One Kiss with a Rock Star Foie Gras Burgers & Truffle Fries

Normally I put my disclosures at the bottom of the post, but the book I'm featuring today is a special case. This isn't a review. It's cover copy and a recipe and a heads up that One Kiss with a Rock Star by Shari Slade and Amber Lin went on sale yesterday. Having been a beta reader for the manuscript, I can't be anything like objective about it. But this blog is just me and I didn't want its release to pass uncelebrated. I thought the book was sexy, serious, sweet and funny. In a completely biased and wholly unprofessional way, I hope you'll consider reading it!

Also, I made a really slammin' burger based on a scene from the book.

Cover Copy

Half-Life bassist Krist Mellas is caught in a PR nightmare after his dirty sex video blew up online. His agent has the solution: a fake engagement with sultry pop princess Madeline Fox. Krist can’t think of anything worse than a charade with the bubblegum bombshell…except losing the band.

Madeline knows better than anyone what it means to live a lie in the spotlight. She’s determined to help Krist without ever letting him find out what it costs her—or about her girlhood crush on him. But after a smoking hot back alley encounter with him leaves her breathless, she can’t deny she wants the snarling bad-boy rocker.

In a world of glitter and diamonds where the kisses are fake but the climaxes are real, their facades start to crack. And the publicity storm may shatter them both.

WARNING: This book contains a scorching threesome, a dirty talking pop princess, and a surly rocker who hits all the right notes.

Near the end of One Kiss with a Rock Star, Krist winds up alone in a fancy restaurant wanting a burger and fries and a beer. The snotty waiter informs him that they have foie gras stuffed prime rib burgers with caviar, truffle fries and a list of microbrews to select from. The scene perfectly encapsulates how ill-fitting Krist's life has become and how yearning for more doesn't always mean, well, MORE. Plus it gives him a beer to cry into.

Here's the thing though. I may wish I were a rock star (or secretly believe myself to be one while singing at the top of my lungs at stoplights), but I'm really not. Nor do I have a rock star's budget. I rather expect few of my readers do either. After all, we're constantly buying books! So instead of stuffing these burgers full of foie gras and caviar, I topped them with just about an ounce of foie gras for each burger. And then I added some onions cooked until they carmelized with a little bit of smoked maple syrup and flambéed with bourbon. The sweetness of the onions pairs perfectly with the rich foie gras and earthy truffle fries.

This recipe is insanely decadent in a way I just love, with expensive ingredients turned into comfort food: my favorite kind of ridiculous indulgence. Like the smoked Gouda and bacon macaroni and cheese I make occasionally. That, incidentally, would go great with this. However, in the book it's truffle french fries so that's what I've done here. I used truffle oil here rather than actual truffles,which is pretty common in restaurants. Truffled mashed potatoes, for example, rarely have actual truffles in them.

As for the onions, I suppose you don't have to flambé them, but it's fun. Plus, don't rock stars love pyrotechnics? If you've never done it before, it isn't hard. You will want your long match and a fire extinguisher or baking soda handy though when you're ready to pour in the alcohol. I've never had a mishap, but any time you're working with open flame, it pays to be careful, ya know?

Other that that, this recipe is pretty easy, for all that's it's also pretty decadent. The only other tricky part is right at the end where the fries have to come out of the oil, the buns have to get toasted, the foie gras is searing and the burgers need flipping. I could have used a sous chef. It all worked out. But it's something to keep in mind if you have another handy kitchen helper around.

Or even two handy kitchen helpers.

Burgers with Foie Gras & Smoked Maple Syrup Bourbon Carmelized Onions and Truffle Fries
Makes: 4 servings
Time: 1 hour

Smoked Maple Syrup Bourbon Carmelized Onions
3 medium onions, sliced
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon maple syrup (smoked maple syrup if you can find it)
1/4 cup bourbon

Truffle Fries
1/2 gallon canola or vegetable oil
4 medium Russet potatoes, sliced into thin strips.
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon truffle oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Burgers
1 1/2 to 2 pounds 80/20 ground beef, formed into patties
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
4 hamburger buns (I used brioche rolls)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Foie Gras
4 ounces foie gras, deveined and cut into four equal portions
1 tablespoon potato starch or Wondra flour

1. Heat olive oil and butter over medium-low heat until butter melts. Add onions, sugar and salt and cook slowly until onions begin to carmelize, about 15 minutes.

2. Raise heat to medium-high. Add maple syrup and cook until boiling, about 30 seconds. Pour in bourbon, heat for 10-15 seconds, then light with a long match. Shake pan until alcohol burns off and flames are extinguished. Remove onions to a bowl and set aside.

3. To prepare fries, heat the oil to 250 degrees F. When it's hot, fry the potatoes in batches, 4-5 minutes per batch until tender. They won't brown at this stage, but you do want them cooked through. Remove to a plate or tray prepared with paper towels to drain.

4. Raise the heat to 375 degrees F. Working in batches again, fry potatoes until golden, 2-3 minutes per batch. When all potatoes are browned, remove to plate or tray prepared with paper towels and add salt, shaking to coat. Sprinkle with truffle oil and again shake to coat. Start with a 1/4 teaspoon. You can always add more and it's a very distinct flavor so you don't want to add too much.

5. To prepare burgers, heat your grill or a skillet to medium-high heat. Add your burger patties, cooking 3-4 minutes each side depending on desired doneness.

6. To prepare buns, brush each cut side with melted butter. In a pan or under the broiler, toast until golden, about 1 minute.

7. To prepare foie gras, heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Dredge each piece in potato starch or Wondra flour. Add to skillet, cooking about 30 seconds each side until just seared. Don't leave it much longer than that or it will completely melt.

8. To serve, add one burger pattie to a bun, top with one foie gras slice and a tablespoon or two of the prepared onions. Serve with the truffle fries.

Disclosure: I received One Kiss With a Rock Star from the authors and I was a beta reader for the manuscript (in case you somehow missed that up top).

Summer Chaparral Carne Asada Tacos & Ranch Beans

Summer Chaparral by Genevieve Turner broke a long reading streak I had of historical romances that just weren't all I'd hoped for. Don't get me wrong: I love me some Regencies & Victorians. But they do seem to suck up a lot of the historical limelight. Sure, there are Westerns and Civil War romances and Medievals and such if you're willing to really look and read a lot of reviews, but the Ton ballrooms still seem to be the hottest thing on the historical romance menu. And I've never read anything like this Western Romeo & Juliet style family epic.

Set in California in the late 19th century, Summer Chaparral is the start of a new series about the Moreno family, an old Spanish family in the process of being displaced by and subsumed into the new American California. Catarina Moreno is the eldest of las Morenas, a dutiful daughter who is nevertheless chafing under her mother's household rule and her own lack of romantic prospects. She suspects she is being kept from marriage as a result of her parents' insistence that she marry within both her ethnicity and her social class, which leaves a dearth of prospects in their small California town. Beautiful, hard-working and intelligent, Catarina's enormous rebellions have included putting cilantro in the barbacoa and flirting with boys, even giving them the occasion kiss. All she wants is a husband and a home of her own, but despite all her family's wealth, it seems impossible.

When Jace Merrill comes on the scene, even a simple conversation with him gets Catarina into trouble with her meddling middle sister and both her parents, making her the object of weeks of town gossip. Jace has taken the much larger rebellious step of actually leaving his social climbing father's house and name behind 13 years prior because he'd prefer to be a rancher than a judge. By working for years at a large ranch in the Valley, he figures he has nearly enough saved for a ranch of his own. He just needs a bit more money put by, a bit of land, a couple hundred head of cattle and a grazing permit. What he finds is Catarina. Right from the start, Catarina and Jave are irresistible to each other. So it is not surprising when someone eventually catches them doing quite a bit more than stealing kisses under the rose arbor.

Forced by her family to marry, there is quite a bit of tension between Catarina and Jace. Family loyalty prevents both of them from expressing their truths to each other and both spend a significant portion of the novel trying to assess where the others' loyalties lie. But rather than relying upon misunderstandings and simple lack of communication, Turner ensures that the conflict between them is believable, reasonable and understandable. There is not only a clash of cultures and old family grudges at play here, but the tension between two newly-married people who haven't quite got each other figured out yet. Having run into this phenomenon early in my own marriage, I identified with their relationship growing pains in a rare and special way.

Summer Chaparral is the first in a series of three. The other two Moreno sisters, Isabel and Franny will get their own next year. I'm very eager for the next book, the hero of which I am assured is quite issue-laden (which, as you may know, is my favorite), and for the final book of the series, which features the independent youngest of the clan; the not at all tradition-bound Franny. This book was a fantastic introduction to the historic California setting and Moreno family, cloaked in a sexy romance full of tension and family drama. If you're ready to take a historical trip away from Regency England, Summer Chaparral would be a good place to start.

I'm from California. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved farther south when I was 12. This was a good experience for a future foodie. Not only is California incredibly racially and ethnically diverse with a corresponding diversity of culinary options, it has a huge array of fresh produce available year-round. In fact, when I moved to the East Coast for university, I was appalled by the state of winter grocery store produce. Pallid tomatoes, limp lettuce, bruised zucchini, flavorless strawberries. I started to pay a lot more attention to seasonality, locally grown fruits and vegetables (hello, ramps: someone write me a West Virginia romance please!) and farmer's markets.

Now from May through November I buy as much produce as I can from the farmer's market near our house and get a lot of our other groceries like milk, eggs and the occasional meat and poultry from a farmer who delivers it right to our door every week. We pay a little more for our food, but it feels more real to me that way: to be closer to the source of production and clearer on what exactly goes into my food. I'm not a huge evangelist for this way of eating or anything, but it did seem appropriate to share in connection with Summer Chaparral, which is so much about the basic necessities of both Catarina and Jace.

As for this recipe, it's definitely not traditional Mexican cuisine, but it's also not Tex Mex. You'll note a complete absence of cheese, rice, refried beans, hot sauce and other things that people tend to associate with "Mexican" food. These two dishes are a particular brand of rural, ranching, cowboy food that seems nearly exclusive to California's Central Valley: Fresno & Bakersfield, but also west to places like Santa Maria and south even to places like Brawley (which is where the friend who gave me this particular recipe years ago is from). Hence the orange juice, which is definitely a Southern California phenomenon. This is better on the grill, but if it's too cold where you are or you don't have one (like me), you can totally broil the flank steak.

The beans on the other hand are a total California grilling standby, usually plopped on a huge grate over an open wood fire. They get seriously burned on the bottom though unless you stir them constantly over a period of 6-8 hours so this crock pot version that I found does an excellent job of approximating the taste without needing constant attention or, uh, completely charring your pot. Not that I'd know anything about that. These aren't sweet Boston-style baked beans or gloopy refried beans. They're spicier, more savory and pair much better with the fresh simplicity of the tacos than anything else I've tried.

Plus, well, it tastes like home.

Carne Asada Tacos & Ranch Beans
Makes: 4 servings
Time: 24 hours, Hands on time: 30 minutes

Carne Asada Tacos
2 cups orange juice
1/2 tablespoon of lime juice
1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon minced cilantro
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 pounds flank steak 
16 small (taco size) white corn tortillas
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
1 lime, cut into wedges (optional)
fresh tomato salsa (optional)

1) Combine orange juice, lime juice, cumin, garlic, cilantro, salt & pepper in a freezer bag. Close and shake to combine. Add flank steak and squeeze out all the air. Refrigerate and allow to marinate for 12-24 hours.

2) Take the meat out of the refrigerator for 30 minutes prior to cooking. On the grill, cook the meat until a meat thermometer registers 140 degrees for medium (which I recommend or the meat will be tough), 160 for well-done (which I don't recommend because the meat toughens up), approximately 5 minutes on each side. If you opt for the broiler, first preheat the broiler. Then lightly oil an oven-proof skillet with vegetable oil and sear meat for 2-3 minutes each side. Then place the skillet under the broiler for 3-4 minutes each side until meat thermometer registers 140 degrees.

3) While the meat cooks, heat corn tortillas in the microwave between two sheets of damp paper towel until warm and pliable, about 40 seconds. Chop half an onion and mince the additional cilantro and mix to combine.

4) Remove the meat from the grill or skillet and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Then slice into 1/2 inch cubes, first going against the grain and then slicing with the grain.

5) Using two tortillas per taco for sturdiness, add meat, then top with onion and cilantro. They don't really need salsa, but you can add it if you like. I like a little squeeze of lime on mine, but that's quite a California thing and may not be to everyone's taste. Serve with Ranch Beans, recipe below.

Ranch Beans
adapted from Chow.com

1/2 pound dried pinto beans
1 1/2 cups beef broth
1/2 medium white onion, diced
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 jalapeño, stemmed, seeded and minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon chipotle or ancho chile powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 small ham hock (for non pork eaters & vegetarians, substitute 1 teaspoon smoked sea salt and 2 tablespoons olive oil)
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

1) Rinse and sort dried beans, making sure to remove any small stones you might find. Cover with at least three inches of water and allow to soak overnight.

2) In a crock pot, combine drained beans, beef broth, onion, tomato sauce, jalapeño, garlic, salt, chipotle chile powder, chili powder, cumin, brown sugar, paprika, black pepper & oregano. Stir until combined. Add the ham hock. Cook on high for 6 hours or on low for 8 hours.

3) At the end of cooking, remove ham hock and rest it is cool enough to remove the skin & bone. Chop up the remaining meat and return to the pot with the cider vinegar, stirring to combine.

Disclosure: I received Summer Chaparral from the publisher via NetGalley for review purposes and I am friendly with the author on Twitter.

Glitterland Cottage Pie

Alexis Hall's Glitterland is a flawless gem of a novel. Certainly the best thing I've read all year. Maybe one of the best things I've read ever. When I start ranking books in my head, it approaches Prince of Midnight, my favorite Laura Kinsale book and Stardust, my favorite Neil Gaiman book. So I think I must have really liked it a lot. I liked it for what it is, a love story about two guys who are super different and yet still manage to find common ground in each other. I liked it for what it represented to me with its themes of forgiveness and redemption. I liked it for how it did both those things, with language that is elegant, funny, erudite and witty. I'm not sure what else one could look for in a book. So, yeah. Flawless.

Ash Winters is a novelist, a former Golden Boy of the British literary scene turned detective fiction writer with a trust fund and a Cambridge education. The detective books he writes keep him busy, but he thinks the work is beneath him. However, the state of his mental health makes him feel like he can't do anything else. Simply put, Ash is a mess and has been one for so long that he may even think he's more of a mess than he is. Technically speaking, he's bipolar, which manifests in manic highs and depressive lows, but he's also agoraphobic and suffers from anxiety. For much of the book, he comes off as selfish, callous, snobby and insecure. He feels awful about himself much of the time and some readers may not readily sympathize with him. But if you've even been on the inside of depression, his struggles will be intimately familiar. Like this:

In all these years, this is all I have learned: Depression simply is. It has no beginning and no end, no boundaries and no world outside itself. It is the first, the last, the only, the alpha and the omega. Memories of better times die upon its desolate shores. Voices drown in its seas. The mind becomes its own prisoner.

If opposites attract, then it makes perfect sense that Darian Taylor and Ash would want each other. Darian is an "orange glitter pirate" with an Essex accent, a lower class upbringing and little formal education. Between his fake tan, his sequined wardrobe and his modeling career, Darian is the last person Ash could have seen himself falling for. But right from the start they have an explosively hot sexual connection and even though Ash would prefer to dismiss the experience and call it a one night stand; Darian is more honest about how rare and special they really are together. Ash gives Darian the brush-off, but charming, simple Darian isn't easily dissuaded. He likes Ash and isn't willing to give up on him quite that easily.

The entire plot of the novel revolves around the differences between the two main characters. Different social classes, different hobbies & interests, different education levels, different work and friends and family situations. Ash is jaded, cynical and experienced while Darian is fresh, hopeful and innocent. Ash has largely isolated himself from the people who care about him. Darian has a cadre of close friends and lives with his grandmother. Though on the surface, Ash's life might seem the ideal one with his posh apartment, bespoke wardrobe and fancy education, it's Darian, who lives with his grandmother, loves reality television and is secure enough to wear a Union Jack onesie, who seems to have mastered the whole living thing. And Darian is gracious and patient in a way Ash has never learned to be, most especially with himself.

But even Darian can be pushed too far. Three-quarters of the way through the book, Ash finally succeeds in pushing Darian away. Once they're separated, Ash realizes two important things, one which is typical of romance novels, the other which really isn't. The typical thing he realizes is that he doesn't want to live without Darian. The atypical thing Ash discovers is that he has to let Darian make his own choices about what he can handle instead of making Darian's choices for him by persistently claiming that he will make Darian miserable and by minimizing their relationship. He has spent so long trying to control every variable in his environment in order to lessen his anxiety that allowing himself to let go of this one thing represents a huge step for him.

I enjoyed this story all the way through. It's hilarious and sexy and sweet all at once. The language is breathtakingly poetic in spots. But what has stuck with me in the few weeks since I read it was how tremendous the ending was. Ash undertakes a necessary journey of redemption, despite the pain and anxiety and embarrassment it causes him and Darian receives him with such generosity. The way Darian reacts to Ash's fumbling, groveling apology is miraculous, wise and generous. Of course Ash doesn't deserve it, but he gets Darian's forgiveness and love anyway. The miracle of that ending is what will keep me rereading this book for years to come.

I've got no idea where this recipe came from. I make it at least once or twice a month, mainly because my husband really likes it and I cook dinner for our Dungeons & Dragons group when we play and they like it too. I mean, what's not to like? It's basically meat and potatoes. I grew up next door to a British family who had a daughter just a year younger than me and we were constantly back and forth to each other's houses, mainly through the fence that divided our backyards. I remember my neighbor frequently making cottage pie for tea, which is the perfect thing for kids to eat at the perfect time of day. I think I searched this particular recipe out while I was at university, but I've been making it from memory for so long that I don't even think I could lay hands on whatever paper copy I might have had way back when.

This is pretty similar to the dish Darian cooks for Ash in Glitterland, with slight modifications. Darian's recipe even appears in the back of the book. The main difference between the two is the absence of grated cheese here, which is amusing to me because Darian makes fun of Ash for not being able to properly operate a cheese grater. For the record, I can't grate cheese either. I'm a fairly accomplished cook, but every time I pull out a cheese grater, I end up grating my fingers. I have actual scars from doing this. I will get the food processor dirty to grate a 1/4 cup of cheese because I loathe bleeding into my guests' food.

I've nearly always made this recipe with ground beef, but you can certainly use two pounds of whatever ground meat you'd like. In the past I've used ground lamb because my husband likes it, ground turkey and more veggies when I was feeding health-conscious people, and ground elk when a friend brought us some from a hunting trip. So this is a pretty flexible recipe.

Between the association with my childhood and the fact that it's an easy recipe I can make quickly from memory with stuff I always have in my pantry, this is definite comfort food. Which makes it pretty funny that Ash calls his fancy friend Max for a salad recipe and produces some froofy thing involving pears and blue cheese that doesn't go well with this dish at all. It's not unlike this recipe, only with pears instead of apples and cheese instead of hazelnuts. Hall reflects that they had "served each other a metaphor": Darian's simple comfort food and Ash's complex and weirdly inappropriate salad meant to impress. Rather, plain lettuce, chopped tomatoes and some generic salad dressing are probably what's called for here. At most, maybe a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing if you insist on being fancy, which I did (I'm much more like Ash than like Darian), so this one from Alton Brown is what's pictured here. I cut the recipe in half for two because it doesn't keep.

Oh, and one other thing: I often don't bother to make mashed potatoes from scratch like I did here. I sometimes just get two pounds of refrigerated mashed potatoes from the deli case, heat them up and spread them on top. That cuts the preparation time by about half an hour so if you're in a hurry, just do that.

See, I'm not a total snob.

Cottage Pie
Makes: 8 servings
Time: 1 hour (Hands on time: 45 minutes)

2 pounds Russet or other non-waxy potato, peeled & cut into 1" chunks
8 tablespoons (1 stick) salted butter, melted
1/2 cup half & half, hot

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 carrots
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
2 pounds ground beef
2 packets brown gravy mix
2/3 cup water
1 cup frozen peas
salt & pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Add potatoes and a pinch of salt to a large pot and cover with water by about 1". Bring to a boil and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes, until potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork. Heat the half & half over low heat while you prepare the filling.

3. While potatoes simmer, peel and dice carrots and onions. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When olive oil is shimmering and fragrant, add the carrots and onions and cook until onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for and additional 30 seconds.

4. Remove carrots, onions and garlic to a 9x13" glass or enamel baking dish (enamel is better because you can finish the dish under the broiler, but I don't have the right size--so sad for me). Add the ground beef to the same skillet and cook until browned, about 5-7 minutes. Drain the fat from the meat and return to the heat.

5. Return the carrots, onions and garlic to the skillet. Add the brown gravy packets and water to the skillet and mix thoroughly. Allow to simmer for 3-4 minutes until all water has been absorbed. Add the frozen peas and cook for an additional 1-2 minutes. Remove mixture to the baking dish.

6. By now the potatoes should be done, or close to it. Drain the potatoes and return them to the pot. Using a food mill or potato masher, mash the potatoes until smooth. Add the melted butter and combine. Add approximately 3/4 of the half & half to the mashed potatoes and combine. Add more half & half as necessary to achieve the desired consistency.

7. Smooth mashed potatoes over the top of the ground beef mixture. Bake for 15 minutes. If you're using an enamel baking dish, you can finish the dish under the broiler for another two minutes to achieve a slightly browned and crisp top. Don't do this if you're using a glass baking dish as the heat of the broiler can cause the glass to explode.

8. Serve with salad of your choice.

Disclosure: I received Glitterland from the publisher for review purposes. The book's editor, the book's author and I follow each other on Twitter.

Private Politics Ben's Chili Bowl Copy-Cat Chili Dogs

[Elisabeth here. I gushed so effusively about Liam, the hero of Emma Barry's latest DC-set romance, that my husband pestered me until I let him read it. I asked if he had any thoughts he wanted to include in my review. As it turned out, he had lots of thoughts. So I just let him write it. I'll pick back up with the recipe after his thoughts about the book.]

If you had told me two years ago that I would be an avid reader of romance novels, I would very likely not have believed you. And if you had told me, right after Elisabeth persuaded me to start reading my first romance novel (for the record, Hard Day’s Knight by Katie MacAlister) that I would be writing a romance novel review for her blog, I would have definitely been skeptical. But my wife knows me well, sometimes better than I know myself. She knows that I like a good story, even though I wasn’t much of a fiction reader when we first met. To borrow a phrase from the Most Interesting Man in the World, I don’t often read fiction, but when I do, I demand good stories and fully-rounded characters. The romances Elisabeth has steered me towards definitely meet that criteria, and today’s review, Private Politics by Emma Barry, is no exception.

Private Politics is the second of a series of romances by Barry set in contemporary Washington, DC, but it can be read as a stand-alone. The heroine, Alyse Philips, is the daughter of a wealthy New York City family who is forging her own path in DC as the star fundraiser for a non-profit. She wants to do something with her life that she finds meaningful instead of the plans she suspects her family has for her (move back to NYC, settle down with an ambitious up-and-comer alpha male, and follow the typical socialite life). But her plans start to go awry when she discovers some suspicious discrepancies in the charity’s books during an annual audit. Torn between protecting her perceived reputation (including her prospects for continued DC employment and therefore independence from her family) and the growing doubts about the legality of her current employer, she ends up working with Liam Nussbaum to get to the bottom of things.

Liam is a political blogger and budding investigative journalist. He’s an acquaintance of Alyse’s, and has been nursing a crush on her for six months. However, he considers her unattainable – she’s beautiful, successful, and desirable, all qualities he believes he lacks. From the beginning of his involvement with Alyse’s problem, Liam is torn between his natural desire to help her and help set things right, and his struggle to hide his growing desire for her. As the case gets deeper, and Liam and Alyse get more involved with the scandal and each other, she starts to key into Liam’s better qualities – his honesty, his enthusiasm, his political street-smarts – and begins to develop a crush on him as well. At which point… well, I won’t spoil the details, but it’s a romance novel. You can work out the end results.

So what made this book in particular so intriguing to me – enough so that I agreed without hesitation to write this review? First, I immediately related to Liam. He’s definitely not your typical Fabio-body-Greek-tycoon-expense-account-Casanova-charm mutant hero found in many romance novels. (Or so I’m told – Elisabeth has fed me on a steady diet of novels with quirky heroes). But he’s probably the character who has come closest thus far to being someone like me in real life – someone who doesn’t have six-pack abs, isn’t rich, and is actually somewhat in awe of the lady love of his life. I got his point of view immediately, even the bad parts (he wavers between holding himself aloof from Alyse to doing the emotional dump truck on her and back again). Which brings me to the second point – the sexual relationship between them looks (and reads) real to me. They don’t immediately go from zero to mutually-assured-simultaneous orgasms. Their first encounters are, well, messy, and it takes them some time (and conflicts) to work through that. Third, the tension ran right up to the end of the book. In fact, the conflicts in Private Politics were painful enough for me to have to take short breaks afterwards to reorient myself, but in this case it didn’t seem too forced. The final resolution fit quite well with who Liam and Alyse are shown to be in the story – and being able to craft a story that honors the personalities of the characters is a great thing.

In short, I liked Private Politics very much, and heartily recommend it. So I guess, counter to all of my prior expectations, I am a romance reviewer after all. But there is one thing I am NOT, and that is a first-class chef. So for the food porn side of the post, I will turn things back over to my lovely Elisabeth.

Hi! Elisabeth again! That was fun, huh? I can't promise you'll see him a lot, but I thought his perspective on this one was even better than mine. I also really loved the book. I've been gushing about it to anyone who would listen, actually. But to get to the recipe, before three weeks ago, I hadn’t eaten at Ben’s Chili Bowl in 10 years. It’s one of those things you do a lot in your 20s when you live in DC, but eventually you get a decent apartment with a good kitchen and you stop going out drinking five nights a week. However, thanks to this review, the staff at the new Arlington location now know me on sight. I’ve eaten there four times in two weeks.

The process behind coming up with this recipe was completely whackadoodle in case you hadn’t figured that out already. I'm obsessive and this recipe played right into that. I Googled around, hoping that someone had come up with a reasonable approximation for the chili sauce Ben’s serves on their half-smokes. I was kind of surprised when most of what I found didn’t seem to match what I was seeing and tasting. But then, I’m really not an expert at this restaurant copy-cat recipe stuff. So what you’re getting here is my best guess.

As for what I ended up with, for one thing, half-smokes are not hot dogs. They’re half beef, half pork smoked sausages. I don’t know if they’re seriously a DC thing or what, but I had to go all the way to Eastern Market to find them as my local Northern Virginia butchers were completely unhelpful. German sausages? Oh yeah. Eight types. Half-smokes? Nope. But I bet if you ask your local butcher for some kind of smoked sausage, you’ll be happy enough with the result.

Most chili consists of some combination of beef, tomato product, beef stock, chili powder, onions, garlic and other spices. My normal everyday chili has actually already made an appearance here on the blog for Molly O’Keefe’s Never Been Kissed. But the Ben’s Chili Bowl chili sauce doesn’t have beans in it. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have anything healthy in it at all. I’m pretty sure the onions are of the dried sort, the garlic is likely garlic powder and the 80/20 ground beef really isn’t optional. What the recipes I found online did get me was the addition of masa harina, which is a cornmeal product used to make corn tortillas. There’s definitely something corn-related in it because I can taste it and rubbing the sauce around on a plate yielded some undissolved lumps of it. Most grocery stores have it in the Latin American section, but if yours doesn’t, I suppose you could try using fine ground cornmeal?

As for the rest, I used this Youtube video as a jumping off point and then guessed and tasted, and tasted and guessed from there. I honestly think I came up with a pretty reasonable approximation as I tasted my version and Ben's side-by-side. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty flavorful chili sauce, so even if it isn’t exact, it should make a decent dinner.

And when Alyse and Liam grow up, they can move out to the suburbs and make it at home instead of having to drive all the way into the city (well, except to buy the damned half-smokes).

Ben's Chili Bowl Half-Smokes with Chili Sauce
adapted from Tom's Test Kitchen
Serves: 6 reasonably, 4 obnoxiously


1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoons dehydrated onion
2 teaspoons beef bouillon powder
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon red curry powder

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3 tablespoons masa harina

1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 cups water, divided
1 pound ground beef (80/20)
sea salt to taste

6 mild half-smokes
6 white hot dog buns
French's yellow mustard
1 small onion, chopped

1. Mix the first 10 ingredients together in a bowl. Whisk in 1 cup water, making sure all the spices are evenly distributed and there are no lumps.

2. Put the ground beef in a pot with remaining 2 cups water. Stir the beef and water to break up the beef into very fine bits. You don’t want any ground beef chunks. Bring to a boil.

3. Add the spice mixture, bay leaf and tomato paste, stir to combine well. Turn down the heat to low and simmer [4/25/15: uncovered] for 60-70 minutes or until chili sauce is still loose, but not liquidy with unabsorbed water. Adjust salt to taste, keeping in mind that the half-smokes are pretty salty on their own. I didn't add any additional salt.

4. With about 15 minutes left in the cooking time, put your half-smokes on the grill. I don’t have a grill so I do what I usually do with sausage, which is to put the half-smokes in a frying pan on the stove with about 1/4 inch of water in it over medium-high heat. Cover and allow to steam for 5 minutes. Remove cover for remaining 10 minutes, allowing the water to boil off and the sausage to brown, turning once. They should be black on two sides when ready to serve.

5. Place a hot dog bun on plate. Add one sausage, about a tablespoon of chopped onion, a drizzle of plain yellow mustard and about half a cup of chili sauce. It will be very messy. Serve with ridged potato chips for scooping up extra chili sauce that falls out.

Disclosure: Private Politics was given to me by the author for review purposes. The author and I also have a friendly relationship on Twitter.

Never Been Kissed Weeknight Chili

The second book of Molly O'Keefe's Boys of Bishop series, Never Been Kissed (pre-order now for release on July 1st), is an intensely personal journey of two very different people helping each other find love. When the book starts out, the heroine has been kidnapped by pirates. The hero rushes to her rescue, arriving in time to save her from both the pirates and her scary political mother. On the face of it, it's a pretty crazy premise for someone like me who's never been the least bit tempted by romantic suspense. Luckily, the story comes back down to earth very quickly.

When Ashley Montgomery and Brody Baxter arrive in Brody's adoptive hometown of Bishop, Arkansas to allow Ashley recuperate out of the both the public eye and the not-so-nurturing bosom of her wealthy, political family, any hints of suspense fly out the window. The story becomes a journey of healing. Ashley has already been dismantled by her kidnapping and the subsequent less than supportive reaction of her family. Brody has never fit in anywhere or been close to anyone, having been adopted shortly before a difficult moment in his adoptive family's history. He's not used to relying on anyone or have them rely upon him but for the most concrete needs: money, personal safety, physical labor. Add in the fact that Brody and a young Ashley had met before when he was a bodyguard for her family and the tension in this book is off the charts.

I struggled with the emotion here because it was just so believable. O'Keefe doesn't allow the reader any distance. There is a subplot that eases the dramatic tension somewhat, but I'll get to that in a moment. I'm not a crier by nature, but I felt so badly for these characters at one point in the story that tears were inevitable. Ashley and Brody both have such tremendous personal pain and so many defensive layers built up around their psychological wounds that they have become more like thick scar tissue. And in true small town romance fashion, it takes a village to help them work through that and bring them together. Brody's strained relationships with his father and brother are as much a part of his healing as his relationship with Ashley. And Ashley finds a context for her life independent from her high profile family through her interactions with Brody's dad.

There is so much need in this book for love and forgiveness: Brody and Ashley, Ashley and her family, Brody and his family. And the fact that all of these relationships experience redemption I think is what kept this book from being depressing. I'm not normally a lover of angst in my romance, but when the problems are as common and real as the ones these characters experience, it made my heart happy to see them work through it. Like, Wild Child, the first book in this series, Never Been Kissed is one of my very few five star contemporary romance reads. I'm looking forward to more from Molly O'Keefe.

As a foil to Ashley and Brody's relationship, Brody's brother and bar owner Sean and diner owner and chef extraordinaire Cora have a much less fraught romantic road to travel. In this sweet subplot, Sean and Cora have set each other up as rivals for the past year, sniping at each other instead of working together to improve the Main Street business scene of their tiny downtown. Cora agrees to teach Sean how to cook, taking his chili from inedible to delectable. And it's not surprising that they discover their mutual attraction in the process.

This chili and I were fast friends when I worked in an office, commuted two hours in awful DC traffic and still had to cook dinner. It takes about 40 minutes total, most of which is hands-off so you even have time to bake cornbread if you're so inclined. Not quite the all-day brisket affair I imagine Cora undertaking, but it's nice to have recipes like this in your back pocket for busy weeknights.

Nowadays I make this for game nights with our friends. We have a few friends who aren't big into spicy food so for them I scale back to 1/3 cup of chili powder and use 2 cans of fire-roasted tomatoes instead of adding a can of Rotel. Just those simple substitutions mellow it out a lot.

Since this isn't your typical simmer-all-day chili recipe and it's not as complex flavor-wise, you shouldn't skimp on the toppings here. I like to serve it with sour cream, shredded Cheddar cheese, diced raw onion and diced jalapeño peppers.

As for the corn bread, I may live in the South now, but I'm a California girl at heart. So crisp, salty Southern style corn bread doesn't really work for me. This is a fluffy, cakey, Northern-style corn bread. Dish chili over it, crumble it up and put it on top or just spread it with butter and honey.

Easy Weeknight Chili
adapted from Real Simple Magazine
Makes: 6-8 Servings
Time: 40 minutes (20 minutes hands-on time)


2 to 2 1/4 pounds lean ground beef
1 large onion, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup vegetable or beef broth
1/3 to 1/2 cup chili powder (depending on tolerance for spice)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 - 14 1/2 ounce can fire-roasted tomatoes
1 - 10 ounce can Mild Rotel tomatoes and green chiles
2 - 15 1/2 ounce cans kidney beans, drained (I prefer Goya as many other brands have high fructose corn syrup in them)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
optional toppings and sides: grated Cheddar, sour cream, minced jalapeño, cornbread

1) Place a large Dutch oven or saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the beef and cook until browned, about 5 minutes. Drain off any fat and return beef to the pan.

2) Add the onion, stirring well, and cook until translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more.

3) Gradually add the broth, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the Dutch oven; bring to a boil.
Stir in the chili powder, cumin, Rotel and tomatoes. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and let simmer for 10 minutes.

4) Add the beans, salt, and vinegar, stirring well. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes more. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper, if desired.

5) Serve with the Cheddar, sour cream, jalapeño, and cornbread (recipe below).

Northern-Style Cornbread
Makes: 16 small squares
Time: 30 minutes (10 minutes hands-on time)

1 cup fine or stone ground corn meal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup oil
2/3 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
vegetable oil spray

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2) Combine corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium size bowl.

3) Combine oil, milk and eggs and whisk until combined. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.

4) Spray a 9x9x2 inch pan with vegetable spray and add batter to pan.

5) Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the cornbread comes out with just a few crumbs attached.

I keep baby spoons and toothpicks right by the stove for tasting and testing.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hard Day's Knight Beef Pasties

A couple of months ago, I asked my husband if he'd be interested in reading one of my romance novels. Since he's usually game for pretty much anything and already a genre fiction reader, he agreed. Admittedly, I didn't expect much. I figured he might read one, get the general gist and then leave me to my own romancey devices. That was not to be.

The book was Hard Day's Knight by Katie MacAlister. It proved the perfect introduction to romance in my husband's particular case. My choice was tailored to a particular interest of his (Renaissance Faires) and answered how I knew so much about the then-topical subject of jousting (since he was running a medieval-style tournament for our D&D group at the time). He devoured the book in three days and then asked me for more.

Pepper Marsh, unemployed computer programmer, has agreed to join her cousin CJ at a Renaissance Faire for a little R&R before going back home to continue job hunting. Her cousin is a member of the Legion of Wenches, whose bawdiness might be out-matched only by the romance writers and readers who make up my Twitter feed. CJ is also affianced to a member of a jousting team, the Three Dog Knights, headed up by jouster, farrier and alpha male extraordinaire Walker McPhail.

I suppose this book could be best described as romantic comedy. It's definitely a step beyond chick lit, which tends to gloss over the sexy parts. Plus it is deliberately funny; almost Bridget Jones-esque in its campy slapstick humor. Someone is always falling off a horse and there's a cat that causes all manner of hijinks. There's also a considerable amount of jousting detail as Pepper sets out to defend the honor of all womankind by learning to sit a horse in armor and aim a lance. Walker is the almost unchallenged jousting expert, though he's having some typically alpha emotional difficulties as a result of the fall-out from seriously injuring another jouster during competition.

Though this is a very light-hearted book, there's one aspect of it that I found both serious and well done. Pepper is a typical urban feminist. She works in a male-dominated field and has mostly been with sensitive nerdy guys romantically. Walker is a rural agricultural worker who spends his free time wearing armor. He is neither sensitive nor nerdy. As their romance progresses, Walker is inclined to coddle Pepper as a precious female even though she is perfectly capable of making her own way in the world. And though she and Walker do find happiness, there's a learning curve for both of them in figuring out how to communicate effectively that felt especially realistic to me, even if the plot did veer into the typically romantic comedy territory of I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I-love-you.

Hard Day's Knight is probably not a book for everyone: the utterly goofy humor, nerdy subject matter and slightly dirty sex won't be what everyone expects from romantic comedy. But I found Pepper charming and Walker devastating (in both his hotness and his obvious vulnerability). Any woman who has tried somewhat unsuccessfully to pry vocalization of feelings loose from their alpha will find poignancy here.

My husband has since branched out in his romance reading. He's read several books by Laura Kinsale, is currently reading one by Elizabeth Hoyt and has agreed to a Victoria Dahl. But I will always have a special love for Katie MacAlister for kicking off our romantic adventures.

In honor of both the setting of the book and it being one of my husband's favorite dishes, I decided to pair Hard Day's Knight with a recipe for beef-stuffed Cornish pasties. I suppose I could have gone with some more traditional Faire food, but who really wants to eat turkey drumsticks and stuff-fried-on-a-stick at home? Nevertheless, this simple peasant-type food seemed to capture the essence of the semi-historical nature of Renaissance Faires.

Ingredients for six pasties.

Historically, pasties (pastry crust with some sort of meat and vegetable-based filling) were made by wives for their Cornish coalminer husbands to carry into the mines and eat for their breaks during the day. The crust was generally tough and substantial so it wouldn't break open in the tea towel or lunch pail in which it was carried. That said, most of us will eat these at home on a plate or take them to work for lunch in Tupperware so this crust is a little more delicate than a traditional pasty crust. The filling is crazy simple with just beef, potato, onion, carrot and some salt and pepper.

Ingredients for 24 pasties.

I generally double or even triple this recipe. If I'm going to drag out the rolling pin and mess up my counter, I want to make more than six pasties. If you're less ambitious and not trying to feed a hungry jousting team, the original recipe works just fine.

But in favor of going with my expanded recipe below, these freeze awfully well. Once they've been fully baked, just put them on a cookie sheet until frozen and then bag up together or individually and reheat for lunches or a quick weeknight meal. I recommend about 25 minutes in a 350 degree oven for reheating frozen ones.

Cornish Pasties
adapted from Emeril Legasse for Food Network
Makes: 12 pasties
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Pastry
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons salt
6 ounces cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
8 ounces lard or vegetable shortening, cut into pieces
2 egg yolks
12 tablespoons cold water

Filling
1 pound, 4 ounces ounces chuck steak, trimmed and cut into scant 1/4-inch dice
2 small onions, very finely chopped
2 medium carrots, cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 small potatoes, cut into 1/4-inch dice
3 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten
1) Sift the flour, confectioners' sugar, and salt into a mixing bowl and add the butter and shortening. Using your fingers, 2 knives, a food processor or a pastry blender, cut the butter and lard into the dry ingredients until mixture resembles fine crumbs.

2) In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolk and water together and add to the flour mixture. Mix quickly, but thoroughly, until mixture just comes together to form a dough.

3) Knead briefly until pastry is smooth with no cracks; the trick to making this delicate pastry easy to work with is kneading it just enough so that it can be rolled out and manipulated without breaking but yet retains its lovely crumbly texture. Press into a flattened disk shape and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight before proceeding.

4) Remove the pastry from the refrigerator and unwrap. Allow to soften slightly, then place on a lightly floured work surface and roll the pastry to a thickness of 1/4-inch. Using a small plate or saucer as a guide, cut out 6 (6-inch) rounds. (Scraps may be combined and reformed if you cannot get 6 rounds out of the first batch.) Stack the pastry rounds onto pieces of plastic wrap or parchment paper (with pieces between each round to keep them from sticking together) and refrigerate while you prepare the filling.
5) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Remove the pastry circles from the refrigerator.

6) In a mixing bowl, combine the meat, onion, carrot, potato, salt and pepper and mix until thoroughly combined.

7) Place the pastry circles on a clean work surface and place about 1/2 cup of the filling in the center of 1 side of the pastry. Using the beaten egg, brush the edges of the pastry and then bring the unfilled side over the filled side so that edges meet. Press edges together to seal and then crimp using your fingers or a fork. Repeat with the remaining turnovers and then transfer to a baking sheet. Brush the tops of the turnovers with the remaining egg and then cut several slits into the top of each pastry.

8) Bake for 20 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown around the edges. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F and continue to bake until the pasties are golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.