A Bloody Good Interview with Writer's Bone

I dropped by WritersBone.com to talk about my new fiendishly funny foody novel, The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret! Click here to listen in to the podcast where we also discuss the perilous plunge into writing itself and my favorites list of novels I've read this year. Also go to PeterHalseySherwood.net and #murderydelicious for more info. Available on Amazon.com, BN.com, iTunes and Google Play. Thanks as always to the kindly folks at Writer's Bone!

Here's their fantastic review!

"Sherwood’s finale to the Murdery Delicious is much like the author himself: 'very witty and very smart.' We find Reynald and Willoughby Chalmers, 'a little older, perhaps wiser, and undoubtedly more terrified,' and trying to survive the perils of the Blood Stone Manor with their wives and children. The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret is chock-full of Sherwood’s theatric dialogue and whimsical prose.

I always feel better about literature and writing whenever I finish a Sherwood yarn (not to mention hungrier!), and this novel was no exception. It’s been a real joy tracking Sherwood’s progress as a writer, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. While I hope that this isn’t the last time we see with the Chalmers brothers, if it is, then it is more than a fitting (and ghostly!) conclusion to their adventures. Standing up applauding at the end...chilling."

The Chalmers brothers have returned in the devastating finale of the Murdery Delicious trilogy—a little older, perhaps wiser, and undoubtedly more terrified. As The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret unfolds, a breezy summer getaway at their newly restored ancestral home quickly becomes a crawl through the gnarled branches of the Chalmers’ family tree. Reality itself is questioned even as fear takes root, center stage. Along the Chalmers’ journey, readers have followed them through literary genres such as the penny dreadful and the classic whodunnit. Now, the brothers, their wives and children find themselves subjected to perils only found in a decidedly ghastly ghost story. Who can uncover the buried secret of Blood Stone Manor? What lurks behind the drapes? The only certainty is that some houses are never meant to be left behind as much as some inhabitants pray to leave them. Do peer past the gate, won’t you? 

Betty, Please ... Chicken Tetrazzini!

I first heard of Chicken Tetrazzini in the late 70's while I was in fits watching the hilarious Laverne & Shirley episode where they attempted to open a diner called 'Dead Lazlo's Place.' The clip is below but even before youtube I always remembered Laverne stuffing a whole chicken in a pot of boiling water in an attempt to make the dish. Now, shield your eyes from the SPOILER ALERT: Hopes for the diner didn't pan out and by the end Shirley (responding to Laverne's sweaty calls of 'Betty, please' and 'Pick Up, Betty' as you may remember) suffered a total collapse and ran out shrieking at the grabbing hands and demands of the unruly customers and a burned mess of 'hash blacks.'



Somehow over the years however,  the dish lingered in memory ... then I happened to be poring through a grand, gilded-in-bronze edition of A Treasury of Great Recipes by Vincent Price (yes, that one--the celluloid ghoul of legend who also provided the cackle at the end of 'Thriller'). I discovered in its glorious pages a recipe for Emince of Chicken Tetrazzini au Gratin that he and his wife enjoyed at Sardi's. It may surprise you to learn that the Prices were international epicures and the cookbook reflects their culinary journeys, laboriously detailed with menus from some of the world's most historied chefs. But oh boy, was this glogging Tetrazzini loaded with fat on top of fat (ie. adding heavy cream to an already rich veloute sauce and then sour cream). No, no--although it may have been created for the opera star Luisa Tetrazzini ("when calories didn't count"), I have no plans of padding my bellows to thunder through a tempestuous Wagnerian epic. I enlisted the help of another, less frantic Betty instead, that old gal Betty Crocker came through. Armed with a cooked rotisserie chicken and low-fat cream soups (subbing for the veloute sauce), I easily prepared her much trimmed-down version of Chicken Tetrazzini, great for any night of the week and quick to go as well. So ... pick up, Betty!

The link is here. So, my suggestions? Just shred that aforementioned rotisserie chicken, and for the suggested soups, use one can each of low sodium/fat Campbell's cream of chicken and cream of mushroom with a can of 2% milk and 1/3 reduced fat sour cream. Pre-sliced baby bellas fit the bill for the mushrooms.

And in case you'd like to watch the entire Laverne & Shirley clip, in its hilarity, click here!

The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret - An Olde Family Receipt

Dispatch the crayfish! Here's a dastardly recipe ripped from the pages of my new novel, The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret! Serve it to someone you wish to torture or seduce. 

An Olde Family Receipt
(Inspires the amorous eater)
Cut a suggestive, skinned eel into short pieces and rub them with truffles of a secretive nature and a thick layer of lard. Wrap in brittle, buttered pages pulled from a recently discovered dusty box of receipts. Bake in them in an unbearably hot oven for a grueling quarter of an hour, or less, depending upon your threshold for discomfort. Serve on a potent bed of crayfish tails which have suffered a good stewing in the driest white wine that has been administered with laborious lashes of cayenne. 

Go to peterhalseysherwood.net #murderydelicious for more info. In the meantime, a morsel about the book (available on Amazon, BN.com and wherever you may find yourself):

The Chalmers brothers have returned in the devastating finale of the Murdery Delicious trilogy—a little older, perhaps wiser, and undoubtedly more terrified. As The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret unfolds, a breezy summer getaway at their newly restored ancestral home quickly becomes a crawl through the gnarled branches of the Chalmers’ family tree. Reality itself is questioned even as fear takes root, center stage. Along the Chalmers’ journey, readers have followed them through literary genres such as the penny dreadful and the classic whodunnit. Now, the brothers, their wives and children find themselves subjected to perils only found in a decidedly ghastly ghost story. Who can uncover the buried secret of Blood Stone Manor? What lurks behind the drapes? The only certainty is that some houses are never meant to be left behind as much as some inhabitants pray to leave them. Do peer past the gate, won’t you? 

The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret - A Blind-Man's Bluff Cocktail

As you tear through the haunting pages of my new ghost story, The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret, I thought it might be of interest to some readers to discover where I found inspiration during the writing of it. For example, one evening I entered Tipsy Parson in my neighborhood--a chapter ensued, one particularly gripping chapter, where our heroes, the Chalmers brothers, come across a particularly peculiar parson who is not quite what he seems. There are other recipes in the novel that precede each chapter and dispense hidden bits of information, scattered hereabouts and thereabouts. Can you spot the clues...before it's too late? Too late for what, you ask? Read on! peterhalseysherwood.net

Blind-Man's Bluff
(Serves a tipsy parson)

Ingredients
1 ounce Bourbon
1 ounce of the darkest rum
¼ ounce simple minded syrup
1 ounce falernum bitters
1 orange peel, twisted and cast out
1 woodsy clove, cracked

Execution
Stir and strain the mixture over one big rock. Utilize the twist and discard. Place the cracked cloves on an ice cube and enjoy the welcome blindness.

The Murdery Delicious Blood Stone Secret is now available on amazon, bn.com or wherever you buy books. Do peer inside, won't you? peterhalseysherwood.net

Thanks to Holly Mathis Interiors for the pic! 

Recipes of Our Mothers - Tess Labas' Angel Food Cake

I'm not exactly sure why I thought of Angel Food Cake the other day--but there it was, in fond traces of childhood memory, my dear Nana and the spongy clouds she harnessed in her kitchen. Perhaps a beneficent angel bent down to airily whisper with a breath of vanilla...a gentle reminder that it had been years since I had eaten this cake, a subtle prodding to get baking! My old pal's mother stepped in to share her recipe. Delicious thanks to Tess Labas!

Such perfection on its own or draped with a fruity coulis, topped with fresh berries--and what an entrance! The appearance of Angel Food Cake at your table is sure to be a delighted surprise that will elicit more than a few reminiscences as well. Further reveries that involve other shuffling angels' feet, I leave to you. Do enjoy!

Chris writes:

Here's my Mom's recipe!

ANGEL FOOD CAKE
A whole dozen of egg whites or about 2 cups (or pre-packaged egg whites)
1/4 tsp salt
1.5 teaspoons Cream of Tartar
1 tsp almond extract (Whole Foods has a good one)
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1.25 cups of sugar
1 cup cake flour (I switched to King Arthur's from Gold Medal)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Beat the egg whites until foamy, then add the salt and cream of tartar, then beat until soft peaks form.
Then add the almond and vanilla and then gradually add the sugar and then beat until stiff.
Sift the flour over the egg whites and gently fold it in.
Bake in an ungreased tube pan (10") for 50 mins to an hour (toothpick meter). Invert the pan on a rack and let it COMPLETELY cool before removing, 90 mins.

Mom said that her pan has small metal attachments on the outside for inverting the pan that prevent the cake from sticking to the plate/rack; otherwise, invert and hang the pan on a bottle. She also tells me one of my aunts used to do that with a fluted pan, until she got the Angel Food Cake pan.

I can just smell this baking in our kitchen with afternoon sunlight pouring through the window...

Heavenly.

Thanks to Chris and Mrs. Labas for sharing with me here on Evenings With Peter!