Class Reunions Are Murder
Page 33
Simple Coconut Tortillas
½ cup coconut flour
4 large eggs
1 cup unsweetened almond or cashew milk
Pinch sea salt
Combine all ingredients until smooth. I like to use the smoothie cup attachment of my blender but you can do it however you like. Let the batter sit for a couple of minutes so the coconut flour can absorb the liquids. Then pulse, whip, or stir it again.
Heat your frying pan over medium heat and grease lightly.
Pour or ladle about ¼ cup of batter into your pan. The batter should be thin—you aren’t making pancakes. Tilt the pan around to spread the batter to the edges.
If the tortillas are too small in circumference for what you want to use them for, go up to ½ cup of batter per tortilla. Cover with a lid and cook until the top has bubbles, looks a little dry, and the edges are brown and curling inward, 2–3 minutes.
Flip the tortilla over (I like using a fork or tongs for this) and cook the other side about 2 minutes. Store between wax paper or parchment until ready to use.
Paleo Tortillas 2
3 large eggs
4 egg whites (⅔ cup)
½ cup water
1 tablespoon melted lard or coconut oil
1 cup tapioca starch
½ cup flax meal (not flax seeds)
2 tablespoons coconut flour
½ teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
coconut oil for frying
Combine all ingredients until smooth. I like to use the smoothie cup attachment of my blender but you can do it however you like. Let the batter sit for a couple of minutes to let the coconut flour absorb the liquids. Then pulse, whip or stir it again. If the batter is too thick, add a couple of tablespoons of water.
Heat your frying pan over medium heat and grease lightly.
Pour or ladle about ¼ cup of batter into your pan. The batter should be thin—you aren’t making pancakes. Tilt the pan around to spread the batter to the edges.
If the tortillas are too small in circumference for what you want to use them for, go up to ½ cup of batter per tortilla.
Cover with a lid and cook until the top has bubbles, looks a little dry, and the edges are brown and curling inward—2-3 minutes.
Flip the tortilla over (I like using a fork or tongs for this) and cook the other side about 2 minutes. Store between wax paper or parchment until ready to use.
Cauliflower Tortillas
1 small head of cauliflower, should yield 3 cups riced and packed
3 eggs
½ teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and grease them with olive oil.
In a food processor rice the cauliflower until you get a texture finer than rice. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can often buy pre-riced cauliflower in the produce department of the grocery store.) Once it’s riced measure it and make sure you have 3 cups packed.
Place cauliflower rice in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and microwave on high for 2 minutes. Give it a good stir and microwave for another 2 minutes.
Place the cauliflower rice in a tea towel and twist it to squeeze out as much moisture as you can (I usually squeeze out over a cup of liquid). This is very important. The cauliflower rice needs to be dry.
Place drained cauliflower rice back in the bowl, add eggs and salt, and mix until combined.
Spread the mixture onto the lined baking sheets into 8 flattish circles. (At this juncture, I want to point out that if you make these into thick circles, top with a little oregano, and bake them a little longer, you’ll have pizza crust—but that’s for another day.)
Place in the oven for 10 minutes, then peel them off the parchment paper, flip them, and bake for 6 to 7 more minutes.
You can stop here and store the tortillas in the fridge until you are ready to use them.
Heat a nonstick medium-sized pan over medium heat and place the tortillas into the pan, pressing down slightly, and brown them (1 minute per side).
GUACAMOLE
2 perfectly ripe avocados, scooped out (Avocados should be firm and not squishy or soft—but yield to gently pressure. Not hard as rocks. You can also flick off the nubby stem that is usually still attached. If the indentation is yellowish-green and not dark green or brown, the avocado should be ripe.)
1 lime, juiced
2 shallots or 1 small yellow onion, chopped fine
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 handful cilantro, chopped fine
Optional:
1 jalapeño seeded and chopped fine—be very, very careful with this and wear gloves
1 ripe tomato, diced small—I call this optional because I don’t want it in mine.
You can scoop all ingredients into a bowl and mash with them fork—or pulse for a second at a time in a food processor. If you go the food processor route, you don’t have to chop your ingredients as fine from the start, but you do have to be careful that you don’t go too far and make avocado puree.
CASHEW SOUR CREAM
3 cups cashews, soaked for at least 4 hours
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ cup water
Place the cashews in a bowl, cover with water, and allow to soak for several hours or overnight. (Alternatively, you can cover with water, heat to a simmer, turn off the heat, and allow to soak for at least an hour.)
Drain and rinse the soaked cashews.
Place cashews in a food processor or high-speed blender with the lemon juice, salt, honey, and about half the liquid.
Pulse to process, scraping the sides down as necessary. Add the remaining liquid and process for several minutes until extremely smooth.
PALEO STRAWBERRY VANILLA MUFFINS
¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted
2 tablespoons coconut sugar
1¾ cups almond flour
1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
2 eggs
¼ cup coconut oil
4 tablespoons honey
1 scraped vanilla bean (I used Tahitian) or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (If you do use a scraped vanilla bean, be sure to put the husk in a bottle of vodka or rum and make your own vanilla extract.)
1 tablespoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons full-fat, unsweetened coconut milk
¼ teaspoon sea salt
1 cup dried or fresh strawberries
Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line a muffin pan with 12 foil muffin tins or grease with coconut oil.
In a small bowl, toss toasted almonds with coconut sugar. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat together the coconut oil, honey, lemon zest, vanilla bean paste or extract, and coconut milk. Beat in eggs. Add almond flour, salt, and baking powder and beat until combined. Scrape down the bowl as needed. Fold in the strawberries using a rubber spatula. Generously fill each muffin tin and sprinkle toasted almonds/sugar mixture on top of each muffin.
Bake for 18–20 minutes until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean.
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Libby Klein’s next
Poppy McAllister mystery
MIDNIGHT SNACKS ARE MURDER
coming soon wherever print and e-books are sold!
Chapter 1
Mischief and Mayhem were running amuck in South Jersey. Mischief, or as I called her, Aunt Ginny was on the warpath flanked by her first in command, Mayhem, also known as my black smoke Persian, Figaro the instigator. Today their battleground was the kitchen and the enemy was knee deep in the hoopla installing pearl gray cabinets and black and silver granite counter tops.
Aunt Ginny barked out orders like Patton leading the allied forces through France. “If any one of you puts so much as a single scratch on my Romba cuckoo clock there will be hell to pay! My first husband Lovell brought that home from Germany in 1945. It’s survived three wars,
a fire, and Hurricane Sandy. I’ll be darned if it’s going down because of a slipshod kitchen remodel.”
I’d been stranded in Cape May with my eighty-ish great aunt ever since I was lured up here to attend my twenty-fifth high school reunion a few weeks ago, and was voted most likely to kill a cheerleader. I’d never wanted to return to the birthplace of my most painful memories, but I’d come to accept that Cape May had a certain charm. One that I’d call “better than a sharp stick in the eye.” I’d been away long enough to forget that Aunt Ginny teetered on the edge of crazy. Now it was my job to look after this rickety old rattletrap . . . and the house. With two redheads under the same roof, and one of them having just bought a wakeboard on xtremesports4seniors.com, I think twenty years in the women’s prison would have been easier.
We’d been undergoing a major refurbishment to transform the Queen Anne Victorian into a quaint beachy bed and breakfast so I’d have a way to support Aunt Ginny and she could keep her independence. A new roof had been laid, the porch and swing had been repaired, and the entire outside of the house had been freshly painted in Easter egg shades of butter yellow, baby pink and lavender. A wooden shingle hung in the front yard proclaiming us the Butterfly House B&B punctuated with a giant blue and black butterfly. I’d gotten the local radio station to run a call-in contest giving away passes to our special Fall Fling Event. The free weekend got me some generosity points, and sent me four sets of guinea pigs who were all caller number 9. There was still a long list of projects to be completed before we officially launched our grand opening, not the least of which was to find ways to keep Aunt Ginny and Figaro from scaring off the clientele.
I ran upstairs with my checklist to the guest bedroom we’d named the Swallowtail Suite and inspected the work. “Smitty!” A little man with a perfectly round bald head like a crystal garden globe, and deep-set cow eyes danced into the room.
“What’s up boss?”
“Smitty, why is this room painted Island Pool? It’s supposed to be Buttercream. Island Pool was for the Adonis Blue Suite. It matches the king size duvet in that room.”
Smitty returned a blank expression.
“It’s a theme.”
Smitty scratched his head.
“We’ve talked about it at length.”
Smitty grunted and pulled a folded checklist out of his paint smeared overalls. He frowned and looked up into my eyes. “I can fix that.” Then he gave me a Benny Hill backhanded salute and a “whoop whoop whoop” from the Three Stooges and shimmied backwards out of the room.
I sighed. Itty Bitty Smitty, as everyone called him, was my general contractor. He was highly recommended by Handyman Haven and I now suspected he either had dirt on the owner or they sent him to me in a self survival effort to get him off their referral list. He was the only handyman within my budget who was available on short notice. I was starting to see why.
I heard a crash on the first floor and Figaro slinked up the stairs and sat at my feet. “What did you do?” He licked his paw and gave me an innocent look before wiping it on his ear. I ran down the stairs to the kitchen to see workmen cleaning up a stack of broken stone tiles that were leftover from laying the new kitchen floor.
“No problem ma’am. Julio knocked the slate over while backing up to install the new cooler. Everything is a-o-kay.”
The new cooler was a seventy-two-inch triple door, brushed nickel refrigerator and freezer that had cost as much as a small car. I bet you could fit forty-seven turkeys in there. If we ever lost the house we could move into the freezer side and sublet the fridge space to another family. I’d spent a fortune on this bed and breakfast gamble, and Aunt Ginny and I had nothing to fall back on if it failed. My mother-in-law had invested just enough into the venture to keep her strings attached so she could yank on me whenever she wanted. I doubted Georgina would approve of our new apricot kitchen or my splurge purchase of a Blue Star Copper infused range with double ovens. When Georgina makes a big purchase it’s a wise investment. When I do it, apparently it’s superfluous. Between the bed and breakfast baking, and my daily delivery of gluten free muffins to La Dolce Vita coffee shop, the 1970’s avocado green General Electric model had to be replaced. I was afraid it would explode if I ran it for more than two hours at a time.
I reached into a box I’d brought with me yesterday when I’d officially moved out of the home my late husband and I had shared for more than twenty years in Waterford. It was a painful move, and with it, part of my life—the part with John—was really over. But I had promised him I would live and be happy. I had no idea how difficult that promise would be to keep when I made it.
“Come here, baby. Let Mama set you up.” I pulled out my prized powder pink Italian espresso machine and lovingly placed it on the new countertop polishing the chrome. If John could see us now. Thinking of him made my heart grip in my chest. Each passing day got a little better, but sometimes it still hurt enough to take my breath away. I missed him terribly.
Smitty appeared beside me. “Are we on target to have the kitchen painted by Thursday?” I asked him. “I have four sets of guests arriving Friday afternoon for a complimentary practice run. Those initial reviews could have a powerful impact on business going forward so I need them to be stellar.”
“Absolutely. You can count on me, boss.”
There was a crash from the dining room, followed by Aunt Ginny’s yell, “Smitty!”
Smitty grunted and said, “I can fix that,” then ran out to inspect the damage.
Stress like this was why I had Senor Ramone’s Tacos and Tater Tots on speed dial in Virginia. I looked around the kitchen. It was coming together. This time tomorrow I’d be up to my elbows in blueberries and almond meal, coconut flour, maple syrup and Tahitian vanilla beans. I added parchment paper and muffin liners to my growing shopping list for the chef supply warehouse, along with commercial muffin tins, sheet pans and a twelve-shelf baker’s cooling rack.
I was just about to take my espresso machine for her inaugural run in her new digs when Smitty tore in on his cell phone.
“We have an emergency.”
“This isn’t another out of marshmallow fluff kind of emergency like last week, is it?”
“The Blue Star is on backorder.”
I could feel the panic rising. “No no no! It can’t be, Smitty.”
Aunt Ginny entered the kitchen, her I Love Lucy dyed hair piled up in a beehive on top of her head, and dressed in what looked like pale blue pajamas with a white dragon print on the sleeve. “What’s on backorder?”
Smitty turned to her, “The range.”
Aunt Ginny whistled and shook her head. “I can’t take anymore. I’m strung up tighter than a new fiddle. I’m going to Karate to relax.”
“Please don’t crane kick Jimmy Kapps today. You already have two strikes.”
“He knew what he was getting into when he signed up for the class.”
“He’s twelve.”
“How else is he gonna learn?”
I had a better chance of teaching a badger to ride a bike than winning an argument with Aunt Ginny. “I’ll see you for dinner tonight. Which now that I think about it will have to be salads or takeout since we don’t have an oven.” I narrowed my eyes at Smitty. “How can I run a bed and breakfast if I can’t make breakfast Smitty?”
Smitty covered the mouthpiece to his phone and shrugged. “Cereal?”
“I really don’t think we want to make a name for ourselves for being the Captain Crunch Bed and Breakfast.”
My cell phone vibrated and I saw a text from Giampaolo, the owner of the espresso bar. I’d been ducking him since he laid that sizzling kiss on me. Of course, that didn’t stop me from daydreaming about him.
I had three men in my life. Tim, my high school sweetheart. I’d never really gotten over him. Then there was John, who knocked me up in college. His family came from money and mine came from crazy so naturally a shotgun wedding was in order. And finally, Giampaolo, or Gia for short. The sexy It
alian barista befriended me during my captivity when I was maliciously and unfairly under investigation by a vindictive blond police officer. But that’s another story. I turned into a pool of melted chocolate whenever Gia was around and I’m pretty sure he could tell.
My head was clogged with murky thoughts of men and moving on, and I had to wade through them to read Gia’s text. It said he had something important to discuss with me and could I come over this afternoon to do it in person. Before I could tap out so much as a smiley face, there was another crash by the front door followed by Aunt Ginny crying out in pain.
My heart lurched and I ran to the foyer with a prayer that she was okay. Figaro galloped past me to be the first on the scene. Aunt Ginny’s tiny frame lay on the parquet wood floor in a heap. I ran to her side and yelled to anyone listening, “Call an ambulance!”