Living in Secret Lamb Tagine

Living in Secret is the third book of Jackie Ashenden's Living In series. Typical of Ashenden, the emotional intensity is off-the-charts. But what I love about her books is that it isn't ever just angst for angst's sake. She's not afraid to give her characters serious problems and genuine personality flaws. Her heroines aren't just a little clumsy. Her heroes aren't still mourning the girl who broke up with them in college (or, maybe they are but that's generally the least of their problems). Her characters navigate difficulties like addiction and abuse.

In Living in Secret, Connor and Victoria are still married, barely. They've been separated for over a year, the result of distance created by not ever being completely honest with one another. They're each keeping a big secret that has allowed them the emotional distance they need to cope with life, but unfortunately also took a toll on their marriage.

This distance has also manifested in their sex life, which has been active, but hardly passionate. They need a dramatic break-through and one is provided via a friend of the previous book's hero: a threesome resets Connor and Victoria's expectations and opens the door to a week's worth of uninhibited sexual exploration. The physical intimacy the characters experience also breaks down their emotional barriers and eventually brings them back together.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the cleansing power of confession in romance and in life as it relates to this book so I don't need to go into all that again in detail here, but this is a powerfully redemptive story and will be a satisfying read for any fan of the marriage-in-trouble trope. And I'm not giving anything away when I say that any lover of erotic romance will also find lots of things to love about Living in Secret. It's crazy hot. I've been a fan of Ashenden for  while, but she has really come into her own with this series. Every book has been everything I love about how romance can be. I can only hope Connor and Victoria's threesome partner in this book eventually gets one of his own. Though he seems curiously well-adjusted for an Ashenden hero. Maybe we'll get to see something new from her? Or maybe he has secrets of his own... I hope we get to find out.

I've had a long-running less-than-serious gripe about Jackie Ashenden's books. She doesn't feed her characters. Like, ever. Oh, she'll let them order food. Or go in search of food. Or pull food out of the fridge. But before they have a chance to eat it, they always fight. Or have sex. Or have sex and then fight. It's a thing.

So when Connor and Victoria actually sit down at a table and eat lamb tagine, I knew it would be an important moment. And whoo boy. It was a doozie. I'm not giving spoilers because it's a relatively new book, but, yeah. It's crucial. And it happens over food. I was pretty excited.

I love making up recipes, tweaking food until it's just perfect. But sometimes it's nice to just cook.

I'd never made anything like this lamb tagine before so I pulled up a recipe online and just made that using a leg of lamb I had my butcher carve off the bone and cut into chunks for me. Having a real butcher nearby is great. Not only was he willing to do a little bit of the prep work, he also used a bone saw to cut the bone in half. I then boiled it and made lamb stock for my freezer.

I think if I made this recipe again, I'd tweak it a little, mainly because the long cooking time mellows out the flavors more than seemed appropriate. I'd jack up the cayenne for sure. And maybe try it out in the crockpot instead of marinating it overnight. If I do, I'll add a note here in the future.

But, like I said, sometimes it's nice to just cook.

Lamb tagine from All Recipes.

The Bride and The Beast Candied Bacon Salted Oatmeal Cookies

Gwendolyn Wilder loved Bernard MacCullough from afar as a girl. But when the English raid his father's Castle for harboring the Scottish pretender, the young would-be laird is killed. Or so she thought. And when a dragon comes to claim the ruined castle, the villagers send the only virgin left in Ballybliss to slake The Dragon's hunger.

The Bride and the Beast by Teresa Medeiros is one of those books that despite some issues, I really loved. It doesn't hurt that beauty and the beast is pretty much my favorite trope, or that the dialogue is witty and hilarious or that it has all the charm of old skool kidnapping romance without any of the problematic consent issues. Less good are a difficult relationship with female sexuality and a healthy helping of fat-shaming. But even those downsides are mild and ameliorated by the book's charm, fairy tale framing and 14-year-old publication date.
 
It's a fascinating book for sure. It was published in 2001 and seems to fall somewhere between the slightly uncomfortable for a contemporary reader 1990s Highland romances and today's carefully feminist historicals. There's a ton of subtext here for lovers of romance and fairy tales, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. The heroine is pretty judgmental of her pretty, selfish, sexualized sisters. She slut-shames the youngest one for having sex outside of marriage. And the oldest, who has had several marriages, still isn't good enough because it appears that she married for material considerations rather than for love. If we forgive Gwen for her judgment, it's because her sisters are generally pretty terrible to her, which fits within the fairy tale aspect of the story.

Then there's the fact that Gwen muses fairly consistently on how sad and terrible it is that she's fat. She does get a bit of a makeover via some lovely dresses, but she never loses the weight and is even shown doing some emotional eating. It's a realistic portrayal of many women's complex relationships with their bodies. Gwen has clearly internalized a negative perception of her eating habits and fuller figure. But a lot of this bad messaging and internal script comes from her not-quite-evil, but not nice either sisters. And both her sexual desires and her shape ARE validated by the hero, which is a good thing. But the (likely unintended) message seems to be that if a man says it's okay, then it's really okay. But ONLY if a man thinks so.

In a current romance, I might have been less forgiving than I was with this one. The problem is that it's just so darn charming. The heroine is abused by herself and her sisters, but not by the hero. He wars with his desire the same as she does. And his thirst for revenge makes for a creative take on the beast archetype. The reason I mention the publication date is that in the mid-1990s I read an awful lot of romance featuring semi-barbaric Highlanders. Those heroines were generally kidnapped English mewling misses (with the requisite flashing eyes) who tame their savage beasts. And I had resigned myself to that being the narrative in this book. After all, that arc's still somewhat nostalgic fun, even if I've kinda grown out of it. But that's not what happens. Or well, it is, but it's not as heavy-handed, sexual or physical as what I remembered from this sort of story. The hero might be a beast, but he's a beast primarily concerned with the heroine's comfort, confidence and pleasure. Where he's most beastly is in his dealings with the admittedly not very likeable villagers who were complicit in his father's death. It makes for a much more subtle transformation.

The thing is, despite the issues, this book really worked for me. While some of the details weren't all I would have hoped for, my overall impression was positive. All the banter between hero and heroine and the hero and his friend is witty and clever and fast-paced. The action keeps the plot moving, but doesn't overshadow the characters' emotional journeys. It's just an interesting moment in historical romance--after pirates and barbarians and before The Dukes. If you can overlook some of its old-fashioned ideas, it's really quite a perfect historical.

I don't know how much I really need to say about these cookies. They're dense and oaty and not too sweet and full of bacon. When I posted them to Twitter, I got several requests for the recipe, which obviously didn't exist yet. And then I had to find a book for them. The book is admittedly sort of a stretch, but who cares. When the Dragon gets pissed at the villagers for sending him a virgin instead of the thousand pounds he asked for, he punishes them by sending Gwen's ridiculous list of all the food she can think of, including oatmeal.

I made these cookies one night when I was, well, craving cookies. And though I salted them, there was still something missing. Turns out that something was candied bacon.

I pretty much always bake my bacon in the oven. Weird, right? But there's no hissing, spitting bacon grease or splattered cooktop. And if I'm making it for breakfast, I can use my large skillet for pancakes or eggs instead. It just works for me. So that's what I did here, adding a little bit of maple syrup, brown sugar and cinnamon in the final few minutes.

I like cookies the size of my head (or well, my palm I suppose) so this recipe makes about a dozen and a half BIG cookies, which is good because these don't keep. I'd make them for a crowd or a potluck or some time when they'll all get eaten within a day or two. After that they'll get chewy and stale.

I suspect it won't be a problem though. They're pretty delicious.

Candied Bacon Salted Oatmeal Cookies
Makes: 18 large cookies
Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes (30 minutes hands-on time)
Difficulty: Easy

6 slices thick-cut or country bacon
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon course sea salt
16 tablespoons butter (2 sticks), softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon reserved bacon grease
2 large eggs
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not the quick cooking kind and DEFINITELY not instant)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Lay out 6 slices of bacon on a cookie tray covered in aluminum foil. Bake for 10 minutes and flip. Bake and additional 5 minutes and check for crispness.

2. In the meantime, mix 1 tablespoon of maple syrup, 2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon in a small mixing bowl until combined. When the bacon is almost done, drain off bacon grease and reserve. Brush the mixture over one side, flip and brush over the other side. Continue to bake for 3 minutes, making sure not to scorch the sugar.

3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sea salt and remaining 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.

4. In the a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter, sugar, brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of the reserved bacon grease. Add eggs one at a time, mixing to combine after each addition. Add flour mixture and and mix until almost combined. Add oats [and crumbled bacon] and mix.

5. On three cookie trays covered with parchment paper, scoop out dough into balls approximately 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches across. Refrigerate trays for 15 minutes.

6. Bake for 22-25 minutes until golden on the edges and set in the middle, rotating and switching halfway through baking. Allow to cook on trays for 10 minutes, then move to wire racks to cool completely.

7. Consume immediately. Recommend refrigeration for any leftovers to be extra cautious. These do have meat in them, after all.

[edited to add: when to add the bacon in step 4--thanks to commenter Kelly for catching that missing instruction!]

In Bed With Her Italian Boss Family Tomato Sauce

In Bed with Her Italian Boss by Kate Hardy, a Harlequin Presents that seems to have started life as a Mills & Boon called Breakfast at Giovanni's, wasn't what I would have expected given that title. That title conjures visions of a dubiously-appropriate workplace romance with a hot-blooded man. This book is not that. Not at all. Rather, it's a story of two people trying to find their way when their careers take unexpected turns, with a side order of fond family interactions.

Francesca has been a customer at Giovanni's coffeehouse for a while before she loses her job due to downsizing after a merger. And while Giovanni, the owner of the coffeehouse, has noticed her, she hasn't ever really noticed him. So when he brings her a consoling treat and they get to talking, she doesn't realize right away that he's the owner. But they talk about her previous job and her skills and he offers her an office management position at his small, but growing chain. And if it just so happens that they've got a little bit of chemistry, well, that's okay because they're not going to act on it.

Of course, they do act on it. But not until after Francesca has been persuaded to be Giovanni's fake girlfriend in addition to being his office manager, a set up that should have sent me running for the hills, but worked because pretty much everything else in this book is so spectacularly plausible and normal. The characters, the setting, the business details, and the coworker and family relationships all formed a steady foundation for this otherwise precarious plot. Both characters have emotional limitations that keep them apart even while circumstance keeps pushing them together. And at every step, their internal conflicts seemed genuine.

Giovanni is a perfect example of where romance's alpha and beta hero distinctions break down. Here's a hero who is good at his job, loves his family, plays classical guitar and feels all the feels right from the beginning of the novel. He rides in on his white horse (er, cargo van), gives the heroine a shot at a new career and helps out when her apartment gets flooded. And get this: he does it without being dictatorial or condescending. He just acts like a real friend would. Um, a tall, olive-skinned, dreamboat of a real friend, but who doesn't have those? (Okay, none of us have those, but that's part of why romance is fun.)

And Francesca is equally grounded and sensible. She is sad when she's is downsized. She gets angry and frustrated with Giovanni when he's being obtuse. She takes time to make decisions, handles her work challenges like a professional and doesn't go to pieces except right at the end when a lack of communication puts the breaks on the romance. However, because the entire story is about two people learning to work together, like each other, trust each other and eventually love each other, that breakdown in understanding didn't feel forced like it sometimes can in romance. There are no distractions in the form of lecherous villains or evil competitors. There's no murder plot, dying family member or other dramatic, trauma-inducing situation to keep the plot moving.

In Bed With Her Italian Boss is just a couple of people fumbling their way through life and landing safely in each other's laps. And how nice is that?

Today's recipe makes me happy. So happy that I've been waiting about 10 months for the right book to share it.

Only about a quarter of my family has any real family recipes. My grandmother on my mother's side wasn't much of a cook. Everyone got fed, but she was very much an upper middle-class 1960s housewife with said's attendant culinary expectations. Think more Jello salad than Julia Child. Don't get me wrong, it has its charms, but in general, that's not how I cook.

My father's side is a different story. They're Sicilian, nearly straight off the boat. So this is very much not a Northern Italian or Italian-American recipe. There is no ground beef or sausage or any meat at all. Probably because my great-grandmother was one of those people who, when you showed up, would ask if you were hungry. And no matter the answer, you'd better have been prepared to eat at least a three-course meal consisting of salad, pasta and main course. Yes, there was a pasta course and a main course. Both.

Are you getting a sense of why I now attempt to feed strangers via the internet?

There are some aspects of this recipe that are downright weird. Why add dried Italian seasoning and dried oregano when there is already fresh basil and fresh oregano and basil pesto? Why whole tomatoes and tomato sauce? What's up with the sugar? Why does the water have to be boiling? Here's my brilliant, insightful, educated answer: I've got no freaking idea.

I could say something about layers of flavors or suchlike, but I suspect that what's really going on here is necessity as the mother of invention and the crafting, over many, many years, of a fool-proof recipe. My family wasn't exactly poor. Certainly no more or less so than anyone else in their neighborhood. But they were working class and probably the recipe turned out like this because sometimes there were fresh herbs and sometimes dried ones. Sometimes there was pesto and sometimes there wasn't. The sugar probably has something to do with counteracting the tomato's acidity, but then, why use the baking soda too? And why at three different stages of the cooking process? Really. No idea. But the overall result is that if you don't have fresh herbs handy or if you forget to add the first pinch of baking soda, don't fret! It will all work out.

As grandma would say, "Mangia!"

Family Tomato Sauce
Difficulty: Easy
Makes: A metric ton (freezes well)
Time: 4 hours, 30 minutes (hands-on time: 30 minutes)

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 shallot, minced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
6 springs of parsley, de-stemmed and chopped
3 springs basil, de-stemmed and chopped
3 springs oregano, de-stemmed and chopped
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons prepared basil pesto
1 heaping teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, undrained
2 15-ounce cans tomato sauce
2 cups boiling water
2 pinches baking soda, divided
Parmesan and additional parsley for garnish (optional)

1. In a large pan, heat olive oil over medium heat until shimmering and fragrant. Add onion and cook for 6-8 minutes or until soft. Add shallot, garlic, pesto, and fresh and dried herbs and cook for an additional 1 minute.

2. Turn down heat to medium-low. Add whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, boiling water, sugar, salt, pepper and first pinch of baking soda. Cover and simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally (check to make sure the bottom doesn't burn, turning down heat if necessary).

3. Add second pinch of baking soda. It will fizz a bit, counteracting the acid in the tomatoes.

4. After 3 hours, uncover and continue to simmer one additional hour to allow the sauce to thicken up, continuing to stir occasionally.

5. Serve with your favorite pasta and garnish with Parmesan and additional parsley if desired

Flight of Magpies Szechuan Pork Tacos

It's books like Flight of Magpies by K.J. Charles that make my heart hurt every time someone says that romance novels are dumb. Because this book, even more than the two that preceded it (and those were pretty damn good), is absolutely brilliant. And it's brilliant in, like, three separate genres, somehow doing justice to each.

For those not familiar with the series, it follows justiciar Stephen Day, a hybrid policeman-wizard, whose job it is to track down and bring to justice magical lawbreakers. His job is not high status or particularly lucrative, but he's devoted to it. What power he has is entirely magical and he's very, very good. If you're a competence porn sort of reader, you're really going to love Stephen. In the first book, The Magpie Lord, his duties throw him into the path of Lord Crane, a man with a magical problem who just happens to be the son of the man who ruined Stephen's father. Crane is powerful in a more temporal way, with physical prowess, political clout and immense personal charm. Over the course of three books, they are drawn together and pulled apart by duty, circumstances, bad guys, wanderlust and a society that doesn't approve of their love, to put it mildly. Flight of Magpies is the culmination of all these conflicts and it is packed full of wickedly hot sex, heart-breaking emotional moments, fast-paced action and a sense of urgency that will make you wish you hadn't opened the book at 10 pm, all leading to such a dramatic climax that you'll be exhausted and speechless by the end. But in the best way.

Flight of Magpies is everything romance can be, wrapped up in one tidy package. It contains a story that just couldn't be told any other way. It's a gorgeous romance where two men who have quite different stations in life, quite different personalities and major conflicts between them fall in love, have fights, make up and do something amazing together. It's also a terrific fantasy, with coherent world-building, a highly logical magic system and a perfectly complex system of magical ethics. And it's accurate historical fiction, using the social mores of the time to stage the conflict.

And not only that, but each of these elements intersects so skillfully. The sex between the characters has magical effects. The historical context impacts the romance. For lovers of Victorian occultism, there are even historical magical intersections. Plus, it's so devilishly well-written by an author who doesn't feel compelled to over-explain things: it doesn't assume that readers are too stupid to read between the lines. And it doesn't have an ounce of fat. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every scene, every chapter serves a purpose with none of the curious looping about I've seen in too many romances with not enough conflict to carry the story.

The entire Charm of Magpies series is everything genre fiction should be, but often isn't. It's perfectly paced, engaging, hilarious, without pretension, and so finely crafted. I've pretty much used up all the adjectives in English that mean anything like "good" so I'll just say: buy it, read it, you won't regret it.

The weather is finally warming up here in Virginia and when it's warm, I start wanting tacos. Preferably with margaritas. Lots of margaritas. It happens pretty much every year. The first sign of temperatures above 60 degrees and I'm Googling the best place for tacos in Northern Virginia.

 

 

Or, you know, I could just make them myself. And I often do. I've been blogging here for a bit less than a year and there are already two taco recipes: Thai beef tacos and carne asada tacos. Today I'm adding a third.

These tacos are really easy. Basically, you brown a pork shoulder, throw it in the crockpot for eight hours, then shred, serve with a cabbage and lettuce slaw and top it all off with a drizzle of Sriracha. It's vaguely Szechuan-inspired, what with the five spice powder and sliced red chiles in the slaw, but with corn tortillas and Vietnamese Sriracha, it's nothing like authentic. Just an homage to Crane's time in China and a brief reference Charles drops at the beginning of the second book of the series, A Case of Possession.

Oh, and for those who hate multiple steps in crockpot recipes, you can totally skip the browning part and just put the shoulder in the crockpot. It won't be as tasty without the carmelization, but if you're in a rush, you can. Also, if you're not into spice, use half a thinly sliced red bell pepper instead of the hot chiles.

Now let's have tacos.

Szechuan Pork Tacos
Diffculty: Easy
Makes: 8 servings (24 tacos)
Time: 8 hours, 25 minutes (hands-on time: 25 minutes)

Pork
2 1/2 - 3 pound blade-in pork shoulder
1 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five spice powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
3 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or other high-heat oil--not olive oil)
1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons sweet chili-garlic sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ginger, minced
24 corn tortillas
Sriracha sauce (optional)

Slaw
1/4 head of napa cabbage, sliced thin (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/2 Romaine lettuce heart, slice thin (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 carrots, peeled and shredded
2 Thai chile peppers, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon rice vinegar (unseasoned)
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon low-sodium soy sauce

1. Combine the five spice powder, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Rub the mixture all over the pork shoulder.

2. Heat the grapeseed oil in a large skillet over high heat until very hot, but not smoking. Sear the roast on all sides (don't forget the ends), about one minute each side. Remove to a 4 to 6 quarts crockpot. Turn down the heat on the skillet to medium-high.

3. Pour off all but one tablespoon of the oil. Cook the garlic and ginger until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour in the soy sauce to deglaze the pan and dump everything into the crock pot on top of the pork. Top with brown sugar and sweet chili sauce and stir everything around a little bit. Cook for 8 hours on low.

4. About 10 minutes before the roast is done, prepare the slaw. Combine the rice vinegar, honey, sesame oil and soy sauce in a large bowl. Add the cabbage, lettuce, carrots and chiles. Toss to combine.

4. When the roast is done, reserve the cooking liquid. Take the roast out of the crockpot and use two forks to shred the meat. It should fall right off the bone and shred very easily. Put it in a large bowl and combine with 4 tablespoons of the cooking liquid.

5. Serve shredded pork topped with slaw and a drizzle of Sriracha.