by Ellen Byron
3. Simmer the mixture until it bubbles, add the shrimp or crawfish, and stir well. Bring the mixture to a bubble again, then reduce the heat to low. Cover the skillet and simmer the étouffée for ten to fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Serve over 1 cup of white rice per serving. Or, if you want to make it low calorie, serve it over riced cauliflower instead of rice.
Serves 6.
Pecan Pralines
Pralines can be deceptively tricky to make. Within one batch, I can wind up with chewy, soft-hard, and crystalized pralines. But you know what? All three consistencies taste delicious. So just have fun with the recipes, and like we told our daughter when she was little, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
Ingredients
1½ cups white sugar
1½ cups brown sugar
1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pecans
⅛ teaspoon salt
Instructions
1. Cover two cooking trays with tinfoil, spray the foil with cooking spray, and set aside.
2. Mix together the sugars and milk in a sturdy pot such as a Dutch oven, then cook mixture until it’s at the firm-ball stage, about 245–250 degrees. Remove and beat in the butter until it melts, then add the vanilla, salt, and nuts.
3. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the tin-foiled cookie sheets. When the pralines have hardened and cooled—you can place the trays in the freezer to harden them faster—transfer to a container for storage.
Makes around 12–24 pralines, depending on whether you make them small or large.
Variations
For almond pralines, substitute 1 teaspoon almond flavor for the vanilla and a cup of sliced almonds for the pecans.
For coconut pralines, substitute 1 teaspoon coconut flavor for the vanilla and a cup of shredded coconut for the pecans.
For rum pralines, substitute 1 teaspoon of rum for the vanilla, or even two teaspoons.
Note: If you can’t get the pralines to harden in some fashion, do what I do—turn the batch into praline topping. I’ve gifted jars of pralines-turned-topping to friends. Heat up a few tablespoonsful, pour them on ice cream, and you have one delicious dessert.
Maple Bacon Pralines
Ingredients
16 ounces pure-cane confectioner’s sugar
1 cup maple syrup
1 cup whipping cream
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup bacon bits
Instructions
1. Cover two cooking trays with tinfoil, spray the foil with cooking spray, and set aside.
2. Mix sugar, maple syrup, cream, and salt in a sturdy pot such as a Dutch oven. Cook until the mixture reaches the firm-ball stage, about 245–250 degrees. (Make sure to stir.)
3. Remove the pot from the stove, add vanilla and bacon bits, and beat vigorously for a minute or two.
4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the tinfoiled cookie sheets. When the pralines have hardened and cooled, transfer to a container for storage.
Makes about two dozen pralines.
R.I.P. Sweet Potato Pralines Recipes
Readers, forgive me. I tried, oh how I tried, but I could not come up with a successful recipe for sweet potato pralines. The inspiration for them came from a delicious patty I sampled at Southern Candymakers, a shop in New Orleans. My fingers were stained orange from a half-dozen attempts at creating my own version of this treat. I finally had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen. But I do have a bit of good news. If you come away from this book with a craving for sweet potato pralines, Southern Candymakers can ship them to you. Their website is southerncandymakers.com.
Ninette’s Rum Raisin Cake with Rum Frosting
The Cake
Ingredients
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup rum
1 box white cake mix
¼ cup water
3 egg whites
Instructions
1. Soak golden raisins in rum for thirty minutes to an hour.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. In a mixer on low speed, blend together the cake mix, water, and eggs. Turn off the mixer and add the rum and raisins. Set the mixer to medium and blend all the ingredients for two minutes.
4. Pour the batter into two greased 8-inch cake pans. Bake for 20–30 minutes, making sure to check at 20 minutes because the layers cook faster with liquor substituted for water as the batter liquid. If you insert a toothpick into the middle, it should come out clean. Do not overbake! The cake will dry out.
5. Let the cake layers cool.
The Frosting
Ingredients
1 cup softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons rum
⅛ teaspoon salt
1–3 tablespoons milk (or use rum, if you like your frosting boozier)
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
Instructions
1. Cream the butter with the vanilla, rum, salt, and 1 tablespoon of milk. Slowly add the powdered sugar, blending it well with the other ingredients. If you need to thin the frosting, add another tablespoon or two of milk—or rum!
Assembly
To assemble the cake, slice a thin layer off one of the cake layers so that it will be level on the bottom, then invert the cake layer onto a plate so that the flat side—the bottom—is facing up. (Feel free to eat the thin slice!) Frost this layer. To add the second layer, invert it onto a plate, then place it on the frosted layer with the flat side down. (This is how you get a professional-looking cake—placing flat side to flat side, that is, bottom of the layer to bottom of the layer.) Frost the rest of the cake.
Note: Remember how I recommended turning a failed batch of pralines into a successful batch of praline topping? You can also use this #epicfail as a delicious middle filling in Ninette’s rum cake.
Serves 8–16, depending on the size of the slices.
The recipe for Chulanes appears in Plantation Shudders.
The recipe for Banana Pancakes with Brown Sugar Butter appears in Mardi Gras Murder.
Lagniappe
The batture is the alluvial land that runs between the levees and the Mississippi River. It’s comprised of silt deposited by the Mississippi and can play host to a variety of trees, plants, and shrubs. While the Army Corps of Engineers manages the levee between the state’s River Road plantations and the Mississippi River, many plantation owners still own and utilize the batture. As the river changed course or flooded during the last two centuries, it often took a plantation with it. That’s what happened to the fictional Harmonie Plantation in this book—the Mississippi overwhelmed it and then retreated, leaving behind the ruins of Harmonie.
If you’re interested in learning more about the batture, especially around the New Orleans area, I highly recommend Down on the Batture by Oliver A. Houck. His wanderings through this almost-otherworldly environment make for some fascinating essays.
* * *
Never been to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival? Put it on your bucket list. From Thursday through Sunday during the last week of April and the first of May, the Fair Grounds Race Course in the city’s Mid-City neighborhood becomes home to tents and stages featuring music ranging from blues to zydeco to country to pop, and everything in between. The performing artists are as excited to be there as you are. I’ve seen Paul Simon and David Byrne wandering around the grounds, checking out the amazing array of music, food, and crafts at the festival, all of which celebrate the melting pot of cultures that is the Big Easy. Jazz Fest is where I first met a voodoo priestess who took credit cards, an anomaly that amused me so much it inspired the character of Helene Brevelle in my series. (We’ve yet to meet Helene because she’s on an endless cruise paid for by sorority girls buying her gris-gris bags in the hopes that the bags’ mojo will help land
them dates for their formals. Yup—I did that in real life!) And there really is a legendary pasta dish sold during Jazz Fest called Crawfish Monica®. Pierre Hilzom created the recipe in 1981 and named it after his wife, Monica. The recipe is a trade secret of their company, Kajun Kettle Foods, Inc., so those of us who love the dish must try to come up with our own take on it or buy the sauce from their company. If you want to learn more about this iconic festival, I highly recommend Kevin McCaffrey’s great book The Incomplete, Year-by-Year, Selectively Quirky, Prime Facts Edition of the History of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
By the way, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival may be the best-known music festival in Louisiana, but it’s only one of many. Did you know the state has more festivals than days in the year? What a wonderful statistic. I look forward to visiting as many of them as I can someday.
* * *
Since music is such an important aspect of this particular Cajun Country Mystery, I did something I rarely do in my series—I referenced a few real people. Clifton Chenier is a legendary musician considered by many to be the founder of the zydeco genre. His son, C.J. Chenier, has followed in his footsteps with his fantastic group, C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band. Another legendary performer I’d like to give a shout-out to is the incomparable jazz singer Banu Gibson. I’m going to brag for a minute and share that I’ve known Banu for years. She was the wife of my beloved late Tulane theater professor, Bruce “Buzz” Podewell. If you’ve never heard this amazing entertainer perform, check out her itinerary (http://www.banugibson.com/html/bg_homepage.asp) and pencil a gig onto your bucket list. You will thank me for this.
* * *
Carina Albieri’s story was inspired by a real-life tragedy. My wonderful hair stylist, Nuria Contreras, had a very talented assistant named Carina. There was something special about her. She was smart, kind, and lovely in a way that seemed to be from another era. Carina had a graciousness about her that would have been rare in anyone but was particularly unusual for a teenager.
During one of our sessions, I noticed Carina was quiet. She seemed pale and tired. Beset with chronic fatigue, she began missing work. Not long after that, she was diagnosed with leukemia.
Carina died a few months later. She had just turned twenty.
Sometimes people come into your life whom you may not know well but who leave a lasting impression. Carina was one of those people. Her heartbreaking, untimely death haunted me. I decided to pay homage to this lovely young woman by letting her inspire a character.
I hope readers are as moved by the fictional Carina as I was by the real girl.
Also available by Ellen Byron
CAJUN COUNTRY MYSTERIES
Mardi Gras Murder
A Cajun Christmas Killing
Body on the Bayou
Plantation Shudders
Author Biography
USA Today best-selling author Ellen Byron is a television writer, playwright, and freelance journalist. Her TV credits include Wings, Still Standing, and Just Shoot Me, and her written work has appeared in Glamour, Redbook, and Seventeen, among others. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, their daughter, and the family’s very spoiled rescue dogs. A native New Yorker, Ellen still misses her hometown and still drives like a New York cabby. This is her fifth Cajun Country Mystery.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reaction to the recipes contained in this book.
Copyright © 2019 by Ellen Byron
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-129-7
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-64385-130-3
Cover illustration by Stephen Gardner
Book design by Jennifer Canzone
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
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New York, NY 10001
First Edition: September 2019
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