For My Lady's Heart Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

Laura Kinsale never disappoints me. In For My Lady's Heart, she has written a masterpiece, not just of romance, but of universal literary merit. It's one of the most subversive works of literature I've read. Well, listened to actually. My husband and I got the audio book and played it in the car on road trips for about six months. And since I'm going to spend the rest of this review talking about myths and cake, let me just say that Nicholas Boulton's narration of this book is outstanding. Well worth acquiring, even if you've already read it. What Kinsale subverts in this book though isn't just narrative structure or genre conventions. No, she's got a much bigger target: the archetypal heroic story arc that underpins much of humanity's storytelling.

For My Lady's Heart's romantic arc begins with the hero and heroine's meet-cute across a crowded room full of priests and petitioners. The hero is instantly attracted to the beautiful, sophisticated heroine, who promptly laughs at him, then saves his ass when he gets in over his head. He pledges his life and sword to her and they go their separate ways, she with her court, he to earn his name and seek his fortune. We rejoin the couple years later when Melanthe is now the widow of a powerful Italian noble, has promised to wed yet another Italian noble, and is journeying home to England to solidify her claim to some land that her soon-to-be-betrothed wants to get his dastardly hands on. Another chance meeting brings Ruck back into her life, this time for good, and he serves as her bodyguard on the trip back north. Nothing goes as planned of course, their pasts catch up with both of them and they have to learn to either stay apart forever or work together.

For My Lady's Heart is anything but straightforward, however. Right away, both my husband and I keyed in on the fact that Ruck calls himself "The Green Knight" in lieu of a name for much of the story. Even before Kinsale hopped into a conversation I was having with Lisa Hendrix on Twitter to say that she'd been inspired by Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the parallels were obvious. If you're not familiar though, basically, we're talking King Arthur here, which clued us into the idea that the book would follow Ruck, his mysterious identity and daring exploits. There's a whole tradition of this kind of literary behavior going back to the beginning of written story-telling. It's the "hero's journey" Joseph Campbell talks about in The Hero With A Thousand Faces: the man leaves home to seek adventure, experiences trials, hits rock bottom, transforms, rights his wrongs, reconciles with his father and emerges triumphant, returning home a hero. That's Ruck's story completely. It's also Luke Skywalker's. And Thor's in the Marvel movie. If you ever studied The Odyssey or Gilgamesh in school, you probably learned about this concept. There's a reason it's considered archetypal.

What's fascinating to me about veering off from something like the hero's journey in a romance novel though, a genre written primarily for, by, and about women, is that those stories are all about the dudes. They're the heroes. The protectors. Large and in charge, even when being buffeted by life. The women are mainly witches, connivers and adulteresses; goddesses and temptresses; Madonnas and whores. They're dramatic foils; obstacles that get in the way of the heroes' honorable impulses.

But what about the "heroine's journey"; a woman's archetypal/literary/epic/mythological path? I'm not sure there is one, at least not one that doesn't focus exclusively on fertility. It's not like most Medieval men ran off and became knights. Or that Grecian peasants were out sailing the Mediterranean for a decade or two. For high school literature students, Elizabeth Bennett might have been the first female main character encountered who was written by a woman. Before that it's all Penelope, Hester Prynne and Lady Macbeth. At least, it was at my school. And while I will never say anything negative about Austen because of course I adore her books, her world was small. The heroes in epics and myths, their worlds are not small. Melanthe's world is not small. Melanthe plays on the highest levels of the Medieval international political stage. She's skilled at diplomacy and deception, but limited in power by her gender and hampered rather than helped by her beauty, which would be the more typical role of feminine beauty in an historical romance. And most people in the story believe that she is a witch who took lovers and murdered her husband.

Outside of the maiden, the mother or the crone, there's no script for Melanthe to follow. Even though she does rather torture Ruck in his celibacy, she for sure doesn't follow the archetypal path of mythological women. She's not a goddess or a witch or a whore or a virtuous woman who stays home and waits for her husband to return triumphant. And, well, maybe that's the point. Despite what everyone would want to believe of Melanthe, how they perceive her, how they would use her or how they would change her (Ruck included), she resists. She remains her own paranoid, difficult, irascible self, refusing all aid and comfort, solving her own problems and shaping her world to suit herself. She proves not to be a witch on their trip through the marsh, not a whore in her sexual inexperience, not a mother or wife when they marry and arrive at Wolfscar, Ruck's castle, midway through the book.

Contrasted with the set path Ruck is allowed to tread, one worn into the literary bedrock over the course of centuries, Melanthe's is one of her own invention. She almost never does what either Ruck or the reader expect. Her values include her freedom, her life and perhaps the well-being of her beloved pet falcon. And whatever she has to be or do in order to preserve those things are what she does. She's rather infinitely adaptable actually, not particularly constrained by social mores, the Church or an inconveniently well-born husband despite being hyper-aware of those restrictions. Ruck is far below her in social standing and can't match her wits, except on rare occasions (and we do root for him when he stands up to her because he's so utterly outmatched most of the time). She makes her own way right to the very end. And speaking of the end, it's no one's triumph. It's an accident that delivers our heroine. Or an act of God.

For My Lady's Heart contains all this and yet, it still functions as a road trip romance. As Melanthe and Ruck journey together, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes in harmony and sometimes (okay, mostly) not, their attraction to one another becomes obvious to both of them. However, Melanthe for fear of her political enemies and Ruck out of fear for his immortal soul, must resist the temptation they represent to each other. All that thwarted desire is awfully hot. We also get Kinsale's humor in hunting herons, slaying dragons, and jokes about sex and confession. The scene where Ruck and Melanthe consummate their unusual marriage and Ruck turns out to be rather a savant of sex as a result of his many, many forays into the confessional is one of the funniest things I've ever read. I went back and read the scene in the book to be sure that it wasn't only Boulton's impeccable comedic timing and it wasn't. Still funny.

I grabbed a used copy of For My Lady's Heart just so I could put it on my Very Favorite Book Ever shelf next to Flowers From the Storm and Prince of Midnight. It's just...everything.

C'est n'est pas Wolfscar.

In my head, this post was going to utilize this pan. Perhaps with a great deal of green food coloring. And probably some Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. Why? Well, how often do you get to use a bundt pan in the shape of a castle? And there are, like, four castles in this book. I mean, really.

But then I realized that there actually is food in For My Lady's Heart. In fact, there's kind of a whole thing about oranges and almonds. Melanthe's decision to share her treats with Ruck represents a shift for her in terms of both how she thinks of him and how she thinks of herself. For the first time, she's laid bare. And he's not sure what to make of that at all.

As for this cake, it's a little bit fussy, but if you follow the instructions exactly, it should work out fine. The first time I tried making the original recipe for a friend who's dairy free, I was too fast and loose with the process and it didn't rise properly. I don't specifically recall what I did, but I'm guessing I probably oiled the sides of the pan. Don't do that. This is sort of a chiffon-type cake and it needs to be able to cling to the sides to rise.

So anyway, when I modified the recipe for this post, I was extra special careful and it turned out fine. I'd say...er...don't fiddle with this one. If you don't have the precise right ingredients (blood oranges are rapidly going out of season and dried orange peel may require a trip to a specialty spice shop) and tools (you'll need a 9-inch spring form pan and parchment paper), make something else or go shopping first. Cool? Cool.

For more photos of this cake, visit Cooking Up Romance on Facebook. I often stash extra photos there so you can see what each step of the process is supposed to look like.


Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake
adapted from epicurious
Makes: 12 servings
Time: 2 1/2 hours (hands-on: 45 minutes)
Difficulty: Advanced

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for pan
2 blood oranges, zested (1 1/2 tablespoons zest)
2 tablespoons blood orange juice
1 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon dried orange peel
5 egg yolks, 4 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil the bottom of a 9-inch spring form pan. Place a piece of parchment in the bottom and close the pan. Oil the parchment only (not the sides).

2. In a food processor, pulse together the blood orange zest, cake flour and dried orange peel until combined.

3. In a large bowl, beat together egg yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar with an electric mixer on high speed until thick and pale (about 3 minutes). Add 3/4 cup of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of blood orange juice. Mix until combined. Stir in the flour mixture (by hand--do not use mixer).

4. Wash the electric mixer beaters thoroughly. In another large bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add 1/4 cup of sugar a little at a time until sugar is incorporated and egg whites form soft peaks.

5. Gently fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the egg yolk and flour mixture to lighten it, then fold in remaining egg whites carefully, but thoroughly.

6. Pour batter into prepared pan and gently tap to release air bubbles. Sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar. Bake until puffed and golden, 35-45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

7. Cool the cake on a rack for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edge of the cake and remove the side of pan. Cool cake to room temperature, about 1 1/4 hours. Remove the bottom of the pan, peel off parchment and serve.

Disclosure: Laura Kinsale and I follow each other on Twitter and engage in occasional conversation.

Trust-Worthy Romance

Trust is an interesting phenomenon. In love or friendship, it's what lets people relax, let down their guards and just enjoy each other for who they are without worrying about being judged, hurt or ridiculed (except in good fun, of course). In romance novels, one or both characters' lack of it is often the main obstacle to a couple's happiness. A lack of trust creates such significant conflict between people that it carries practically the entire genre.

This week has been an interesting one in terms of my reading. I started and finished a book I had no expectation of liking, I finally slogged my way through the remainder of a book I despised (you can see my review here) and I took refuge in a book I knew I would almost certainly enjoy. The first was Nurse Janice Calling, "A Candlelight Romance" from Dell that was published in 1964. I'll have a full review of that for you on Monday since I really enjoyed it, but going in, my trust level of this particular book was low. I've not had a wealth of great experiences with older romances, from the cultural misogyny and sexism displayed in older works and downright rapey sex scenes to unsatisfying resolutions of the primary love story. I was pleased to discover a book that in some ways was more enlightened than even a lot of contemporary romances I've read.

Speaking of unenlightened contemporary romances, the one linked above is a good example of that. I don't want to relive the hell of that book, which is why I've linked my Goodreads review above, but thanks to that book, I now feel the same way about Skye Jordan as I do about Kathleen Woodiwiss, who has been crossed off my list for all time, and Mary Jo Putney, who I put in the "trust but verify" category of authors whose books I have enjoyed, but whose occasional forays into rapey sex make me nervous (Silk and Shadows - h/t to @GrowlyCub for furnishing me with the title). I recall finishing that book, but I haven't picked up a Putney since. I have no problem with rape in romance novels. Men rape women every day. It's just one of those things that I can only forgive from the very rare hero and thereby the very rare writer. Feel free to argue with me about Woodiwiss and Putney, by the way. I'm happy to consider new points of view and information outside my experience.

And then there are the writers I trust implicitly: Laura Kinsale, Cara McKenna and Charlotte Stein. None of these women write "easy" books. There's always a character or a situation or some deep, dark angst in their novels that walks the edge of whatever limits I have as a reader. Midsummer Moon is a bad example of a Laura Kinsale book and one I would never give to a newbie, mostly because it's relatively angst-free, happy and amusing. But I didn't know that going in. Nevertheless, in a week of intense news from the outside world, Kinsale was the first writer I reached for. But when a scary character or borderline sex or profound intensity come up in any of these writers' novels, I don't feel any anxiety about it. I'm secure in the knowledge that I'm in good hands.

I think this is the reason many of us read romance in the first place: the happy ending is guaranteed. No matter if it's unconvincing or presented as "happy for now", we all know what's coming. There's a lack of anxiety in romance--not throughout the stories, which run the gamut of all sorts of emotions--but in the end. As Sonny says in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, "Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end." We trust that in romance, this will always be true.

Which writers do you trust? Who do you reach for when everything else is crazy?

Book BFFs

 Are you familiar with the concept of "book boyfriends"? Picking out a particular hero and referring to him as your book boyfriend seems like pretty common practice among romance lovers. My first was probably the Phantom of the Opera. Even in high school I loved me a tortured hero. The reality of tortured boyfriends is much less fun though so I love the book boyfriend concept. Let my fiction-loving self deal with the drama.

But it wasn't until recently that I ran across a heroine I loved so much that I wished she were my BFF: Magalie Chaudron from Laura Florand's The Chocolate Kiss. The hero of that book, Philippe Lyonnais, seems to be the hero among heroes for Florand's fans. And while of course I found him compelling, it was Magalie that kept me enraptured by this particular book. Not only is she possibly literally magical (so fun), she cooks in a teensy kitchen and loves boots.

Perhaps I was primed for this by my recent brush with another heroine I loved: Emily Bartwell from Jeffe Kennedy's new erotic romance Going Under. But unlike with Emily, Magalie and I actually have things in common. We could go running together, hang out in her tiny, chocolate-filled kitchen, go shopping for killer boots for ourselves and sweaters for our guys. She could tutor me in idiomatic French while my dog and I hang out in the Maison des Sorcieres. And I could fill in at the counter while she visits Philippe down the street...

Um...sorry. I kinda wandered off there.

In reading through reviews trying to decide what books to buy, one of the things I've noticed is that many reviewers are harder on heroines than they are on heroes. For example, Laura Kinsale's The Prince of Midnight features quite an arrogant hero, but it's the prickly heroine who seems to bear the brunt of the character criticism. And frankly, I think that's unfair. She's just lost her entire family. He lost his balance and self-confidence. Leigh needs a cup of hot chocolate, a soft blanket and an Anna Kendrick movie marathon. Instead, she gets called a heart-hearted bitch? Come on, we don't really talk about other women that way, do we?


So let's hear about some book BFFs. What heroines have you particularly loved? Why? Do you fantasize about hanging out with your favorite romance heroine? Please tell me I'm not the only one.

The Most Broken of all the Broken

The other day, my proclivity for loving really, really broken characters and gleefully watching as an author puts them through the wringer came up in a conversation on Twitter. The context was Jackie Ashenden's Having Her, in which a hero with a schizophrenic mother and a heroine with a struggling business and virginity issues tumble into a fairly surprising relationship for a "best friend's older brother" trope book. Then everything falls apart in a bunch of really bad ways. And it doesn't get better until about 95% of the way through the novel. I adored it.

As much as I would like to say that it's fun for me when both the characters are a mess, what I love is screwed up heroes. My top three heroes ever are 1) the Duke of Jervaulx from Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm, 2) S.T. Maitland from Laura Kinsale's Prince of Midnight and 3) Rob from Cara McKenna's Unbound. For those keeping score, that gives us a three out of three on "avoiding his life," a hero who keeps falling down, a hero who can't actually speak for a good part of the novel and a hero whose profound issues I won't reveal because I know someone who reads this blog hasn't read it yet. Self-possessed, omnipotent alphas these are not.

In romance, this works partly because no matter how much characters screw up, there is redemption and healing in the end. They eventually get their acts together with the help of the heroine and everyone gets their happily ever after. Even the worst put-together people who make the most horrible mistakes in the most fraught situations can still be dreamy objects of someone's affection.

While I appreciate the romance heroes who make everything okay by virtue of their very presence, they're not the ones that get my heart pumping. Mary Balogh does this with Wulfric Bedwyn. Any time he shows up, the reader just knows everything is going to be okay, often with just the lifting of his quizzing glass. And in Grace Burrowes books, I've started referring to certain endings as "Deus ex Moreland" because the Duke, the Duke's heir and their primary investigator/spy all seem to have the power to put to rights any situation a character finds him or herself in, no matter how perilous or scandalous. And to be clear: I'm actually charmed by this. These books make up my favorites for when I just want a little light reading. But charmed is not the same as head over heels in deep obsession.

Oh, and let's make another distinction. I'm not talking about heroes who had a bit of a sad childhood because they were orphans, got bullied in school or had murderous relatives. Or they're afraid of ruining a friendship or because duty calls them elsewhere. Those are pretty standard romance reasons for having trust issues, confidence problems and not flinging themselves headlong into the arms of their heroine. It's the bare minimum for the standard of conflict in a romance novel. There are a lot of great books where these set-ups worked wonderfully, but the fact is, they'll never make my top five.

In the case of Having Her, Vincent Fox actually has his life pretty much together. He has a thriving business, a best friend, a good relationship with his sister (if not his parents) and he's building a home. But he's hit a wall that seems precipitated by his mother's latest  mental health crisis, his sister's move and a business expansion. I think a psychologist would call this an adjustment reaction. And what he uses to bring himself through it is very wrong indeed. His destructive impulses are impressive. I was angry with him for most of the book, which paradoxically is why I liked him so much when he got it together again.

So give me your felonious heroes. Heroes with PTSD. Heroes missing limbs. Suicidal heroes. Heroes with addictions, scars and blindness. Any time you can find a new way to break a hero and then fill the broken place with love, I'm all in.

Speaking of broken heroes, tune in Monday for my review of Patricia Gaffney's Wild at Heart, a story of a "lost man" found in the woods without the ability to speak and the manners of a wolf. See? Broken. I thought it was great.

Prince of Midnight Roast Chicken and French-Style Beans

I'm a late Laura Kinsale convert. Her first book was published when I was still a kid, but in my early absorption with Julie Garwood and a whole host of Harlequin titles (which could be had for 25 cents each from my local used bookstore), I never ran across her work. It wasn't until I started reading romance blogs and her name kept coming up as the best of the best of romance authors that I picked up Prince of Midnight. And then Flowers From the Storm. And then everything else she has ever written.

In Prince of Midnight, S.T. Maitland is a former highwayman. The reason he stopped marauding is that he suffered an injury that caused permanent dizziness and deafness in one ear. He has shut himself up in a crumbling chateau above a tiny French village. He's not exactly wallowing in self-pity and penury--he has too healthy a sense of humor for that--but he's not far from it either. His only friends are an innkeeper he owes money and an honest-to-goodness wolf named Nemo. He spends his time defending his kitchen garden from rabbits and creating paintings he can never seem to finish. It's a sad come-down for a man who was once the terror of the English countryside.

When practical Leigh Strachan arrives on the scene, she has revenge on her mind. A cult-like figure has murdered her family and she wants the Prince of Midnight to teach her all he knows in order to enact her own justice. She's not at all impressed when presented with S.T. as he is now. She is actually pretty annoyed when he insists on accompanying her back to her hometown to take on her nemesis. And though it gradually becomes obvious to the reader that S.T. is not as useless as he might first appear, it takes Leigh a lot longer to figure that out. What follows is a pretty non-standard road trip romance that just keeps miring the protagonists deeper in both internal and external conflict, which is another thing I love about Kinsale's books. Even though we get our HEA, it remains in actual real doubt for about 95% of the novel.

Though the plot is a bit cumbersome at times, the characters of S.T. and Leigh carry the novel, working through their pain and loss separately and then eventually together. A lot of reviewers have problems with Leigh. She is abrasive and difficult and mercenary in her pain, but that just felt real to me. Though she has been hurt, she hangs onto her innate strength with claws and teeth, which isn't always pretty. The scene where Kinsale uses the process of S.T. teaching Leigh to gentle an abused horse represented a turning point in the novel for me. It's the point where I learned to trust Kinsale unconditionally. It's also where I fell in love forever with S.T., not because of his capability, but how he takes both the horse and Leigh and opens the gate to a different path, one of love instead of pain.

Prince of Midnight has high adventure, a swashbuckling hero, a heroine who learns to trust herself again and several wonderful four-legged characters. The language is literarily lovely and the love story unpredictable. All this adds up to a book that I will reread over and over again for years to come. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Early on in Prince of Midnight, Kinsale spends some time talking about S.T.'s chickens. He can't manage to kill them himself and figures when the time comes, he'll have his pet wolf do it. It's one of the first moments where we get a glimpse of the reality of S.T.'s internal landscape and it stuck with me.

Roasting chicken isn't hard. Just make sure the wingtips point toward the ceiling.

However, if S.T. had ever managed to pick a chicken, here's something he probably could have cooked up. If he had any gardening skills. Or cooking skills. Or really any skills at all that aren't related to swinging a sword, gentling a horse or painting.

A meat thermometer helps a lot. It just beeps at you when the chicken is done. This version takes a little over an hour.

If you're not a housewife like I am, Roasted Bourbon-Rosemary Chicken from Garden & Gun magazine might be best saved for a Sunday night. This chicken takes about an hour and fifteen minutes so grab a glass of wine and your current book and have a snack before you start. It makes a great lazy dinner, plus you have leftover meat for sandwiches during the week. I also save the carcasses for a cheap source of chicken stock. I just stick them in the freezer until I have time to babysit boiling bones for a couple of hours. For true Prince of Midnight flavor, use a free range chicken.

These white beans are amazing. We had a friend over for these and he agreed that he didn't know beans could be this good.

The white beans are from It's All Good, which is Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook. I'm not a big fan of celebrity cookbooks, celebrity diets or celebrity anything really, but this book is phenomenal. I'm printing the recipe below just to convince you to buy it and because I think 3-4 minutes is waaayyy too long to cook garlic. Seriously though, never has healthy tasted this good. Plus, it amuses me that these are Italian beans cooked in a French style. That will make more sense if you have read Kinsale's book and appreciate the research that she clearly put into it.

The roasted asparagus is just a simple alternative to boiling or steaming. This and the beans are so quick, they'd even make an easy addition to any weeknight meal. It's also May so no matter where you live, asparagus should be popping up in your local farmer's market just now. It's skinny and fresh and perfect so it was a clear choice for this late spring meal. As for timing, when you pull the chicken out of the oven to rest, you can start the asparagus and the beans and you'll be eating within 15 minutes.

White Beans, French Style
from It's all Good by Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Turshen
serves 4 as a side, takes 15 minutes

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
Leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme (about 2 tsp)
1 large shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
1 - 14-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
course sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp red wine vinegar

1. Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.
2. Add the thyme and shallot and cook for 1 minute more until the shallot is just softened.
3. Add the beans and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.
4. Add a healthy pinch of sea salt, a few grinds of pepper and the vinegar and cook for 5 minutes more.
5. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

Roasted Asparagus
serves 4 as a side, takes 15 minutes

1 pound asparagus
1 tbsp olive oil or olive oil spray
fine sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees and prepare a cookie sheet by covering it with foil.
2. Rinse, drain and trim the bottom ends of the asparagus. The "snap off the end at the weakest point" thing is a myth. Just chop about an inch and a half off the bottom. If they're late season and very thick, you may want to peel them. Place them on the cookie sheet.
3. Sprinkle olive oil or spray the asparagus.
4. Add a generous pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Shake to coat.
5. Roast in the oven for 8-10 minutes depending on the thickness of your asparagus.

Stop by again next Monday when I review Delphine Dryden's newest book, Mai Tai for 2 and give you the recipe for this Chocolate Macadamia Tart with Coconut Whipped Cream. The book was great and this tart will be the best thing you've ever eaten. Seriously.