by Delia Rosen
In another medium-size bowl, mix the eggs (or egg whites), butter, and vanilla.
Now combine all the ingredients in the large mixing bowl that holds the noodles. Fold the ingredients together thoroughly. Place them in a large (8-inch) square brownie pan that has been spritzed with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and take a breather. Don’t worry, though, you’re almost there.
Mix all topping ingredients together (plain bread crumbs, brown sugar, cinnamon, and unsalted butter) in another bowl. Evenly sprinkle this mixture on top of the kugel, put it in the preheated oven, and bake uncovered for about an hour. Remove when you think the top looks crunchy (but not dry).
Tip: For bursts of fruity sweetness, you can add ¼ cup raisins to the kugel—simply stir them into the egg, butter, and vanilla mix; the rest of your preparation stays the same. At Murray’s, we prefer flame raisins because they’re large, plump, and generally stay moist, but any type of raisin will do.
KITCHEN TIPS FROM THE PROS
Here are a few useful pointers from the kitchen crew at Murray’s Deli.
1) Zipper storage bags are great for marinating. Just place marinade and meat in a bag, close it tightly, set it in a shallow dish, and put it in the refrigerator—that’s it! No tools, no mess. When the meat needs turning, flip the bag over and give it a few squeezes to distribute the marinade.
2) It’s a good idea to keep a box of instant potatoes on hand in case your soup, stew, or gravy needs some thickening. Add a small amount of the instant potatoes at a time, stir, let it cook, and continue adding in increments until the liquid reaches the consistency you desire.
3) You can keep your celery crisp in one of two ways. Either cut the stalks and place them in a glass of cold, salted water, or wrap them tightly in aluminum foil and store them in the fridge.
4) Speaking of the fridge—be careful of what you freeze! Leftovers containing garlic or peppers will taste a bit stronger once they’ve been frozen.
5) If you bake in glass pans, the light-colored pans are the best. Darker colors bake hotter.
6) Keep your pizza wheel handy even when there’s no pie around. It’s great for slicing grilled cheese and many other toasted delights.
7) When making your favorite coleslaw, add some slices of green pepper for a fresh garden taste.
8) One frequently asked question is, “What’s the difference between frying in a little oil and sautéing?” The answer is, “For the most part, ‘sauté’ sounds better!”
9) Nonprofessional cooks tend to slice their meat with the grain, but you might have noticed that most restaurants serve meat that’s been sliced against the grain. We recommend that as a standard practice. Even a thin portion of meat will hold together better when it is sliced against the grain. You’ll have a nice presentation and it’s easier to eat.
10) A major don’t-forget-type tip is that, pound for pound, a boneless roast takes longer to cook than a roast with a bone. The bone acts as a heat core carrying the heat to the center of the roast.
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ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVY
A Nashville Katz Mystery
By Delia Rosen
Coming in October 2011
Where books are sold
Chapter One
“The Creeping Leeches?” said Thomasina. “Oh my Lawfy, what kinda sick, disgustin’ name is that?”
I eyed the logo on the side of the van. Although Thom’s reading of it wasn’t quite errorless, her reaction was definitely understandable. I had worries of my own about the realistic painted leeches forming the letters being enough to kill people’s appetites. But transportation was transportation; we couldn’t afford to be choosy.
Thom should have known making a fuss wouldn’t help. Then again, when had knowing better than to complain ever stopped her? Under any circumstance?
Luke frowned at her from the driver’s seat. Moments earlier, he’d swung into the alley between my restaurant and the country-and-western night club next door, pulling to a halt in front of the service and delivery entrance. With an unlit cigarette poking from my mouth—I was trying to gratify my oral fixation while quitting the habit cold turkey—I’d been waiting there with my grumpy manager for about fifteen minutes.
“Before you criticize, Thom, you oughtta try ’n read it right,” he said through his lowered passenger window. “Ain’t no ‘the’ in it. And it’s written CreepLeeches—one word—for a reason.”
“And what might that reason be?”
“Reason’s that the rockabilly group that owns the van ought to know how they want their name spelled. And you’re lookin’ at their official tour vehicle.”
“That so?”
“You better believe it,” Luke said. “And stickin’ to the point, you got to have some respect. A name’s a name. Like mine’s Luke. Like yours is Thomasina Jackson. And like Nash here’s, well, y’know…”
Luke scratched under his ear, realizing I wasn’t the best example he could have chosen. With me stuff always gets a little complicated. F’rinstance, Nash was short for Nashville Katz, my full nickname. The “Nashville” part referred to the location of my restaurant—Murray’s—which happened to be the first and only Jewish deli in Music City. The “Katz” part came from my real name, Gwen Katz. And the whole thing was a play on the title of some old Lovin’ Spoonful song that unquestionably could have been written about my late uncle Murray, from whom I’d inherited the place right before my messy, humiliating New York divorce from the Pied Piper of Stripper-land was finalized.
Told you it was tricky, didn’t I?
“Okay, we better forget Nash,” Luke said. He was still looking out at Thom. “I want to hear where you figure we’d be if CreepLeeches hadn’t loaned us their van.”
“Inside, where we belong, preparin’ for dinner…and if you don’t stop repeatin’ that awful name I’m gonna puke!” Thom replied. “Say what you want, I ain’t a deliverywoman for some rich old crackpot.”
I checked my watch and decided it was time to interrupt. As much as they enjoyed bickering with each other, we had to get cracking. “Easy, Thom, that’s unfair,” I said. “Lolo Baker’s a nice lady.”
“One who’s got nothin’ better to do with her nights than playact with her friends.”
“Don’t change the subject. We were talking about her dinner party—”
“Murder party,” Thom interrupted. “You ought to be clear about what it is while tryin’ to persuade me that she ain’t batty.”
“And you ought to stop being so obnoxious,” I said.
Thom’s brow furrowed under her bob of silver hair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I sighed. “It means it’s ridiculous for us to argue about this. Audience participation dinner shows are mega-popular everywhere. And Lolo’s into reading murder mysteries. I think her throwing a mystery-themed dinner is a fun idea.”
“Well, I think it’s trouble,” she said. “She can get half-naked men in Spartacus costumes to serve her food for all I care. But since when are we in the caterin’ business?”
“Since Lolo offered to pay us big time.”
“Then you admit this is about her havin’ oodles of money.”
“Did I ever tell you it hurt? You know how much we’re taking in for the party. Businesses have to grow—”
“Says who?” Thom frowned disapprovingly. “In all the years he owned the deli, Murray never mentioned a word about growin’.”
“Maybe that’s true,” I said. “But things change.”
“And how might that be? How’s anything different besides you bein’ in charge nowadays? And your boyfriend, Royce Ramsey, wantin’ to buy us out.”
I looked at her. “That isn’t fair. It’s been six months since Royce approached us. And furthermore, he isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Oh no?” Her tone went from critical to knowing. “Then what you gonna call him, sugar?”
The phrase unstoppable turbocharged sex dynamo jumped into
my head, but I wasn’t sure that would help make my case. “If you want to mudwrestle, count me out,” I replied instead. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that our insurance premiums went sky high after the flood. With rates being what they are, we can use some added revenue. And special events planning is just an extension of what we already do. It isn’t as if this is totally unfamiliar territory.”
Thom stood there scowling at me a few seconds. Then she nodded back toward the van. “Might I ask how rollin’ up to Brentwood in that eyesore’s gonna make us look? Or you really think Lolo’s a fan ’a the Slime Bugs?”
“CreepLeeches!” Luke shouted out his window. “I’d suggest you get that straight, because the band’s got itself a huge followin’.”
“Yeah? In what swamp?”
“You ain’t the slightest bit funny.” Luke shook his head. “People do us a favor, we ought to be grateful. My cousin Zach and his boys were even kind enough to remove their instruments—well, except for a drum kit and some cables, I guess—so we’d have plenty of room for food.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, tapping my watch, “we’d better get ready to roll.”
Thom looked at me. “So you really intend to go through with this harebrained deal?”
“Right you are, Thom. We’re professionals, and whatever you might think this job’s important to us. I have absolutely no intention of blowing it.”
She opened her mouth to answer, then seemed to change her mind. It was almost two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and the murder mystery dinner was set for seven P.M. Moreover, we’d booked it several weeks before. Her grumbling aside, Thomasina really was as professional as they came. She would have never backed out—or expected me to back out—at that late stage.
Losing the sour puss was another story, of course, and I was getting a serious eyeful it when the service door swung open and Newt—that’s short for Newton Trout, nothing complicated there—poked his head out into the alley. He was wearing his cook’s cap and apron and had wrapped his bushy brown whiskers in a beard net.
“Hope ya’ll are good n’ ready,” he said. “Everything’s about set to go.”
I turned to face him and started ticking off items on my mental checklist. “The turkey—?”
“Carved.”
“The corned beef and pastrami?”
“Laid out on platters.”
“The goulash…”
“Packed in a hot food carrier,” Newt said. “Same for the stuffed cabbage and meatballs.”
“Knishes, kugel, latkes, kasha varnishkes…”
“Them too. Plus we got plenty of supper rolls.”
“Pickles?”
“Sours, half sours, you name it.”
“And the sides?”
“I just got the lid down on a six-pound tub of coleslaw…it was so chock full I practically had to stomp it shut with my foot,” Newt said. “Jimmy’s crammed another one with potato salad.”
I was feeling appreciative when panic struck. “The Sterno! Oh crap, I forgot to order the—”
“Watch your foul mouth,” Thomasina interrupted. “When you gonna learn better’n to be vulgar?”
“Right, sorry, let’s try this again,” I said. “Oh Lawsy, Newt, this is a real bitch-stinker of a screwup. What in goddamned hell are we going to do now?”
He deliberately avoided looking in Thom’s direction. “Don’t fret. A.J. stopped by our wholesaler on her way into work, bought a whole carton of Canned Heat.”
“Has anyone seen her yet?”
“She’s waitin’ in that fancy new convertible of hers.” Newt jerked his chin toward the outdoor parking lot at our rear. “I asked one the bus boys to dig the warmin’ trays outta the storeroom. He’s gonna put them in her backseat so she can drive them over to the party.”
Relieved, I exhaled through my mouth, the cigarette almost shooting from it like a dart from a ninja blowgun. “What about Medina and Vernon?”
“They already started out separate in Vern’s rust-bucket.”
I nodded. That would leave us seriously undermanned at the restaurant and force Raylene Sue Chappell, one of my best waitresses, to work the cash register. But I really didn’t see an alternative. Lolo was plugged in to Nashville high society in a major way, and some of the city’s most influential people would be among her guests that night. If word of mouth on our first catering gig was positive, there would be many more coming over the horizon.
“All right, Newt, I think we’ve covered everything,” I said. “As long as you’re okay with holding the fort tonight…”
“Don’t you worry,” he said. “We’ll be fi—”
He broke off all at once, gawking at the van with his mouth wide open. I realized he hadn’t yet noticed the logo on its side.
“Whoa…is it my imagination or are those letters supposed to look like slugs?”
“Worms,” Thomasina said.
“Leeches!” Luke exclaimed inside the van. “Can’t any of you folks read?”
Newt stared at him, his brow crinkling in disgust. “I stand corrected,” he said. “I mean, leeches…they’re gonna look a lot less nauseatin’ when they roll in with our food, now won’t they?”
Four hours later, Thom and I were in the immense dining hall of Lolo Baker’s restored antebellum plantation house, giving our buffet tables a final inspection. All pillars, porticoes, porches, gables and hanging eaves, the estate was set on three acres of farmland that had been in ’s family for generations—or more accurately in her late husband Colton’s family. It had been years, if not decades, since crops had grown in its fields, but Lolo didn’t need their production in order to stay rolling in ripe green stacks of moolah. Thanks to Colton making some successful high-yield investments back in the freewheeling 1990s, she could afford to sit back and let the value of her financial shares grow…and grow and grow and grow. No watering, fertilizer, or plows required.
“Well now, it seems to me everybody’s here,” Thom said, looking up from a tray of beef goulash. The room’s mahogany pocket doors had been slid back into the wall, giving us a wide open view of the parlor where Lolo’s guests were having cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. “Another few minutes and they can come fill their faces before the stupidity begins…though I suspect some of the men might stay behind to get better acquainted with AJ’s bra.”
I didn’t say anything. Once we’d hit the road, Thom had gone from griping about the party itself to the outfits we’d worn. I had prepared my responses in advance, figuring I was bound to hear her squawk about it at some point on the way out to Brentwood. And same as when I’d seen the band logo on the van, I frankly understood her exasperation—although I wasn’t about to be latke batter to her hot oil and let her cook me till I was done.
Uncle Murray had wanted the atmosphere at the deli to be what he’d always called Western casual. As long as the staff dressed neatly he was satisfied.
But it was easy to distinguish diners from servers in a restaurant, where the customers stayed put at tables while the waiters and waitresses came around and took their orders. At special events, it was different. Because partygoers moved around and circulated, they had to be able to identify the servers in a crowd. That meant uniforms were a must.
I’d opted for basic black. Shirts and trousers for the guys, skirts and blouses for Thom, AJ and me, pairing them respectively with honey-gold silk neckties and feminine scarves of the same color and material. I told everybody they were free to choose their own footwear and tweak their outfits with whatever jazzy personal touches they chose, as long as they didn’t stray from the color combo.
It still didn’t go over well with the staff. Forget what I said about accents, they’d responded like I was forcing them into Sunday school outfits. And I admit their unhappiness surprised me. I didn’t see what was wrong with wearing black. In fact, I thought it was kind of cool. Johnny Cash wore it. The E Street Band wears it. So does Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Well okay, I realize Angelina is
n’t much of a recommendation.
Anyway, after seeing how disgruntled they were, I’d decided to set a positive leadership model in catering couture. Besides adding a wide retro patent-leather belt to my getup, I’d squeezed into a pair of black sky-high heels that made my feet look sexy, my legs longer, and my hips swingier…not to mention adding four or five sylphlike inches to my height. So what if they bunched my toes together like swollen red radishes? I’d had confidence in my ability to keep from screaming in pain till I got home and took them off. And bear in mind I was trying to prevent a full-scale staff mutiny.
Unfortunately AJ had pushed—or maybe I ought to say push-upped—the bounds of professional attire a little too far south of the modesty line, wearing her blouse half unbuttoned from the top, getting plenty of lift from the aforementioned bra, and guiding the eye down the Major Cleavage Expressway with a string tie straight out of a Dallas cowgirl pinup.
One thing, though. With the party barely underway my tootsies were already sore from rubbing together. And since that probably wasn’t also true of AJ’s twin peaks, I felt it was a little unfair for me to stand in judgment of their exposure level. Or stand, period.
I looked through the entry into the wainscoted parlor, where AJ was offering hors d’oeuvres to the guests, including a short, roly-poly man who was taking in a choice view of her personal scenery.
“The girl doesn’t watch herself, she’s gonna spill out into his food,” Thom said. “That’s got to violate some health code or other, Nash. Don’tcha think?”
I kept quiet. At first it was because I didn’t want to spur her on. But then I realized I knew the man.
“Hey,” I said. “That guy over there’s Happy!”