Some Like It Hot (30 page)
Authors: Louisa Edwards
Meyer Lemon and Plum Compote
2 lbs firm red plums, cut into eighths and pitted
(about five large plums)
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon Meyer lemon zest
2 teaspoons Meyer lemon juice
2 branches fresh thyme
Combine the plums, sugar, lemon zest and juice in a large saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring often, adding more sugar if desired. After 30 minutes, add the branches of thyme and cook for another 15–20 minutes.
When the plums are super tender and the mixture has thickened somewhat, remove from heat. Don’t worry, it’ll get even thicker and more compotey as it cools. Discard thyme branches and let the compote cool completely. Serve over ice cream or pound cake—or use it as filling between the layers of a French Pancake Stack, along with Danny’s Pastry Cream!
Danny’s Pastry Cream
1 whole vanilla bean
1 1/2 cups low-fat milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons cornstarch
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar (divided into 6 tablespoons and 2 tablespoons)
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Combine the milk and cream in a medium saucepan with a heavy bottom. Slit the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the black seeds into the milk, then add the pod. Stir in 6 tablespoons of the sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat. As it heats up, give it a good stir every so often to get the sugar all dissolved.
While the milk heats, whisk the egg yolks in a medium-sized bowl until smooth. Then whisk in the other 2 tablespoons of sugar and keep whisking until the whole thing is creamy and the sugar grains are beginning to dissolve—shouldn’t take long, about half a minute or so. Then add the cornstarch a tablespoon at a time, whisking after each addition, and—you got it—whisk some more, until the eggs are pale yellow and the whole thing resembles a paste.
Meanwhile, the milk should be about ready to simmer. When it gets hot enough that small bubbles break the surface, fish out the vanilla pod and toss it. Then grab a small cup measure and dip out a little bit of the hot milk. Whisk that into the egg mixture—gradually introducing the hot liquid will keep the eggs from scrambling. Keep adding the simmering milk to the eggs in a slow stream, whisking the whole time, until it feels like your arm is about to fall off, or until you get to the end of the milk—whichever happens first.
Transfer the whole frothy mixture back to the original saucepan and set the heat to medium. Keep whisking! I know, your elbow is sore, but it will be worth it. And it’s almost over—it should only take about 45 seconds or a minute of vigorous whisking over heat to turn the mixture into a thick, glossy custard.
Take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the butter, a piece at a time. Then strain the pastry cream through a fine-mesh sieve over a clean bowl, pressing the cream through with the back of a spoon or with your spatula. This step seems fussy, but it ensures that your pastry cream is perfectly smooth, no lumps at all!
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, letting the wrap rest right on the surface of the pastry cream, to keep a skin from forming. Then stick the bowl in the refrigerator! You should let the cream get good and set; 3 hours will do it, or you can make it ahead and leave it in the fridge overnight.
Pastry cream has a lot of uses—it’s what goes inside cream puffs and eclairs, or you can slather it over a pre-baked tart crust and top it with fresh berries … or you can use it as the filling in the French Pancake Stack!
Eva’s French Pancakes
1 cup low-fat milk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
Butter for cooking
Powdered sugar for serving
Put all ingredients in a blender, in the order listed, then blend for about a minute. If some flour sticks to the sides, just scrape it down into the batter with a spatula.
The batter will be easier to work with if you let it rest for an hour or so to let the air bubbles settle—but honestly, if you’re pressed for time, you don’t have to.
When you’re ready to cook the pancakes, heat a medium sauté pan over med-low heat. You’re going to have to play with the heat a little to see which setting works for you—as Danny explains, make it too hot, and you’ll have a hard time getting the thin batter to cover the bottom of the pan when you tilt it. It’s better to err on the side of too cool, and ratchet up from there.
Melt about a teaspoon of butter (a third of a tablespoon) in the pan. When the foam dies down, scoop about a quarter cup of batter out of the blender. (That amount will depend on the size of your pan—too much will give you a too-thick pancake, and too little will yield a misshapen crêpe that doesn’t go all the way to the edges of your pan.) Pour the batter into the center of the hot pan, quickly tilting the pan to let the batter run out to the sides of the pan and form a circle.
Put the pan back over the heat and let it cook until the edges are curling and crisping. You can take a spatula and slip it under to check for browning, if you like. Then flip the crêpe—either with the spatula, or using the tips of your fingers, or, if you’re very adventurous, by jerking the pan à la Julia Child! Personally, I recommend using your fingers—it’s the simplest, gentlest way, least likely to puncture or tear the delicate crêpes.
Give the crêpe a good twenty to thirty seconds on the other side, then slide it out of the pan and onto a waiting plate. Repeat until you use up your batter—this recipe makes 8–10 crêpes, depending on the size of your pan.
Guys, I know this sounds tricky, but it really isn’t! It just takes a little practice. And the good news is, just about anything you do with the crêpes will hide any imperfections … things like rolling them up around jam and sprinkling with powdered sugar, folding them around a squirt of lemon juice and some granulated sugar, or … layering them into a French Pancake Stack!
To assemble the French Pancake Stack:
Take the compote and pastry cream out of the fridge an hour or so before you start, to let them come up to room temperature. Slide a crêpe onto a cake stand or plate, and spread with the pastry cream, topping it with another crêpe. Spread that crêpe with the compote, and top with another crêpe, and so on, alternating compote and cream layers until the crêpe cake is the desired height. Double the crêpe recipe to use up more of your compote and cream, and to make a taller stack. Save the prettiest crêpe for the top layer, which won’t be spread with anything.
Chill the cake for at least two hours. Just before serving, dust the top crêpe with powdered sugar, then slice the cake into pieces. Use a sharp knife and go easy! The layers should hold together pretty well, but it’s going to be more fragile than a regular cake. More special, too! It’s a bit of work, but all of it can be done ahead of time, and no individual component is that difficult. This is a great recipe to impress a boss or in-law! Or just to let your family know how special they are…
The Rising Star Chef competition comes to a spectacular conclusion in Louisa Edwards’
Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Beck dusted the chopped tarragon from his fingertips onto the last of the judges’ plates just as Eva Jansen said, in her official announcer voice, “Time! Step away from your plates.”
The physical act of backing up a pace seemed to cut the cord that had bound him to his work, and Beck felt the rest of the world come back online, background noise and awareness of the other two chefs who’d finished their teams’ dishes flooding his head in a rush.
Skye Gladwell was right next to him, her heady, earthy scent of nutmeg and cream hitting him like an open-handed slap to the face. Beck had to close his eyes for a long moment to thank his combat training for giving him single-minded focus and drive.
Because this particular challenge was perfectly calibrated to tap into Beck’s primal fight-or-fuck instincts.
Skye? He’d had ten years to get over her, but apparently that wasn’t long enough to blunt the edges of his desire for her.
He didn’t love her anymore, obviously, but damned if he didn’t still want her as badly as he had at the age of twenty. It had been a surprise to him in Chicago, that unexpected surge of physical need, but he was over the shock of it now, and working to kill the desire as dead as his softer feelings.
Until he managed it, though, he had to acknowledge he was pretty fucked in the head when it came to Skye Gladwell.
The third contestant in this final challenge, however … Beck’s feelings on that guy were a whole lot less complicated.
On Beck’s left stood Ryan Larousse, the cocky, smarmy head of the Midwest Team. They’d already gotten into it once or twice during the competition, to the point where Beck had humiliatingly and completely lost his cool and actually knocked the skinny little weasel on his ass.
Drawing calm blankness around himself was like strapping on body armor, and it helped as Beck worked to slow his breathing and return his heart rate to normal. Eyes straight ahead, waiting for the judges to come over and pronounce a winner.
Feel nothing. Feelings are for people who have the luxury of acting on them. You do your best and accept the rest.
It was a decent mantra, as far as survival went, but Beck couldn’t help but feel a mirroring tingle of the excitement in Skye’s eyes as she shot him a sideways look.
“This is amazing. I can’t believe we’re both here,” she breathed, her wide, cornflower eyes tracking the progress of the judges, who’d started at the other end of the table with the Midwest Team’s plate.
All the work Beck had done of slowing his pulse and regulating his body temperature went up in smoke. “I can’t believe you still look at the world that way,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The sudden ramrod tension of her body said more than her stiff words.
Beck shook his head. He’d always loved the innocent pleasure she took from life—but it drove him crazy, too, the way she refused to see the world as it really was, in all its harsh, ugly reality. Especially considering what she’d gone through while their relationship was imploding.
Let it go,
he told himself, gritting his teeth.
You’re over this, remember?
“Nothing. Forget it. Congratulations on making it to the finals.” Beck thought that was safe. Polite, distant.
“You too,” she muttered as the judges exclaimed over Larousse’s handmade gnocchi with pea shoots and shiitake foam. “And hey, congrats on finally finding your balls again.”
Beck felt his head snap back on his neck as if she’d spit on him.
“What?”
Skye turned to get a better look at his face, brushing the flyaway softness of her red-gold curls against his arm. Beck fought not to flinch, not to grab her and shake her, not to betray his agitation by moving a single muscle.
“Your balls,” she said clearly, eyes flashing darker than he’d ever seen them, even that last, awful night. “You must’ve found them, if you finally got up the guts to show your face in this city again.”
The bitterness in her voice stung like lemon juice in an open cut, and Beck had to fight with everything in him not to react.
“Nice talk,” he said, unable to help the hoarse thickness of his voice. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
She looked away, back to the judges, who were finishing up with Larousse. “I’m not the sweet kid you left ten years ago, Henry. Don’t think for even a second that I’m going to go down easy. I’m here to win, not to make new friends or relive ancient history.”
“Don’t worry,” Beck snarled under his breath. “Once this is all over and my team has won, I’ll be ditching San Francisco and heading back to the East Coast.”
“Perfect,” she said. “Except my team’s going to be taking home the prize money and the Rising Star Chef title. And before you run back to New York, there is one little thing I’m going to want from you.”
The judges were thanking Larousse and sauntering down the table toward Skye as Beck said, “What’s that?”
He didn’t know what he expected—money, maybe, or a demand that he go to hell. In the furthest, undisciplined depths of his mind, there might’ve even been a hint of a thought that maybe she’d ask him for one last night together, for old time’s sake.
Instead, what she whispered out of the corner of her mouth just before smiling brilliantly and greeting the judges knocked Beck off-balance and stopped his heart.
“I want a divorce.”
LOUISA EDWARDS
Can’t Stand the Heat
On the Steamy Side
Just One Taste
Too Hot to Touch
Some Like It Hot
First of all, thank you to Deidre and my editor, Rose, who love Eva Jansen as much as I do! Thanks, both of you, for allowing me to tell the stories that excite me and play with the characters who make every day of writing more like fun than work.
Also on the make-work-fun side of things, a zillion thanks to my besties Roxanne St. Claire and Kristen Painter! I honestly don’t know how anyone makes it through a draft without you two.
The first draft of
SLiH
would’ve stayed a messy, ugly draft without the beta reading talents of Kate Pearce, Bria Quinlan, and especially Nic Montreuil. Kate, you never hold back, and I love you for it. Bria, your insights and speed-reading make you a treasure I totally cherish, and Nic. Honey. What can I say? Sometimes I feel like you know these characters better than I do. Thank you for helping me stay true to them! (Winslow thanks you, too…)
Thank you to the Peeners—you dirty girls know who you are—for invaluable advice, venting sessions, and dick jokes.
Thank you to all the readers and reviewers who read
Too Hot to Touch
and said, “We want more of Danny. And OMG BECK!” The rest of the Rising Star Chef trilogy is for you.
I can’t let a book go by without thanking my parents for everything you’ve done (and continue to do) for me. You make us dinner, you bring us veggies from the farmer’s market, you walk the dogs, you find the best Mexican restaurants, you entice me away from my desk to swim … how did I go so many years living so far away from you?
And last but never least, thank you to my handsome husband, Nick. Your support and encouragement mean everything to me. And the fact that after more than a decade together you can still make me pee my pants with laughter? That’s what convinces me true, deep, everlasting love exists.