This weekly column, “Adventures in Good Eating,” by Back Door Café chef/owner Fran Ginn appears each Thursday in the Marion County Informer.

……I relish the opportunity of finding something new and different to eat wherever I go. I love to explore why people eat what they do and how food has shaped their lives. Adventures in Good Eating is my way of sharing the pleasure of culinary discovery and also the anticipation of tables and tastes yet to be found.

Last Friday I was shopping in my favorite store for finding things I had no idea I needed (Dirt Cheap).  On an aisle of books marked “2 for $ 1 – my favorite kind of books -  I spotted a paperback book entitled Death Dines at 8:30.  The blurb on the cover promised “Sixteen stories of crime and cuisine – with recipes included.”  How perfect, a mystery with a recipe…..what a way to spend a rainy afternoon and become re-acquainted with some of my favorite authors.  The editors of this anthology, culinary mystery writers themselves, Claudia Bishop and Nick DiChario, asked a group of their peers to vary from their usual book length writing and submit a short story based around the common theme of a murder committed at the dinner hour of 8:30.  The results are delicious.

In the early 1980’s Virginia Rich, a former food writer for the Chicago Tribune and food editor of Sunset Magazine, began writing a series of mystery stories which were set in Arizona and New England, places where she lived.  These light-hearted stories always included a dead body and several good recipes.

Her sleuth, Eugenia Potter, was openly based on herself.  Eugenia  lived in Tucson and summered on the coast of Maine.   Unknowingly, Rich created a new genre of mystery writing – the culinary mystery. This genre has come to be known in the trade as a “cozy”, meaning an escapist, fun book, largely directed at an older, usually female reader.  Somehow the method of murder – poisoning at a church baked bean supper or dropping a stuffed moose head from a restaurant wall onto a mean-spirited diner – are bloodless and tidy when compared with Mickey Spillane or James Patterson.  These “gentle” murders are more about solving the puzzle of identity of the murderer and recording the daily life of the sleuth, hence the recipes.

I remember reading Virginia Rich’s The Cooking School Murders many years ago.  I was entranced by the entire thought process of her book.  I do love mysteries, but had stopped reading many authors because of the gory content.  How wonderful to find a mystery book essentially written for me.   A good story and good recipes – a perfect book.

Many other writers followed Rich’s lead.  Some of the best known are Diane Mott Davidson, Claudia Bishop and Tamar Myers.  Each has unusual sleuths with different occupations.  Davidson’s Goldy Schulz is a caterer and Episcopalian (just like me!), Claudia Bishop has sisters Meg and Sarah Quilliam,  who run a country inn and restaurant, while Tamar Myers’ detective is a Mennonite woman named Magdalena Yoder, proprietor of the Penn-Dutch Inn. 

The books have outrageous titles and are more comic than serious.  Among my favorite quotations are:

From Davidson’s Goldy Schulz:  “I did not expect to find Edith Blanton’s body in my walk-in refrigerator.”   She says it in such an off-handed manner and my first reaction is …oh my goodness – a body in the walk-in…..what will the health department say? 

Myers’ Magdalena Yoder introduces herself by saying, “My cook, Freni Hostetler is Amish, and we are double second cousins once removed.  The branches of my family tree are so tangled that I am, in fact, my own cousin and require only a sandwich to make it a family picnic.”  How could one not be entertained with prose like that!

The titles of the books are extremely witty.  Perhaps the authors come up with the names, then create the stories around them.  The names are so tongue in cheek and are often parodies of other more serious works.  Some of my favorite titles are:

• Thyme of Death
• Fried by Jury
• Shades of Earl Grey
• The Last Suppers
• Immaculate Reception
• Dim Sum Dead
• Dial M for Meat Loaf
• Roux the Day
• Between a Wok and a Hard Place
• Play it Again Spam
• Just Plain Pickled to Death

The placement of recipes in these books vary from author to author.  Some include a recipe just after the dish is mentioned in the story, while others wait and compile the recipes, cook-book style, at the end.  For the most part, from a professional cook’s perspective, the majority of the recipes “read well” to me – meaning that the techniques and proportions of ingredients make sense.

During these dog days of the end of summer, perhaps  a great, light-hearted read is just the ingredient for an afternoon’s relaxation.  Who knows, the menu for supper just might be in the back of the book.

From the book which started the entire genre, The Cooking School Murders:

Green Tomato-Apple Pie

Makes one 9 inch pie

Pastry for a 2-crust pie (find these in the refrigerated section of the grocery)

2 c. green tomatoes, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

3 c. of apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

2/3 c. brown sugar, firmly packed

1/3 c. granulated sugar

2 to 3 Tblsp. all-purpose flour

½ tsp. cinnamon

2 Tblsp. butter

Preparation:

Place one crust in a 9 inch pie plate.  Gently press the crust into the plate.

To peel green tomatoes:  place in boiling water.  Let stand 3 minutes.  Skins Will slip off easily.  Combine tomatoes, apples, sugars, flour, and cinnamon.

Place apple and tomato mixture into the pie crust.  Dot with butter.  Place the second crust over the apples and tomatoes.  Pinch the top and the bottom  crusts together, removing the excess pie crust if necessary.  Cut several vents in the top crust.

Bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 50 – 60 minutes or until the crust is  golden.