Janel Gradowski's Blog, page 8

Cover Reveal: Chicken Soup & Homicide

Coming February 23!

Chicken Soup & Homicide (Culinary Competition Mysteries #2)

Amy Ridley and her friend, Sophie, have perfected their chicken soup recipe, and the winter-weary residents of Kellerton, Michigan can’t wait to watch them compete against other local chefs in the Chicken Soup Showdown. But the charity event starts out with a bang, literally, when one of the rival chefs falls out of a freezer and onto Amy. If it wasn’t stressful enough for Amy to catch a dead body, the detective in charge of the investigation targets her best friend, Carla, as the chief suspect in the murder.

In order to clear her friend’s name, Amy does her own investigating. The problem is nobody liked the arrogant murdered celebrity chef, and soon her suspect list is longer than the list of ingredients in her secret chicken soup recipe. Can Amy figure out who killed the celebrity chef? Or will Carla be spending the spring in jail?

Have A Happy New Year!

As 2014 comes to an end, I wish you all a new year full of bravery and joy. This year has been crazy, exhilarating, a bit frightening at some points and all together wondrous for me…and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Happy New Year!

 

Cookbook Review: A Kitchen In France

A Kitchen In France: A Year of Cooking In My Farmhouse

By Mimi Thorisson

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

This is a gorgeous book for food lovers. A cookbook that can be read like a novel but it is also filled with photos of food and scenes from life in the French countryside. Ms. Thorisson writes the blog, Manger. Her husband, Oddur, is a photographer and he took most of the photos for the book. It’s a coffee table book because of the size and beautiful photography, but also a cookbook that will be referenced many times over the course of a year because of the recipes.

The recipes are organized by season featuring the culinary bounty that is found in the markets or foraged from the land around the Thorisson’s house in the Medoc region of France. Some of the recipes that caught my eye are Chou Farci – Savoy cabbage stuffed with a savory pork filling, Lyonnaise Sausage Roll – brioche baked with sausage inside, and Apple Tart with Orange Flower Water – a simple dessert with the unexpected addition of the orange flower water. For the most part the recipes are simple and straight-forward everyday meals from the kitchen of a busy mom often with seven children afoot to feed. A few ingredients, like squab, pork cheeks or cepes, may not be so easily accessible for some cooks in the U.S., but there are plenty of other dishes to try with more readily available meats and produce.

I enjoyed the writing in this book as much as the recipes and photographs. It was a literary vacation to rural France. The Thorisson family moved from Paris to the countryside. While the lifestyle change was welcome, their growing family needed more space than what a Paris apartment could offer, it did take some time to get used to and Ms. Thorisson talks about how it feels to be a city girl in the country. Her writing style is chatty and conversational, like sitting down with a friend. Overall it is a very enjoyable book, especially if you are interested in France or French cooking.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads

GHP 12 Days of Christmas Sale!

My publisher is celebrating the holidays with a sale. Woohoo! Each day from now until December 19th one GHP ebook will be on sale for $.99. All books will only be at that special price for one day. December 15th is the sale day for Pies & Peril. Click HERE or on the calendar below will take you to the page where you can buy each book. While you’re there enter to win a gorgeous Christmas crystal charm bracelet!

Please help spread the word and pass on some reading joy to your friends!

 

Win A Kindle Fire!

To celebrate the release of Cozy Christmas Capers, some author friends and I are giving away a Kindle Fire HDX this weekend. Just follow this link to the Laffeinated Ink blog to enter. Good luck!

 

Cozy Christmas Capers Is Here!

A new story in my Culinary Competition Mystery series was released today as part of the Cozy Christmas Capers anthology. If you’re looking for some great stories to get you in the holiday spirit, please consider getting a copy. At only $1.99 for a book that has over 800 pages it’s a great bargain! It will only be available from now until January 31, 2015.

19 holiday short stories by 19 New York Times, USA Today and award winning authors! Enjoy these tales of mystery, romance, and laughter amid the backdrop of pine tress, gingerbread men, and Santas galore! The perfect short bites for cozying up by the fire with a cup of cocoa…or waiting in line at gift wrapping!

**Holiday Recipes Included!**

Stories include:

Rosolio Red (Franki Amato Mysteries) by Traci Andrighetti

Chasing Tinsel (Miranda Vaughn Mysteries ) by Ellie Ashe

Death of a Christmas Witch (A Crewel to be Kind Mini Mystery) by Diane Bator

Queenie Baby: Pass the Eggnog (Queenie Baby Mysteries) by Christina A. Burke

The Holiday Inside Job by Mary Jo Burke

Hard to Catch a Christmas Thief (Hard Targets) by Wendy Byrne

A Christmas Ghost & Zero Regrets (Dead by the Numbers Mysteries) by Jennifer Fischetto

Christmas Canapés & Sabotage (Culinary Competition Mysteries) by Janel Gradowski

Christmas in High Heels (High Heels Mysteries) by Gemma Halliday

Christmas Al Dente (Southern Pasta Shop Mysteries) by Jennifer L. Hart

Santa Claus, Lies, and Murder (Amber Fox Mysteries) by Sibel Hodge

A (Gingerbread) Diorama of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries) by Gin Jones

Mini Pie the Christmas Spy! (Mini Pie Mysteries) by Libby LaManna

Have Yourself a Deadly Little Christmas (Greatest Hits Mysteries) by Leslie Langtry

Ornamental Danger (Working Stiff Mysteries) by Kerri Nelson

Motion for Mistletoe (Jamie Winters Mysteries) by Kelly Rey

Christmas in Venice by Maria Grazia Swan

Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Tahoe Tessie) by T. Sue VerSteeg & Gemma Halliday

Santa’s Little Mistake by Stacey Wiedower

 

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Kobo

Smashwords

 

Cookbook Review: The Kitchen Ecosystem

The Kitchen Ecosystem

By Eugenia Bone

Clarkson Potter/Publishers

A trip to the grocery store can by a budget-busting experience now. When you pay hard earned money for food, why not use it as fully as possible? That’s the principal behind this book. Turn chicken bones into broth, beet greens into side dishes and apple peels into jelly.

The book is alphabetized according to ingredient. So if you get a deal on fresh apricots or salmon you can easily find recipes to utilize your bounty. Each ingredient has recipes to: Eat Some Fresh, Preserve Some, Use The Preserve, and Use The Scraps. At the beginning of each food section there is a flow chart listing the recipes. They’re simple and unadorned, but a nice, graphic touch that I love.

Just because using ingredients fully is economical, that doesn’t mean the book highlights only inexpensive meats and produce. You can find sections on fresh tuna, lobster and duck. Since those types of foods are a splurge to many people that’s all the more reason to make sure you get as many meals as possible from the purchase. The recipes are often quite simple to make, but have a sophisticated, gourmet flair like Warm Scallop and Potato Salad with Lobster Reduction or Ricotta and Marinated Mushroom Pie. For people that want to tackle the preserving recipes there is a section at the end of the book to help with things like canning, pickling and freezing. It also goes over basic techniques such as cooking pasta in broth and preparing crepes.

I really love this cookbook. Not only does it help stretch my food budget a little farther it’s also full of recipes that I want to try. I’m sure I will be turning to it often.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads

Cookbook Review: The New Indian Slow Cooker

The New Indian Slow Cooker: Recipes for Curries, Dals, Chutneys, Masalas, Biryani and More

By Neela Paniz

Published by Ten Speed Press

I love eating Indian food, but have always been reluctant to try cooking it myself. I head to a restaurant for my biryani and keema fix. On the other hand, the slow cooker is about the easiest cooking technique for making meals. This book combines the complex flavors and spices of Indian cuisine with the preparation ease of a slow cooker.

The cookbook starts with a very crucial aspect of Indian food, the spices. There is a section to start the book that explains all of the spices and some of the unique ingredients that go into the recipes. Quite a few of the recipes can be made with ingredients found at a well-stocked grocery store. Others will involve a trip to an Indian grocer or an online resource for things like green mango powder and kari leaves. Many of the spices are used in multiple recipes, so once they’re bought, you can use them in a variety of dishes.

While using the slow cooker saves some work, these aren’t the kinds of recipes where you dump everything into the cooker, turn it on and walk away. Often vegetables need to be sauteed before adding to the crockpot or tadkas (spices cooked in ghee) need to be made to add to the dish at the end of the cooking time. It’s a good idea to read through all of the steps in the recipe before beginning to make it, so there aren’t any unexpected surprises.

There is a great variety of recipes. Basics not made in the crockpot include chapatti flatbreads and paneer cheese. Then there are all kinds of recipes to explore from simple dals that cook quickly in the slow cooker to Kerala fish curry and even lamb biryani, a layered rice dish. I’m working on building my Indian spice pantry and I can’t wait to try many of the recipes in this book.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads

 

Kimchi Craving

On Tuesday I turned Chicken Soup & Homicide in to my publisher. All summer there was a lot going on with life in general, beyond my writing life, so getting the book whipped into shape over the last month and a half was intense. I’ve written before about how I end up with food obsessions whenever I work on big writing projects. Beyond the always present coffee, the editing phase of this book brought on a craving for kimchi. Yay for a healthy obsession, for once!

Kimchi is spicy fermented vegetables that is also the national dish of Korea. Traditionally it’s made with cabbage, but it can be made with all kinds of vegetables. It’s one of those dishes that has seemingly endless varieties and every cook that makes it has their own version. I would love to try making it, but the last few months I haven’t had the time to experiment in the kitchen. If you want to try it here are a bunch of recipes from the Beyond Kimchi blog.

For the most part, I buy the mild version of the commercially made brand of kimchi at my local grocery store. A rather standard napa cabbage variety. It is garlicky, mildly sour, slightly salty and pleasantly spicy. I like the taste of the fermented cabbage, so I’m not particularly interested in the sinus clearing spicy version. A few weeks ago I found the cucumber kimchi pictured above at a farmer’s market. What a difference! Even though it is red with chili pepper flakes, it isn’t extremely spicy. You can definitely taste the ginger in this variety and the cucumber gives it a rather grassy “green” flavor. I love it.

So kimchi has been the flavor-packed ingredient that I’ve been adding to my quick lunches while I’ve been writing. One ingredient = a cornucopia of flavor. It’s great with ramen noodles or rice. I also like to accompany it with eggs, either poached in ramen broth or fried and slid on top of rice. My favorite dish so far has been rice topped with low-sodium soy sauce, a fried egg and kimchi. I actually do a one-pan version of this in my little 4-cup rice cooker, by cracking an egg on top of the almost cooked rice then letting it cook from the residual heat. Add soy sauce and the kimchi. Stir to break up the egg into bite-sized pieces and enjoy!

Have you tried kimchi? If you have, do you have a favorite variety?

This post is part of Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads

 

 

Cookbook Review: The Nourished Kitchen

The Nourished Kitchen

By Jennifer McGruther

Published by 10 Speed Press

Eating like our ancestors is the basis for this book, what the author calls a traditional foods lifestyle. What does this mean? Eating fruits and vegetables when they are in season. Eating meat from pasture-raised animals or wild game. Making things like bread and yogurt instead of buying the significantly less-healthy processed versions from the grocery store. Basically eating like our grandparents and generations before them did, when there was no such thing as convenience or fast food.

I love this style of cooking. In this book, it’s really more of a lifestyle. The author shows how to make many foods that most people buy from the grocery store from scratch, like bread and yogurt. Recipes include everything from beverages  – water kefir, ginger beer and beet kvass to name a few – to desserts like the Portugal Cake that I can’t wait to try. In between there are simple recipes that will please many people (buttered spinach, braised short ribs and honey custard) and some dishes for more adventurous eaters and cooks (smoked salmon roe, stewed beef heart, and chicken foot broth, to name a few). So the snout to tail philosophy of butchering is also employed in the traditional foods kitchen.

This is an excellent book for cooks who would like to move away from cooking with processed foods. The articles and recipe descriptions give cooks and readers additional information on the foods, from how the author serves a dish to the nutritional benefits in preparing food the old-fashioned way. The recipes are nicely written and many come with accompanying photographs. I have really enjoyed reading this book and can’t wait to try more of the recipes.

About the author: JENNIFER MCGRUTHER is a food educator and the author and creator of the award-winning traditional foods website, Nourished Kitchen (www.nourishedkitchen.com). She teaches workshops on traditional foods, fermentation, and food activism. Jennifer lives with her husband and son in the central mountains of Colorado where she and her husband started and managed a farmers market for seven years. Her work emphasizes traditional, from-scratch cooking with a focus on farm-to-table recipes. You can also find out about The Nourished Kitchen on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads