Cooking and writing are creative pursuits. I often have food in my books because I believe sharing food is romantic and appetites for love and food are often connected. And I simply like to write about food. I've been cooking for 30 years. Here are a couple of my "secrets" I'd like to share with you and a couple of "food" snippets from some of my books.
1. Use
an egg slicer to slice mushrooms. 2. Mixing batter for toll house cookies in the Cuisineart, using the metal blade, not the dough blade, produces perfect cookies and saves your arm.
3. You
don’t really need to brown the meat when you make chili. If you buy very lean
meat you can throw it in raw with the tomatoes and stuff and it’ll cook
through. Refrigerate it and you can easily skim the fat off the top.
4. Melt
butter in a microwave. Much less chance of burning it.
5. Make
a roué for gravy. Never have lumps again.
6. Pie
pastry is lighter and flakier if you use orange juice instead of water.
7. Cook
a turkey upside down for at least 60% of the cooking time for a juicier breast.
Christmas dinner at Clare Quill's house in Maine. She's Gunther's mother.
A
tempting, spiral-cut ham shared a place of honor with a roasted turkey on the
long table. Casseroles of spoonbread, green beans almondine, and mac and cheese were lined up, along with a green
salad. Platters of chocolate pixies, almond crescents, lemon bars, and molasses
cookies graced a sideboard. A punch bowl filled to the brim with warm, spiced
wine stood on a cart with other alcoholic beverages and mixers.
The
doorbell began to ring and new people seemed to arrive every ten minutes all
night long. The crowd varied from young to old as Clare’s friends and neighbors
stopped by to sip some Christmas cheer and graze at her buffet.
RED CARPET ROMANCE
Romantic dinner ordered in at Quinn Roberts house.
He nodded. The buzzer rang. The food
had arrived. She poured the wine while Quinn answered the door. Hunger gnawed
at her stomach. Camping out at her sister’s apartment, sleeping on the couch,
and helping with her kids, meals had been slapdash at best. A steady diet of
chicken nuggets, scrambled eggs, and fast-food hamburgers made her queasy. She
survived on as little food as possible to keep her stomach from objecting. She
craved real food, grown-up food, a civilized meal.
Quinn raised a large bag as he came
through the archway into the kitchen. Susanna’s mouth watered. He unwrapped the
food—Coquilles Saint Jacques, wild
rice, and haricot verts. Napoleons
for dessert. She tucked into her food, chewing slowly, closing her eyes to
savor every bite.
“You look like you haven’t eaten in
years.” He popped a scallop into his mouth.
“I haven’t eaten grown-up food in a
long time. Bunking in with Annie and her kids. We ate kid food all the time. If
I never see another chicken nugget…”
Check out my books on my WEBSITE
THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!
5 comments:
Despite the fact I just had breakfast, I'm hungry again from reading this. Lovely blog today.
I have some food scenes in some of my books. Food can be very sexy...Thx for sharing the great recipes....Yum!
I gained five pounds just reading your blog! I agree -- food adds a lot to a scene by incorporating all the senses. Taste, scent, visual, texture, and even sound if your character is eating something crunchy!
Food scenes do add a great sensual touch to a book and you do it so well.
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