Sizzling in Singapore (A Carnal Cuisine Novel) (18 page)

Traditional Apple and Rosemary Braise

Allow one Granny Smith apple, one small onion, one carrot and a rib of celery for two shanks.

Peel and chop (medium dice) the apple, onion and carrot. Chop the celery.

When the shanks are browned, remove them and put all of the chopped fruit and vegetables into the pan. Sweat the vegetables until they soften.

Mince or grate three cloves of garlic. Remove the leaves from a six-inch stalk of fresh rosemary and chop finely. Add these ingredients to the pan along with a bay leaf or two.. Add the shanks.

You will need enough liquid to come halfway up the shanks. If you are only making two shanks, you will have way more sauce than you will consume, but there's no way around the liquid requirement. Use one part red wine to one part water. In my electric frying pan, I use about a quart of liquid.

Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce to a bare simmer if using an electric skillet. If you are baking the shanks, put foil over the pot very tightly and then put the top on. Cook in the oven at three hundred degrees. If you are using a crock-pot, this is the point where you put the shanks, veggies and liquid into the pot. They will be fine cooking all day on low. Both the oven and the electric skillet method will require about four hours cooking time. A word of warning: my electric fry pan periodically heats up and boils and therefore I usually have to add some liquid during the cooking process to keep it from drying out. Use just water for this as you don't want the wine to be overwhelming in the end product. This won't be a problem with the oven or the crock-pot method.

The shanks are done when you can easily separate the meat from the bone with a fork. They should be very tender. If the sauce seems too watery, you can reduce it on the stove or in the electric frying pan, if using.

Elysium Dinner Special with Mango Braise

Substitute one (or two if very small) green mangoes for the apple. Omit the carrot but keep the onion and celery. Probably the only place you might find green mangoes (other than on the tree) is at an Asian market. If you don't have green mangoes, don't despair. Use the hardest mango you can find at your supermarket.

Use ½ to one teaspoon of your favorite curry powder—I like hot Madras--instead of the bay leaf and rosemary. Add a teaspoon of grated ginger with the chopped garlic.

Add two stalks of lemongrass to the pot. Crush the ends of the lemon grass, tie it in a knot and remove before serving. No lemongrass? Toss half of a seeded lemon, skin and all in the pot.

Use a dry white wine instead of red. This is just so that the color of the fruit and the curry has a chance to shine in the dish. Once your ingredients are all combined taste the liquid. Add one or two teaspoons of brown sugar (palm sugar or jaggery in the Elysium recipe, but that's nearly impossible to find—check the Indian shelf at the Asian market) if the sauce seems too tart.

Again, these are proportions for two shanks. More fruit, veggies and spice for more shanks. But because the shanks then occupy more of the pot space, you probably won't have to double the liquid even if you double the shanks.

Questions, comments, demands, needs, desires? Email
Torri:
[email protected]

You can find K.C. Falls

On Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/kcfallsbooks

On Twitter:
https://twitter.com/kcfallsbooks

On Her Blog:
kcfalls.com

By Email:
[email protected]

And, if you enjoyed the book and love the recipes, please take a moment to leave a review.

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More from
K.C. Falls & Torri D. Cooke

Year of the Billionaire Series

Knowing His Secret (Part 1)

Taking His
Risk (Part 2)

Keeping Hi
s Promise (Part 3)

Carnal Cuisine Books

Sizzling in Singapore (Carnal Cuisine Novel)

Passion in P
anama (Carnal Cuisine Novel)

Desire f
or Dinner (Carnal Cuisine Short Story)

Hunger for Hallowe
en (Carnal Cuisine Short Story)

About K.C. Falls

The 'C' in my name stands for Cheyenne. Although you wouldn't know it by looking at me, I have a great grandparent who was a member of that Native American Tribe. Her people once lived in the very southeastern corner of Montana where I now make my home. I didn't always live in such a wide open space, though. I grew up in New York City. Much as I love the city and admire what it takes to live there, I met a kindred spirit at Columbia University and together, we found a way to take our lives from the Big Apple to the Big Sky. We haven't regretted a moment.

We've got a smallish ranch where we raise cattle and keep a menagerie of other animals, too. Once or twice a year, we hire a 'ranch sitter' and take an urban vacation somewhere hitting all the restaurants, plays, museums and musical performances we can squeeze in. Then it's back to the wide open.

My inspiration comes from the hundreds (maybe thousands) of wonderful romances I have read since I was old enough to hide my "bodice rippers" under the covers and read with a flashlight away from my mother's prying eyes. I'm happy to have found a partner in Torri who can bring her passion for food to my world of passion for, well, passion. Together I think we make a very creative team. She gets all the credit for the culinary creativity that goes into our collaboration.

A writer finds creativity flourishes in solitude. My fantasy world is full of characters and stories lined up and waiting for me to bring them to life. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

About Torri D. Cooke

I’ve been around the world seven times. I’ve eaten in some of the finest restaurants on the planet and some of the humblest as well. I’ve cooked for diplomats and princes as a private chef. I’ve slaved in a bitch-run deli in a strip mall and toiled as a cheesemonger in a gourmet grocery store. I’ve taught ethnic cuisine to bored, rich American housewives in Saudi Arabia and American comfort food cooking to Filipina housemaids in Singapore. I’ve served as the herb garden specialist for a renowned botanical garden. I’ve peeked inside the lives of the very rich as a personal chef. I’ve sweated on the line of fine white-tablecloth establishments in South Florida’s toniest districts. I know my way around the culinary world.

I've always felt that people who regularly work with fire and knives are sexy and a little dangerous. By its nature, cooking takes the ordinary and elevates it into something that is at best sublime and at worst, at least sustenance. Like sex, food is one of our basic instincts. We need food to survive as individuals and sex to survive as a species.

And, like food, sex can become the physical equivalent of shoving a McBoring burger into your face day after day. There is a place for McBoring burgers and I'm not saying they should be outlawed. By the same token, in the right time and space, sex can be of the less than earth-moving variety and still serve its purpose.

But not here. Not with me. I'm here to bring you the polar opposite of McBoring (burgers or sex).

Our books are romances about culinarians--the grand and the humble--in exotic locations with a no-holds-barred erotic punch. I've decided to bring my considerable food experience into erotic romance by including recipes published both with the books and extras ones here, on my blog. All the recipes are as original as it is possible to be and are mentioned or prepared in the books. I say as original as can be because, unless you are el Bulli or one of his disciples, there's nothing really new under the sun when it comes to food. Hell, when you think about it, people have been pretty much fucking the same way since time began as well.

But what I'm saying is that the recipes are mine, I made 'em and I wrote 'em.

The characters in our books cook the way they make love--sensually, passionately, adventurously, and with devotion to the task. If you are looking for "five easy dinners from one pot" don't look here. If you want your lovers to play with bits "down there" and the curtain to draw before they even get naked--not here either.

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The Condom Conundrum

We are aware that the issue of condoms in erotica is contentious. We claim our license as fiction writers to conjure up raw and unfettered sex. If you, dear reader, cannot bear the thought of our handsome hero and our lovely heroine going at it Trojan-less, feel free to add the following at the appropriate point in any of our sex scenes:
 

“He opened the Magnum wrapper with his teeth and sheathed himself with one hand, never missing a beat in pleasuring her. She shivered in anticipation at the crackle of the cellophane as she realized the moment of completion was upon her."