’t think of any dish I’d seen in her repertoire that involved gravy. Which seemed a shame, really. My stomach gave a little rumble of agreement.

  “New York is fabulous in December—the lights, the crowds, the festivity. January and February? Dead. I’m an ambitious person,” she said, tapping her fist on the table, which bobbled a little under the impact. A frown crossed her face and she snapped her fingers and called for the waiter who’d greeted me. “Leo?” He trotted across the room. “As soon as Ms. Snow and I are finished, you need to look at this table,” she told him, rocking it for emphasis. “Our diners should not have to endure an unsteady eating surface.” He backed away with a sheepish look on his face, and she returned her attention to me.

  “Truth is, as in many arenas, a female chef has to work harder than a man to get to the top levels. The work is brutal—long hours, heavy lifting, staffing issues, money problems. Of course male chefs have those challenges too, but women are assumed to be less creative than men, less driven, less than men in actually any way you can imagine. But I don’t buy that.”

  Again she stared me down. It was hard to imagine anyone would dare consider her less than a man.

  “I have some information to share with you that you can read before you write your piece. Menus, of course, but also my training manuals for kitchen and front-of-the-house staff.” She pushed a folder across the table.

  “Let’s go for a spin around the kitchen, assuming you’re interested?”

  She whisked me through the gleaming kitchen, which smelled amazing—onions frying, sauce simmering, c
hicken roasting—and introduced me to a few of the staff. They seemed very professional, if a bit harried and distant from the chef. There was no question about who would be in charge of what came out of this kitchen—every detail—from the amuse-bouche to the sprigs of parsley garnishing the dinner plates.

  After we’d finished the tour, Chef Edel walked me out through the restaurant to the dock along the water. “Before you write anything up, I’d like you to come back, spend a few hours in the kitchen. I think you’ll understand what we’re trying to do here in a way you couldn’t by listening to me talk—or even from the brief visit we just had.” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Honestly? I’m not quite sure that Key West will be able to appreciate my kind of food—the islanders may be too provincial. I mean that literally and figuratively,” she added.

  I stared, unsure what I could possibly say. Maybe she didn’t realize that a large chunk of the population came from points north. It was a peculiar blind spot, to say the least.

  “How would tomorrow around four p.m. work in your schedule? Tomorrow night is our soft opening.”

  I agreed without checking my phone because nothing felt more pressing than the opportunity to watch this whirlwind chef in action.

  “There’s a reason I asked for you to write this piece,” she said.

  She’d asked for me? “What’s that?”

  She fidgeted, gazing over the horizon for a moment—the first time I’d noticed her looking insecure about anything—then swung those intense blue eyes back to me. “Some things have started to go a little wrong.”

  Now I was really puzzled. And curious. Surely she wasn’t asking for my culinary expertise—my tweaks on her recipes would not be welcome. “What kinds of things?”

  “Recipes altered. Things gone missing. Like that. I’ll discuss it with you further on Thursday. We have a soft opening coming up very soon and my staff is acting as though they’ve never set foot in a professional kitchen.”

  “I’d love to help if I can. But why me?”

  “I’ve heard about you. You’re good with puzzles. And fearless. To the point of being a little dumb.”

  Which struck me almost dumb for the second time that day. If she was trying to butter me up, her technique needed honing in a way I was certain her knives did not.