Mexican Chocolate Pots de Crème

In Murder Before The Bell Leti makes Mexican Chocolate Pots de Crème. This is not your typical chocolate pudding because it contains several ingredients that concentrate the flavor of the chocolate.  These include espresso, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and Kahlua.  You can put these in ramekins as mentioned in the recipe or you can make it in a tart dish and then serve it in wine glasses.  Either way, this dessert is delicious.  If you want to pair this with wine, use a Merlot.  The recipe was adopted from one found in Sunset magazine.

Serves 6

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 cup whole milk

1 teaspoon espresso powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons coffee liqueur (such as Kahlúa)

6 ounces finely chopped high-quality bittersweet chocolate

6 large egg yolks

2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, bring cream, milk, espresso powder, and spices to a gentle simmer; cook 10 minutes. Increase heat to medium and bring mixture to a boil, then remove from heat and stir in coffee liqueur.

Put chocolate in a heat-proof bowl and pour the hot cream over it. Let stand 1 minute, then stir until smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar. Slowly drizzle yolk mixture into chocolate mixture, whisking constantly. Let cool at room temperature for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a kettle or small pot, bring about 4 cups water to a simmer. Arrange a dish towel in the bottom of a 9- by 13-in. baking pan. Set ramekins on top of towel (this helps keep them in place), then fill each ramekin with custard or use a tart pan as show in the pictures. Pour simmering water into pan so that it comes halfway up sides of ramekins. Set pan in oven and bake the pots de crème until their edges are set but their centers are still wobbly, about 25 minutes; do not over bake. Transfer ramekins to a cooling rack and let cool at room temperature for 30 minutes, then chill in refrigerator until fully set, about 3 hours.

Summer/Winter Sale

The Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale--July 1-31

Go to: Smashwords to receive a free copy of 

and

Heavenly Fettuccine with Barbera Wine

The heat of the summer makes us want to spend less time in a hot kitchen.   Heavenly Fettuccine  is light and very simple to make.  Serve it with Italian bread, a garden salad, and  a light fruity Barbera. In Murder Before the Bell. Rick drank Downhill Winery’s Susannah’s Barbera.

Serves 6

2 garlic cloves

1 small onion

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 large can of chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon of tomato paste

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 cup (or more) of red wine

Italian Seasoning (or use basil and oregano)

1 pound of fettuccine (home made or the kind that's refrigerated)

Chop the garlic and the onion in the food processor. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and then add the onion and the garlic. Cook until the onions are soft.

Add the tomatoes, the tomato paste, the sugar, red wine, and the spices. Simmer for about thirty minutes.

Prepare the fettuccine according to the directions on the package. Pour the sauce over the fettuccine and serve with Parmigiano Reggiano or imported Pecorino Romano cheese.

The Adoption And Foster Care Novels

 

All children deserve to be raised in loving and caring homes.  Sometimes that doesn't happen and the children are removed from their birth parents and put into foster care and in other cases they are put up for adoption. In The Winning Certificate and Death of a Foster Child Rick Podowski and the Hefty Trio examine the issues associated with adoption and foster care.

Sylvia Medina, a student at Central High joins a teenage gang after her adopted mother's death and is trapped in a life style of violence and hopelessness. Can the school's Literary Club and an image on the computer of her birth mother provide the hope necessary for Sylvia to survive?

Antonio Medina, after his wife's death from cancer tries everything to get Sylvia back on track. However, nothing helps until Rick Podowski and Leti Rios, advisors to the high school Literary Club, get Sylvia involved. Sylvia reluctantly shares some of her poems. Then, as Sylvia becomes more committed, she begins to change and becomes in touch with her feelings.

As Sylvia develops her ties to the Literary Club, she gets more intrigued by the picture of her birth mother and tries to find her. She learns that her mother lives in New York and when members of the Literary Club go to Columbia University to attend a conference and receive an award for their magazine, Sylvia goes along. Instead of going to the conference, she visits her mother.

She finds out that her mother married a very rich man, and she has two stepsons. The stepfather is dead, and the two sons along with her lawyer are trying to obtain her farm and include it as part of a land trust being used as a means to launder money for the mob. Murder, kidnapping, money laundering, and mob activities are included in this novel.

In addition to being an amateur detective novel, The Winning Certificate is the story of how a young woman, her adopted father, and her birth mother each react to the seven core adoption issues, confronting, as they do, personal issues centered on loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, intimacy and mastery or control.

The term "winning certificate" refers to two things. Our birth certificates are the proof that we are connected to a family structure that is greater than ourselves. The main character in this story was finally able to confront the issues associated with her adoption as well as coming to grips with the people named on the original birth certificate. Students in minority schools often feel inferior because their life experiences are not valued. The Literary Society members in this novel achieved a degree of excellence in their stories and poems about their lives, which resulted in their receiving a "winning certificate" in a national competition.

The Winning Certificate is available for $2.99 at Smashwords or at Amazon.

California’s foster children attend an average of seven to nine different schools by age 18—80% are held back in school by the third grade. In an investigation by a local newspaper, they found that about one in five foster children are given psychotropic drugs. Less than half of California’s foster youth will graduate from high school and only 2% graduate from college or universities. Each year over 4,000 foster youth emancipate in California. They lack a supportive network of adults and generally have no plan for work or housing. Within the first 2 to 4 years after “aging out” of the system, 51% of these young adults are unemployed, 40% are on public assistance, 25% become homeless, and 20% will be incarcerated. This situation is similar in other states.

In order to have a foster child in the home, the interested couples must complete an extensive complicated process, which many find to be extremely humiliating. Although there have been attempts in recent years to make the rules less oppressive, the California Community Licensing agency (CCL), has made complying with the rules more important than the welfare of the child. Rules like keeping the detergent for the washing machine under lock and key are common even if your foster child is a teenager. It's even worse if you obtain your foster child from a private agency rather (FFA) than the county. Instead of a cooperative effort between CCL and the Foster Family Agency there seems to be one of "obey the rules or else" which creates stress for all involved and works to the detriment of the children.


Fear is the overriding factor as social workers and agencies go overboard to keep from losing their licenses or being fined. CCL acts like a fiefdom where inspectors intimidate both foster parents and the adoption/foster care agencies. Child Protective Services (CPS) becomes the enforcer for this system and in many cases unproven allegations can become the basis for removing a child. The rigidity of the system creates the situation where there aren't enough foster parents.

Death of a Foster Child explores the guilt felt when the foster placement of a teenage girl in the home of Rick Podowski and his wife failed. To complicate matters, the foster child was brutally murdered and the authorities believe she was selling drugs on the school campus and by implication asserted that the foster parents allowed this behavior. Rick Podowski with the help of Leti Ramos, Erin McGinty and Teresa Spinelli, also know as The Hefty Trio investigate to learn the truth.

In the process of investigating, they discover the world of drug sales on the high school campus, the underlying challenges facing students in a gang infested school, as well as the difficulties faced by special education students. The reader will experience the frustrations of foster parents when faced with a system that is designed to keep the children dependent. Suggestions to improve foster care and move the children towards independence are provided at the end of the book.

Even though both books address difficult topics, the stories are up-lifting. As an added bonus, Rick and The Hefty Trio love to eat and the books contains ethnic recipes with pairings of boutique wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.

Death of a Foster Child is available for $2.99 at Smashwords or at Amazon.

Moral Issues Presented In The Novels

There are five books in the Rick Podowski and The Hefty Trio series. Three of the books explore moral issues--good people doing bad things, loyalty to our country and falsely accusing another person. This post will focus on these concepts. The two books concerning adoption and foster care will be presented next week. Each book contains seven ethnic (Polish, Italian, Irish, Mexican) recipes and seven wineries are presented. A wine is then paired with the recipe. A reader who completes the series will have learned about thirty-five boutique wineries and have thirty-five recipes paired with the appropriate wine.

Rick Podowski and the Hefty Trio a group of four middle-aged overweight high school English teachers fight to save their friend accused of murdering the school principal. The story begins when Rick arrives at Central High School and sees the administration building engulfed in flames. Later, the police discover the charred body of the principal and as the police start to gather evidence to frame the acting principal, Rick and the Hefty Trio start their own inquiry. They discover that their friend and the principal are both involved in illegal activities with a former South Vietnamese Colonel who runs a language school on the campus every Sunday. The community loves the Colonel and is unaware that he owns a house of prostitution in the neighborhood and employs a local Mexican gang for security. A rival gang wants part of the action. The excitement continues as Rick and The Hefty Trio work to solve the mystery. Purchase at Smashwords. Purchase at Amazon.

Loyalty and betrayal quickly become conflicts in this novel set in the Silicon Valley of California where many of the titans of the computer world have research and development operations and manufacturing facilities. Educators, under the control of Chinese agents are using students from the Mission Community College’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Program to obtain a top-secret computer chip being manufactured by Intel for use in the United States Military's anti-ballistic missile system. Rick has to reconcile his loyalty to his students with loyalty to his country as he works with his friend from the FBI to recover the stolen component.

Also telling the story is George Yuan, a nineteen-year-old alienated Chinese-American. Through the help of a beautiful female spy, George discovers his love and loyalty to China. He agrees to help steal the computer chip. In the process of recovering the stolen computer chip, the FBI captures the members of the spying ring, and two others are murdered. Purchase at Smashwords.  Purchase at Amazon.

This book explores a tragedy resulting from a teacher being falsely accused. Rick Podowski, the head grievance representative for the teacher’s union enters the science lab and finds the body of the teacher hanging by a braided rope from the metal frame of the overhead fluorescent light fixture.

As Rick and his friends investigate, they find Dan Longreen's secret. He has been charged with sexual misconduct concerning three young girls in his Las Vegas classroom. Even though proven innocent, a small group of parents forced his resignation. He accepts a job in San Jose, California, and is creating a new life. Suddenly, he starts to receive threatening emails and there are questions about his death.

Did someone stage the suicide? Was the principal putting extreme pressure on Dan to resign to protect his forthcoming promotion or was the suicide related to Longreen's fiancée?  Purchase at Smashwords.  Purchase at Amazon

Mexican Pineapple Stuffed with Seafood

When Rick Podowski was in Barra de Navidad, Mexico he had been served a delightful dish consisting of half a pineapple stuffed with seafood, covered with cheese and then baked. The pineapple is delicious paired with Mums Pinot Noir Rose.  This recipe is from Death of A Foster Child.

Mexican Pineapple Stuffed with Seafood with Muns Rose Of Pinot Noir 

1 large ripe pineapple

1 cup onions,

2 garlic cloves

1 teaspoon sugar,

1 cup chopped fresh cilantro  (dried cilantro works, too)

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 pound shrimp (Imitation crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops or Trader Joe's Seafood Blend also work)

1 pound scallops

1 1/2 cups coarsely shredded Jack cheese or a Mexican cheese blend (about 3 ounces)

Cut pineapple in half lengthwise. Using a small paring knife, remove core and discard. Using a large spoon, remove the pineapple flesh from its skin, making sure to leave about 1/2-inch of flesh all around each pineapple half. Set pineapple shells aside and coarsely chop pineapple flesh.

Sauté the pineapple flesh, onions, garlic, sugar, cilantro and chili powder until soft. Add the shrimp and the scallops. If you have extra, bake it in the oven along with the pineapples.

Position rack in center of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees.

Divide seafood mixture evenly between each pineapple shell; sprinkle with cilantro. Bake for 20 minutes. Cover with cheese and bake for twenty minutes more. Let stand several minutes before serving. Black beans, rice and salad round out the meal.

Serves 4

Muns Vineyard

Ed Muns and Mary Lindsay are the team behind Muns Vineyard wines. Ed, a former technology manager at Hewlett-Packard, and Mary a public relations consultant for technology startups found an abandoned vineyard on the Loma Prieta Ridge above Monterey Bay at 2,600 feet while looking for a high elevation home for Ed's ham radio antennas. They cleared the land and replanted the 12-acre vineyard to Pinot Noir making it the highest Pinot Noir vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  They produce a total of 248 cases consisting of Pinot Noir, and Syrah. 

Celebrate Cinco De Mayo With Steak Tampequena

Are you tired of having the same old tacos, burritos, and beer for Cinco De Mayo? Well, liven things up with this delicious steak, cheese and chili pepper dish that was developed in the 1940’s by José Inés Loredo for his restaurant, the Tampico Club, in Mexico City. Serve this dish with a great wine like Katheryn Kennedy's Lateral. The dish isn't spicy so put a jar of hot sauce on the table. This recipe first appeared on this blog in January, 2013. 

Steak Tampequena

Serves 4
3-4 thin sliced steaks (round, sirloin or whatever)
2 small onions (minced)

4 Roma tomatoes (chopped)
4 cloves of garlic (chopped)
2(4 ounce) cans whole roasted green chili peppers (not chopped)
1 tablespoon olive oil
4-6 slices Monterey jack pepper cheese or white Mexican blend cheese (sliced length wise)

Cooking the chilies, garlic, onions and tomatoes

The second side is ready for broiling

Heat olive oil in the pan and add onion, garlic, and tomatoes.  Sauté for 3 minutes or until tender.  Set mixture aside.  Preheat oven to broil.  Cut green chilies into long strips and set aside.  Sprinkle seasoning salt on both sides of steak.  Broil steaks for 3-4 minutes on one side.

The steaks are ready to serve

After removing the steaks from the oven, turn them over and place the mixture of tomato, onion, and garlic evenly on the steaks.  Top with 2-3 strips of green chili.  Next, place a slice of cheese on top of each steak covering the mixture and green chili strips.  Broil until steak is done and cheese is melted.  This usually takes about 3 minutes.  Serve this with some rice, beans, and a little salad.  Hot sauce and tortillas should also be available.

Kathryn Kennedy Lateral is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petite Verdot grapes and it pairswell with this dish.