by Barbara Ross
Remove fish to warmed platter.
On stovetop, pour white wine in the skillet the fish was cooked in and deglaze over medium-high heat.
Let bubble for 1 minute, then add salsa. Cook until warmed through, about 2 minutes. Adjust seasonings.
Spoon salsa over fish and garnish with cilantro.
Serve with lime wedges.
Serves: 2
Slow-Cooker Sweet-Braised Short Ribs
Chris is alone in the Gus’s Too kitchen, so it’s critical that he have some dishes he can prepare ahead. These delicious ribs fit the bill nicely. He often makes them the night before they are served, after things quiet down in the kitchen.
Ingredients
3 Tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
1 Tablespoon ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon smoked paprika
1 Tablespoon ground mustard
6 short ribs, English cut, 3-4 pounds
2 onions, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped
1 cup dried apricots, halved
1 cup pitted prunes
1 bottle red wine
2 cups apricot jelly
1 can (15 ounces) diced tomatoes
buttered noodles for serving
Instructions
Stir the first 5 ingredients above together. Put 3 tablespoons of the resulting dry mix aside for later. Rub spices into the short ribs.
Lay the chopped vegetables in the bottom of a slow-cooker. Nestle the short ribs in with the vegetables. (Brown the short ribs if you prefer, but it is not necessary.)
Scatter prunes and apricots over the top.
In a large bowl or pitcher mix jelly, diced tomatoes, wine, and the three tablespoons of reserved dry mix and stir to combine. Pour over everything.
Cook on low in slow-cooker for 8-10 hours.
Remove short ribs to heated platter. Skim the fat and strain the liquid to remove solids. Discard the solids. Boil down the liquid until reduced by half.
Serve meat with buttered noodles. Serve the sauce over the meat or noodles.
Serves: 4-6
Baked Hake Filet with Leek & Fennel Tomato Sauce & Scallop Buttons
Another hake dish, but with the filet instead of the loin. Chris uses scallops, expensive in December, as a garnish, which is another way he keeps the price of meals affordable.
Ingredients
Sauce
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 shallot
1 clove garlic
1 Tablespoon tomato paste
¼ cup white wine
1 medium leek, white part only, split, washed, and sliced
½ large fennel bulb, sliced thinly
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
Salt
Pepper
Fish
1 pound hake filet
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Smoked paprika
Parsley
Lemon wedges for serving
2 scallops
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté shallot for 2 minutes.
Add garlic and cook 1 minute.
Stir in tomato paste and white wine and let bubble for 1 minute.
Add leek, fennel, and tomatoes, and cook together until vegetables are tender but retain a little crunch.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Put sauce in a baking dish.
Rub hake all over with olive oil.
Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika.
Tuck hake into sauce and bake for 15 minutes or until fish is cooked through and flaky.
While hake is cooking, pan sear two large sea scallops in olive oil on both sides.
Remove from pan and slice in half.
Garnish hake with parsley, top with scallop buttons seared side up, and serve with lemon wedges.
Serves: 4
Lobster & Corn Chowder
This hearty soup is derived from one of my treasured family recipes. It was originally Corn and Turkey Chowder, a Depression-era meal popular in our house after Thanksgiving. Bill Carito adapted it for lobster and brought it into the current millennium.
Ingredients
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
2 onions, chopped
3 Tablespoons flour
6 cups lobster stock or fish stock, warmed
1 can creamed corn
1 pound frozen corn
½ pint heavy cream
½ pound lobster meat, chopped
Salt
Pepper
Corn nuts for garnish
Chopped chives for garnish
Instructions
Melt butter over medium-high heat.
Add onions and sauté for 5 minutes.
Add flour and stir constantly for 2–3 minutes.
Add warm stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 5 minutes.
Add creamed corn and frozen corn and continue simmering for 5 minutes.
Stir in heavy cream and lobster meat and continue simmering for 5 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Ladle into bowls, and garnish with corn nuts and chopped chives.
Serves: 6–8
Deborah’s Fish Tacos
Deborah Bennett makes this meal in Fogged Inn. Her recently retired husband expects a “proper lunch.” In reality this recipe was contributed by my soon-to-be son-in-law, Luke Donius, who began playing around with these ingredients when he was in graduate school and has continued to perfect the recipe.
Ingredients
Sauce
½ cup mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
small shallot, finely chopped
1 medium jalapeño, diced
Juice of one medium lime
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cilantro sprigs
Tacos and Toppings
8 corn tortillas, warmed
2 jalapeños, chopped
(remaining portion) shallot
2 tomatoes, chopped
Chopped cilantro sprigs
1 lime cut into wedges for squeezing
1 small radicchio, chopped
Fish
1 pound any seasonal white fish
2 Tablespoons butter
Seasoning
teaspoon cayenne powder
¼ teaspoon paprika
teaspoon pepper
teaspoon garlic powder
teaspoon salt
Instructions
To make the sauce
Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix. Prepare at least 1 hour in advance and let sit in the refrigerator. (If you have leftover sauce, it makes for a great chip dip!)
To make the fish
Cook fish in butter and ½ teaspoon of the seasoning. Cook the fish until it is opaque. Squeeze lime juice from one wedge on the fish, then break up the fillet.
To serve
Serve fish on warmed corn tortillas with toppings and sauce.
Serves: 4
Acknowledgments
I first heard the expression “You cannot make any new old friends” at the commencement address given by actor and writer Mike O’Malley at my daughter’s graduation from the University of New Hampshire in 2006. I admit I went into the event rolling my eyes. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush had already been announced as the joint speakers for 2007, and it didn’t help when my daughter explained who O’Malley was by referencing his show on Nickelodeon. (Of course, now that I know who he is, he’s everywhere.)
It turned out, as it so often does, that my low expectations were dramatically wrongheaded. O’Malley’s speech was heartfelt and wise, and resonated all the more because he had sat where those graduates were sitting. The relevant portion of the speech is this: “Try as often as you ca
n to give tribute to your friends, to stay in contact, to be at their momentous occasions. Drive across the country and go into debt to go to their weddings, fly across the country and be with them when their parents pass away. You cannot make any new old friends.” (The whole address is worth a read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UserIanManka/Mike_O%27Malley:)
That speech is what got me thinking about a group of old friends and the reason they might not drift apart, but be blown apart. The reason it happens in Fogged Inn is from a story my mother once told me. I have no idea if it was true, but I have remembered the story for more than thirty years.
I thought this book would take much less research than the previous three. All the suspects are baby boomers, and I’m one, too. But the group in Fogged Inn is about seven years older than me, and as anyone who was there will tell you, the sixties and early seventies were a fast-moving time. College deferments from the draft changed to a lottery system that included all eligible men, and then to a time when no one was called up. By the mid-1970s, female students entered law schools and medical schools in numbers truly unthinkable just a few years before, reflecting a larger, dramatic change in young women’s expectations for their lives. The leading edge of the baby boom had a very different coming of age than the middle, who had a very different coming-of-age than the trailing edge. I found myself constantly checking reference points and looking at photos as I pondered the lives of this group of recent retirees. So thank you, World Wide Web.
For this book I’d like to thank my agent John Talbot, my editor John Scognamiglio, and the team at Kensington Books for giving me the opportunity to tell more of the Snowden family’s stories.
Thank you to Sherry Harris and Bill Carito, who read drafts of the material and provided critical feedback. You always help me get out of my own way. Sherry was also on a deadline for her Kensington series, the Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mysteries, so I particularly appreciated her support for this book.
I’d especially like to thank fellow writer A.J. Pompano for reviewing and making such wonderful suggestions about the scenes that take place in Guilford, Connecticut.
Pat Kennedy, Luke Donius, and Bill Carito contributed recipes to Fogged Inn. The delicious pea soup is Pat’s. The scrumptious fish tacos are Luke’s. Bill provided all the others, as well as ideas about how Chris would go about developing tasty and innovative, but affordable, menus for Gus’s Too.
As always, I’d like to thank my blog sisters at Wicked Cozy Authors—Jessie Crockett, Sherry Harris, Julie Hennrikus, Edith Maxwell, Liz Mugavero, Sheila Connolly, Kim Gray, and Sadie Hartwell, and the whole gang at the Maine Crime Writers blog. Also to my writer’s group—Mark Ammons, Katherine Fast, Cheryl Marceau, and Leslie Wheeler.
Because Fogged Inn takes place the first week in December, we don’t make it to the Snowden Family Clambake in the book. However, I still want to take the opportunity to say that if you want to go to a real Maine Clambake on a private island in Maine, check out the Cabbage Island Clambakes at http://www.cabbageislandclambakes.com/.
Thank you to my family for their unflagging support—Bill Carito, Rob, Sunny and Viola Carito, and Kate Carito. I truly don’t know what I would do without you.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my old friends. We don’t make nearly enough time to see each other, but you are the people I can go years without seeing and then pick up the conversation as if it were yesterday. Thank you for being in my life, friends of my youth—Hilary Hinds Kitasei, Amy and Thom Fritz, Vida Antolin-Jenkins, Jon Anton, Pat McGrath, and Paul and Paula Dowd. Love you all.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by Barbara Ross
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-0037-7
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: March 2016
eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0038-4
eISBN-10: 1-4967-0038-4
First Kensington Electronic Edition: March 2016
