Stir Me Up
Page 27
INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray entire top and insides of muffin tin with generous coating of non-stick cooking spray.
Make muffins: Cream butter and sugar together, then add vanilla and eggs as it continues to mix. Set this bowl of wet ingredients aside. Then, in a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients. Blend wet and dry ingredients together. Hand mixing is preferred.
Each muffin tin will eventually be ¾ filled with batter. Place half this amount of muffin batter into each tin. Then add apples and cinnamon sugar to each tin, pressing gently. Top this with remaining batter until each is ¾ full. Use a butter knife to spread batter evenly. The idea is to get the apples in the middle.
Make streusel: Once your butter is fully at room temperature and very soft, mix ingredients for the streusel together with a fork until fine and crumbly. Add some crumbles to the top of each muffin and press down very gently with the tips of your fingers so they adhere.
Bake until lightly browned, 12 to 14 minutes for regular sized muffins, 15 to 17 for jumbo muffins. Remove carefully from pan, using knife to loosen top and sides.
Makes a dozen regular or six jumbo muffins.
Midnight Soup
Cami creates this with someone special in mind...
INGREDIENTS FOR THE BASIC STOCK:
2 2-inch pieces veal or beef marrow bones. You can order these from a butcher. Ask them to cut the bones into two-inch pieces and split them for you.
1 large turnip—peeled and cut into large dice
2 medium yellow onions—peeled and cut into large dice
2 cups carrots—peeled and ends removed, diced
2 cups celery—tough ends removed, diced
2 26-oz. boxes of natural, unsalted, no MSG added beef broth
2 cups water
2 bay leaves
INGREDIENTS FOR THE MEATBALLS:
½ cup crushed saltine crackers
¼ cup half and half
2 shallots—finely diced
1 Tbsp. fresh parsley—minced
1 stalk celery—finely diced
1 large egg
1 tsp. Herbes de Provence
1/8 tsp. ground white pepper
¼ tsp. kosher or sea salt
8 oz. ground veal or beef
8 oz. ground pork
1 Tbsp. olive oil, for frying
INGREDIENTS FOR THE OTHER SOUP GARNISHES:
1 cup fresh parsley—finely minced, stems removed
2 cups baby spinach leaves—chiffonade (stack together, roll and slice into thin strips)
2/3 cup fresh chervil—loosely chopped, stems removed
5 oz. shiitake mushrooms—small dice
INGREDIENTS TO FINISH THE SOUP:
2 Tbsp. Calvados or other apple brandy
1 ½ tsp. kosher or sea salt
Dash of ground white pepper
¼ cup flour
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. heavy cream
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
Rice cooker with steamer insert or pot with steamer basket and lid
Grease strainer
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Place marrow bones in a small casserole dish and bake for 15 min. in oven until lightly browned.
In a large stock pot, add the browned bones, turnip, onions, carrots, celery, beef stock, water and bay leaves. Cover and cook over medium heat for one hour. This is your basic stock.
While the basic stock is simmering, make the meatballs. Mix the crackers and the half and half in a small bowl and let sit until mushy. Then mash together to form a paste. Combine with the rest of the ingredients and mix preferably by hand. Form small meatballs, about 1 inch in diameter. Then set up your steamer basket, either in the rice cooker or in the pot with the water at the bottom. Place the meatballs in the steamer basket, making sure they don’t touch each other, and steam until cooked through. Cut into one to check and see. You may have to do this in two or three batches. Place the steamed meatballs on paper towels and set aside.
This is also a good time to prepare the other soup garnishes. Chop up each one and set them aside.
After about an hour of cooking the basic stock, turn the heat off the stock pot and let sit for five to ten minutes. Then remove the bones, vegetables and bay leaves and strain the stock through your grease strainer. As a side note, the vegetables are delicious to eat either by themselves or as a side dish. Return the degreased stock to a clean dry stock pot and reheat on medium. Then prepare your roux.
A roux is a thickening agent for soup. Take out a small non-stick pan and melt the butter. Once melted, whisk the flour into the butter to form a paste and continue to whisk as you add, by dribbles, about ¼ cup of hot stock to the paste to thin it out. Whisk constantly so no lumps form. Transfer this paste into the stock pot and whisk constantly until stock comes to a boil. While stirring, add the salt, pepper and Calvados. Once the soup boils, turn the heat down to low and let sit on low while you brown the meatballs.
Set a large frying pan on medium-high heat, and when the pan is hot, add a tablespoon of olive oil and sauté the meatballs very quickly by shaking the pan back and forth just to brown them slightly. Remove to paper towels to drain.
Shut the heat on the stock pot for a moment and add the cream to finish the soup. Once the cream is added and blended, you can turn the heat back on and add the browned meatballs and other soup garnishes. Taste the soup and adjust for salt and pepper.
Makes 6 servings
Special thanks to executive chef Dennis Garber for his help with this recipe.
For step-by-step photos of this and other recipes from the novel, please visit Sabrina online at www.sabrinaelkins.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest love and gratitude go to my husband, son and daughters, who are endlessly supportive and have sustained me with praise, reassurances, cappuccinos, and extra tissues whenever needed during the course of writing this novel.
Big thank you hugs to Laura Bradford, my phenomenal agent and strongest ally in all matters related to my career. Her guidance, advice and advocacy mean the world to me. And thank you Natalie Lakosil, for being such a big fan of the novel so early on.
One of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had has been working with my amazing editor Margo Lipschultz, who loved this novel from the first and has been its enthusiastic champion ever since. I am extremely fortunate to be able to work with her.
My grateful appreciation also goes to Natashya Wilson, head of Harlequin TEEN, Annie Stone for ensuring the production process ran smoothly, Amy Jones and Mary Sheldon in Marketing, Kathleen Oudit in the Art Department, editorial assistant Lauren Smulski, and all the other exceptional individuals at Harlequin TEEN and Harlequin TEEN Digital First who helped my dream of publication become a reality.
I owe an enormous debt to my long-time writer’s group—Carl Oliver, Ricki Ristuccia, Ann Stalcup, and executive chef Dennis Garber. They read many drafts for me and aided me in countless ways.
I’m thankful as well for the help of webmaster Leonard Morgan, artist Steven E. Gordon, reader Susanne Coie, and high school teachers Matt Micek and Ellen Chevalier.
In researching Julian’s injuries and recovery process, I received valuable assistance from the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, White River Junction VA Medical Center, the Amputee Coalition, clinical psychologist Sandra Houston, PhD, who specializes in rehabilitation and intimacy issues for amputees, and friend and colleague Laura Elliott, aunt of a heroic amputee war vet. Though I sincerely hope there are none, any errors regarding this subject are mine alone.
About the Author
SABRINA ELKINS is a former journalist who worked for the Los Angeles Daily News and other newspapers in the greater Los Angeles area. Prior to this she worked in advertising, writing ad copy for corporate travel accounts and major motion pictures. Her first job out of college was as an administrative assistant to an executiv
e chef and a food & beverage director at a Four Seasons hotel. She also spent some time working as a prep cook for Spago in Beverly Hills.
Sabrina received her Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Southern California. While in graduate school, she had the privilege of studying fiction writing under renowned author Hubert Selby, Jr., and comedy writing under famed comedian Shelley Berman. She is a past participant of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Summer Writing Workshop.
Raised in the woods of Vermont, Sabrina now lives in the greater Los Angeles area with her husband and three children. Her hobbies include yoga, hiking and experimenting in the kitchen. Stir Me Up is her first novel.
Visit Sabrina Elkins online at
www.sabrinaelkins.com
Facebook.com/elkins.sabrina
Twitter: @sabrina_elkins
Connect with us for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Visit Harlequin.com
We like you—why not like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/HarlequinTEEN
Follow us on Twitter: Twitter.com/HarlequinTEEN
Read our blog for all the latest news on our authors and books: HarlequinBlog.com
ISBN-13: 9781459254732
STIR ME UP
Copyright © 2013 by Sabrina Decker
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com