Steamed (35 page)

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Authors: Jessica Conant-Park,Susan Conant

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Mystery Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Boston (Mass.), #Cooks, #Women Graduate Students

BOOK: Steamed
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“Are you telling me you weren’t
ever
part of that gossip?” I teased.
 
“Of course not. I was all innocent and sweet until you corrupted me.” He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. “And, truthfully, I’m feeling a little vulnerable right now.”
 
“I intend to take full advantage of that. Right after you finish cooking.” I hugged Josh tighter. “Oh, and what about Ian? I can’t imagine Tim would give him a reference!”
 
“Not likely, but he’ll get another job somewhere, no problem.”
 
I guess the Ians of the world are everywhere. Perfect chefs, of course, are not. But I got lucky. I found mine.
 
RECIPES
You don’t have to be a professional chef to make the romantic dinner that Josh served to Chloe. Here are the recipes for all three courses. Notice that many steps in the preparation may be completed well ahead of time.
Bon appétit!
 
 
 
Biff and Radicchio Salad
with Three-Tomato Vinaigrette
 
1 head Bibb lettuce
1 head radicchio
2 ounces goat cheese, dry enough to crumble
 
Remove the stems from the Bibb and radicchio, and wash and dry the leaves very carefully. Layer the leaves, alternating colors, on individual serving plates. Use four or five leaves of each. Drizzle with the tomato vinaigrette and then crumble the goat cheese around the leaves.
 
 
 
 
Three-Tomato Vinaigrette
 
1 red tomato
1 green tomato
1 yellow tomato
1 tbsp. minced garlic
2 tbsp. red onion, diced
2 tbsp. fresh oregano or
1
⁄
2
tbsp. dried
2 tbsp. fresh marjoram or
1
⁄
2
tbsp. dried
1
⁄
2
tbsp. honey
1
⁄
4
cup white balsamic vinegar or champagne vinegar
1
⁄
2
cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
 
Cut the tomatoes in half and scoop out and discard the seeds and liquid. Dice up enough tomato to make one cup, and place in a bowl with the garlic, onion, and herbs. (If you are using fresh herbs, remove the leaves from the stems and add whole to the dressing.) Mix in honey, vinegar, and oil, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Let the dressing stand for at least an hour before serving, or make the day before and store in the refrigerator.
 
Spiced Tuna
 
2 tsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. minced fresh ginger
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. ground coriander
4 tbsp. olive oil
2 fresh tuna steaks, approximately 7 ounces each, preferably
3 inches thick
1
⁄
2
tsp. salt
1
⁄
2
tsp. pepper
1 tsp. sugar
 
 
Mix the garlic, ginger, cumin, and coriander with the oil. Rub both sides of the tuna steaks with this mixture and let them sit for approximately 30 minutes. Heat a large pan on medium-high heat. While waiting for the pan to get perfectly hot, sprinkle tuna with the salt, pepper, and sugar. Sear tuna on both sides for 1
1
⁄
2
minutes per side. The tuna should be very rare inside, with a beautiful seared crust on the outside. Serve with the cardamom sweet rice and bok choy slaw. If you’d like, you can drizzle the plate with a little sweet soy to enhance the flavors.
 
 
 
Bafy Bok Choy Slaw
 
2 heads of baby bok choy
1 tbsp. honey
1
⁄
4
cup rice wine vinegar
1
⁄
2
cup salad oil
 
1 tsp. ground coriander
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 red pepper, julienne
1 yellow pepper, julienne
1
⁄
4
cup cilantro, whole leaves
 
Cut off the stem from the bok choy and julienne (thinly slice) the entire head.
 
 
To make the dressing, mix together the honey, vinegar, oil, coriander, and salt and pepper. Let the dressing sit out at room temperature to have the flavors meld together.
 
 
Mix the peppers and bok choy together and gently toss with the dressing. You may serve the slaw cold, or you may heat it for a minute or two in a hot skillet. Don’t actually cook the slaw, but heat it up just enough for the bok choy leaves to begin to wilt. Garnish with fresh cilantro.
 
 
 
Cardamom Sweet Rice
 
1 cup sushi rice
1
⁄
4
cup sweet soy sauce
1 bunch chopped scallions
1
1
⁄
2
tsp. cardamom
1 tsp. ground coriander
1
1
⁄
2
tsp. sesame oil
1
⁄
2
tsp. salt
 
If you have a rice cooker, cook the sushi rice in it with 2 cups of water. If not, you may cook the rice on the stove top, following directions on the brand you use. Simply mix the rest of the ingredients with the hot rice and serve.
 
 
 
 
Warm Chocolate Cake
 
5
1
⁄
2
ounces dark chocolate (not baking chocolate), preferably
Valrhona
5
1
⁄
2
ounces butter
3 eggs
3 egg yolks
3
⁄
4
cup sugar
1
⁄
3
cup all purpose flour
fresh berries or other seasonal fruit
ice cream
 
 
Preheat oven to 400˚.
 
 
Melt the dark chocolate and butter together over low heat and set aside. Using a whisk or an electric mixer, whip the eggs and the yolks together with the sugar until the mixture turns pale yellow and almost doubles in volume. Using a spatula, gently fold in the chocolate mixture and then the flour. Let the batter sit for about an hour or until it is somewhat firm. Fill small brioche molds (or other individual-size oven-safe nonstick dishes) about three-fourths of the way up with the batter. Bang the dishes on the counter to make sure the batter fills up all of the crevices. Place the molds on a cookie sheet and bake for 4 to 7 minutes. The edges should feel set, but the center (about a quarter-size area) should still be jiggly. Do not overbake the cake, or you will lose the delicious, gooey center. Unmold cakes and serve with ice cream and fresh fruit.
 
 
If you use very high-quality chocolate, extra batter may be kept in the refrigerator for later use.
 
Turn the page for a preview of
the next Gourmet Girl Mystery
by Jessica Conant-Park
& Susan Conant
 
SIMMER DOWN
 
Coming from
Berkley Prime Crime
in March 2007!
 
ONE
I hate the week after Christmas.
 
Or I used to anyway. When I was growing up, I kept trying to convince my Protestant family that we were Jewish and consequently had to celebrate Hanukkah for a full week instead of Christmas for one short evening and a single all-too-brief day. But this year, I, Chloe Carter, have an actual boyfriend, and everything has changed for the better—even my post-Christmas blues. Now, on December 27, I was not, for once, bemoaning the end of carol singing, and it didn’t bother me at all that I’d have to wait almost twelve months to tear through my presents like a six-year-old and then finish off every Christmas cookie in sight. On the contrary, I was brimming with excitement at the prospect of spending New Year’s Eve with my boyfriend.
So, in the mid-afternoon, I was seated at my kitchen table pretending to concentrate on work for my social work school internship while actually being distracted by my gorgeous Josh, who was busy cooking. How I got lucky enough to find a chef as the love of my life, I don’t know. What could be better than good food and good sex all rolled into one? Well, not “rolled into one” in the sense that we were smearing food all over each other as foreplay. I mean, ewww! How gross. If I have to watch one more B movie with couples seducing each other with strawberries and whipped cream, or licking champagne off each other, or wagging their tongues in the air to catch dangled tidbits of food, I think I might gag. Still, there’s no denying the food-love link.
I could seriously stare at Josh for hours while he cooked: He was so focused and serious and skilled and . . . well, so cute, besides. I couldn’t get enough of his dirty-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and slim build. And he was loving and funny and loyal. We’d been together only since September, but we were already spending most nights with each other, usually at my place. The apartment he shared with his roommate, Stein, was, like most apartments inhabited by heterosexual males, messy and filthy. Discarded chefs’ clothes were everywhere and unidentifiable odors emanated from dark corners. With some justification, Josh and Stein blamed the state of their living quarters on chefs’ hours; in fact, neither of them was ever home for long. Whatever the reason, I seldom went there.
Josh had lost his last chef job right after we’d met and had been struggling to find a new home in which to park his culinary talents. He’d spent the past few months picking up hours by helping out chef friends of his who’d needed him to fill in now and then at restaurant after restaurant. His only steady employment had been at Eagles’ Deli, around the corner from my apartment in Brighton, where he’d been putting in a few days a week. Stein owned the booming deli and always needed the help, so the time Josh put in at Eagles’ gave the best friends and roommates a chance to catch up with each other.
After chasing after every job lead possible, Josh finally hooked up with a man named Gavin Seymour, who was opening his first restaurant, Simmer, on posh Newbury Street, right in the heart of Boston. Gavin knew that if he was going to open a restaurant, he’d need the hottest location possible—and restaurant locations in Boston don’t get much hotter than Newbury Street. So, when the property became available, Gavin jumped right on it and paid what must have been a fortune for the lease. Nestled in the bottom of a brownstone and located among top restaurants and high-end shops, Simmer was strategically set up for success. And with Josh at the helm, there was no way it could fail.
In the three weeks since Josh had accepted the position of executive chef, he had been working more or less normal hours, days only, instead of working until late at night as chefs almost invariably did. Opening a new restaurant was a tremendous amount of work, and Josh had been swamped with hiring a kitchen staff, contacting food purveyors, assisting Gavin and the contractor in remodeling the kitchen, and most importantly, at least in my book, writing a menu.
I’d been loving his schedule, which meant more time together, but all that was about to change when Simmer opened on New Year’s Eve. For now, though, I’d savor every minute I had with Josh. Technically, I was on winter break from my first year at Boston City Graduate School of Social Work, so I was still free to follow Josh around like a lovesick puppy. In fact, although classes had ended, my field placement, as it was called, took no notice of the holidays. Since September I’d been interning at the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace, which I’d taken to calling the Organization, as if we were some sort of Mafia cell. The Organization was headed by my supervisor, Naomi Campbell, who was not, of course, the internationally famous supermodel and, in fact, had only a vague notion of who the other Naomi Campbell was. Naomi failed to find anything amusing about her name or, frankly, about much else. Totally driven to rid the world of harassment, she felt that since harassment didn’t break for the holidays, neither should we. The Organization consisted of Naomi and me plus a bunch of invisible board members who made themselves known only by signing hundreds of petitions and notices that Naomi was forever having me type up. We worked out of a minuscule downtown office, and my primary social work contribution so far had been to address the daily feelings of claustrophobia that came from finding myself trapped in the gloomiest, messiest one-window office in Boston. My other major responsibility was to handle hotline calls from women dealing with office jack-asses who thought that attempting to fondle a coworker was acceptable behavior.

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