Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Asian Noodle Bowl

Comfort food, fast, easy and oh, so good. This is a neat little bowl of Udon noodles in a spicy broth with vegetables. A few shrimp or some thinly sliced chicken could easily be added.


Udon noodles are Japanese wheat noodles that cook quickly and can be served hot or cold. Those pictured are Hakubaku organic noodles, made of 100% organic whole wheat flour and water. No other mystery ingredients. Udon noodles cook in about four minutes after being dropped into boiling water. Drain, then rinse well with cold water. They can be reheated easily by submerging them in hot water or in the case above, broth.


Ingredients:
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
6 oz Udon noodles
1 medium red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 cup broccoli florets, cut into bite size pieces
1 1/2 cups snow peas
1/4 cup sliced green onions
1 med jalepeño pepper, sliced (optional)
3 TBS chopped cilantro
2 TBS tamari, shoyu or light soy sauce
2 tsp grated fresh ginger (a microplane does a good, quick job)
1 tsp Asian chili-garlic sauce
1/4 tsp salt


Directions:
Boil Udon noodles for 4 minutes in a quart of dark vegetable broth, or chicken broth would be fine, too. Remove the noodles from the broth, rinse under cold water, drain and set aside. Bring the broth back to the boil and add the broccoli florets, red pepper and (jalepeño pepper, shrimp or chicken, if using). Cover and cook for 4 minutes. Remove from heat.

Return drained noodles to pot. Add snow peas, green onion and cilantro, and remaining ingredients. Cover and let stand off heat for another 3 - 4 minutes until snow peas and onions are crisp-tender. Serve in deep bowls with a squeeze of fresh lime juice and a sprinkling of chopped cilantro. Chop sticks make the noodles easy to grasp and a big spoon lets you slurp up the wonderful broth.


This will make 4 starters or 2 main servings.

Another easy meal, ready in minutes, fresh, fast, nutritious.

Till next time . . . keep on cooking!

Thursday, May 24, 2007




Farmers Market Finds

A bunch of beets, a pound of green beans and three ears of corn were my goodie finds at the Farmers Market on Sunday. Remember, I'm cooking for one, so quantities are small. These fresh vegetables had been grown by a Belle Glade farmer, Jonathan Morris and his wife, Amy, and carted up to the Orlando Farmers Market.

I shucked the corn as soon as I got home, and washed, topped and blanched the beans. The beet greens had seen better days, unfortunately, so out they went. Had they still been fresh and perky, I would have used them immediately. The greens are fragile and don't have much of a shelf life once harvested. I stored the beets for another day. With $5.00 worth of vegetables, I proceeded to plan a few meals, starting with lunch on Sunday.


Corn off the cob is a less messy proposition to eat than corn on the cob, so I often slice off the kernels and sauté them in equal parts of olive oil and butter with a dash of thyme and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. The blanched green beans were sautéed in a little garlic infused olive oil with a sprinkling of dried red pepper flakes and once they had heated through and taken on just a little color, some salt and pepper and a dash of Pickapeppa finished them off nicely.
Before I started the beans and corn, I diced a juicy, ripe tomato and dressed it with a little salt and lemon juice and a bit of lemon zest and let it rest to absorb the flavors.
To appease the protein police, I tossed a couple of tablespoons of hummus on the plate (as if anyone ever heard of a protein deficiency in this country) along with some leftover focaccia. The result? A plate filled with colorful veggies, vegetable protein, white whole wheat flour and a little healthy oil. Imagine, filling all these nutritional requirements and it tasted wonderful and was ready in under 20 minutes from start to finish. My kind of fresh fast food.



One of my goals with this blog is to encourage the casual cook to stop buying convenience foods, fast foods and processed products and cook whole foods regularly with enthusiasm and confidence. One doesn't have to spend a fortune, slave hours over a hot stove, or have a culinary degree to enjoy healthy whole food meals. The few meals covered here, built around the beets, beans and corn, are a good example of simple foods prepared quickly and with ease—without sacrificing flavor.

The pale colors in this sweet and sour stir-fry belie the vibrant flavors. Perhaps a red pepper instead of the soft green of the cubanella would have been a better choice, but I used what I had in the veggie bin!


Here we have the green beans, leftover sautéed corn combined with onions, peppers, napa cabbage, bean sprouts and green onions in a sweet and sour sauce served with soba noodles topped with peanut dressing and crushed peanuts.
The sweet and sour sauce is a very unsophisticated slurry of equal parts: water, brown sugar, rice vinegar and ketchup. It tastes good, it's fast and easy, it didn't come in a bottle laced with synthetic chemicals, and it's made from items most folks have on hand. For this small batch of veggies, I used 1/4 cup of each item to make one cup of sauce. Taste for salt and pepper. Play it by ear. A bigger batch of veggies will need more sauce.
The buckwheat noodles (soba) provide both protein and fiber. The dressing is not homemade. Whole Foods' house brand organic peanut sauce works for me. Another item that's handy to have on hand.

And here are the beets, roasted and sliced, resting on a bed of sweet green leaf lettuce and peppery watercress. A few thin slices of Vidaldia onion, some crumbles of Gorgonzola and a few toasted walnuts all dressed in a light vinaigrette that includes a dash of fresh orange juice to complement the orange zest sprinkled over the salad.


Wash beets and place on a large piece of foil, drizzle with olive oil and fold up foil to form a packet. Place the foil packet on a baking sheet or small shallow pan and roast in a 400° oven for 40 - 50 minutes. They should be crisp tender. Pierce with the tip of a sharp knife to check. When the beets cool, peel, slice and toss with a little of the vinaigrette. Toss the washed, dried greens with enough vinaigrette to lightly coat the leaves then plate the items attractively, finishing off with some freshly grated orange zest (optional).
Citrus Vinaigrette: 4 TBS extra virgin olive oil (use the good stuff); 2 TBS red wine vinegar; 2 TBS orange juice; salt & pepper.


Then I was left with green beans. A pound of green beans is a lot of beans for one person! I decided to do a Thai red curry with the beans and a few other vegetables, influenced, I suspect, by Prik King. With a fresh supply of red curry paste on hand, coconut milk in the pantry and lots of compatible aromatics to accompany the beans, it was a winner. While I made the curry, I put some jasmine rice on to cook.

Thai curry is made from a curry paste, a blend of more than 10 seasonings and spices. As opposed to Indian curries which are developed from a wide selection of dried seasonings and spices. Yes, I know. We can buy a can of yellow powder called curry powder but it doesn't do justice to the authentic taste and aroma of an Indian curry made from whole herbs and spices that have been freshly roasted prior to using. But that's Indian curry.
My little can of red curry paste contains: dried red chiles, garlic, shallots, salt, lemon grass, kafir lime, galangal, coriander seeds, cumin and cardamon, all conveniently packaged together, ready to go for less than a dollar. Similar to an Indian curry preparation, the curry paste is first cooked in oil to bring out the flavors and the color, then the coconut milk is added in two stages. Thai cooks separate the thick, heavy milk at the top of the can from the thinner coconut milk at the bottom of the can. Do not shake the milk before opening, then gently spoon off the top portion of the milk into a small dish until ready to use.
I used a medium Vidalia onion cut into wedges, a sweet red pepper cut into strips, a jalepeño with the seeds removed, cut into strips, two young carrots sliced on the diagonal for quick cooking in the stir fry and the rest of the blanched green beans. The veggies were sautéed in olive oil in layers starting with the onion and peppers then adding the carrots and green beans. when the veggies are crisp tender (just a little under done) remove them from the pan and stir 2 TBS of red curry paste into the oil in the hot pan, press the frying paste with a wooden spoon to blend it with the oil. Be careful about breathing too deeply close to the pan. The chiles and spices are very pungent. After frying the curry paste in the oil, spoon the thick coconut milk into the pan and bring it to a boil mixing it carefully with the paste. Continue cooking the paste and coconut milk, letting it boil very gently until the oils in the pan start to separate. Little oil droplets will appear on the surface of the sauce. Do not boil too rapidly as the oil won't separate. Once the oils separate, add the remaining thin portion of the coconut milk, 1 TBS Asian fish sauce, 1 TBS lime juice and 1 tsp sugar and the sautéed ingredients. Thinly sliced chicken or pork could be included and sautéed with the veggies. Simmer gently for another 10 minutes or so until the oil separates out again. A rich color and tiny droplets of oil in a curry means it was made correctly.

The veggies ladled over jasmine rice with a generous portion of sauce, served piping hot makes an exotic, spicy one dish meal.
A few selections at the farmers market, corn, beans and beets, inspired these dishes. All quick, easy, tasty, attractive and a little out of the ordinary. None requires exact proportions, all reheat beautifully.
Till next time . . . keep on cooking.



























Saturday, May 19, 2007

Lasagna - An Elegant One Dish Meal

However you choose to spell lasagna, ending it with an e or an a, this layered noodle dish is a popular Italian specialty. The big debate arises over what is nestled between the layers of tender sheets of pasta and whether the provenance of those structural noodles is fresh from an Atlas roller or slipped from a blue box. I've gone both routes, and if all the other elements are done to perfection, the choice of pasta is almost irrelevant. In my opinion, fresh pasta should be showcased with minimal adornment, lasagna has too much going for it to highlight the pasta.

Then there is the faction that stubbornly adheres to the dish's old world origins with the meat layers separated from the pasta layers with a rich, creamy béchamel sauce. Given that Louis de Béchamel, attributed with originating the white sauce, was French, the debate rages on as to what constitutes an authentic lasagne(a). I choose to go all the way with red sauce and save white sauce for other applications. Though there's nothing wrong with the way my Italian friend, Melina, makes a lasagna, believe me! Despite the prevalence of white sauce.


My personal choice is simple layers of pasta with fresh ricotta cheese that has been mixed with beaten egg, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, minced fresh parsley and salt and pepper. Each layer separated from its brother with a light coating of red sauce and thin slices of whole milk mozzarella cheese. The entire dish laced on the bottom, between layers and over the top with a perky fresh tomato marinara sauce. I love vegetables, but keep them out of my lasagna and I prefer a meatless rendition, if I'm having my druthers.


I have friends who are partial to a rich ragù that I've adapted from The Frugal Gourmet. They've indicated that the combination of layers of ricotta alternating with layers of ragù is a winner in their book and to please everyone, about once a year, I put one of these meat and cheese combos together.

This was the week. My friends, Paul and Betty, were celebrating their first wedding anniversary and I wanted to offer a toast to them for many more happy years ahead.

We started the meal with shrimp cocktail. The large, sweet, fresh shrimp recently off the boat from Key West. Followed by an adventurous little salad of torn green leaf lettuce, thinly sliced Vidalia onions, diced vine- ripened tomatoes, crumbled Gorgonzola cheese and spicy hot, toasted walnuts. The pan-roasted walnuts dusted in sugar and ground chipotlé were a bold companion to the piquant cheese and the two somewhat brash components lent just the right character to the sweet mild greens that had been lightly dressed with a mellow Asiago dressing.

Foccacia, warm from the oven, with rosemary and kosher salt, was good for mopping the zingy cocktail sauce (fresh horseradish is a must) with the shrimp, the dressing on the salad and any traces of red sauce from the lasagna. The dense, cake-like crumb, sweetened by a heavy dose of olive oil within and served with herbed olive oil for dipping, could have been dessert by itself.


But we ended the meal with a simple presentation designed by a clever chef in Treviso. Freshly churned lemon ice drizzled with vodka. The light fresh tart taste of the lemons was a fitting end to a rich meal. And the unexpected appearance of the ice cold vodka, straight from the freezer, lent just the right air of decadence to the finale.

The meal was complemented with a feisty young red Zinfandel and a pleasantly mellow Cabernet. Rich French Roast coffee added the final touch to an extremely enjoyable, casual meal with good friends.

Get-togethers like these are rich rewards for spending a day in the kitchen. As you might have guessed, this was not a 30 minute meal!

Ragù
1/2 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1 rib celery, finely chopped
1 med carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 med yellow onion, finely chopped
1/4 lb pancetta, finely chopped
1 pound ground sirloin
1 pound ground pork
1/8 cup chopped parsley
1 1/4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup dry white wine (I use dry vermouth)
1/2 sm can tomato paste
3 TBS butter
1/4 cup heavy cream (I use half & half)
1 tsp chopped fresh sage of 1/2 tsp dried ground sage
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste
Heat a large, heavy bottom stainless steel dutch oven or kettle. Add the oil, garlic, celery, carrot and onion. Sauté until the onion is transparent, about 10 - 15 minutes. Add the pancetta and sauté 5 minutes. Add the chopped meats and brown until crumbly. Add the parsley, chicken stock, white wine and tomato paste. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer gently partly covered for about 2 hours. When all is well homogenized, add the butter, cream, sage and cheese and simmer carefully for another 5 minutes or so. Skim any accumulated fat from the top of the sauce then season to taste with salt and pepper.
Ricotta Layer
one pound ricotta(approx 2 cups)
one egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
dash of 1/2 & 1/2
Salt & Pepper
In a medium bowl mix all ingredients to spreadable consistency (add cream or 1/2 & 1/2 to thin as needed).
Assembling the Lasagna
In addition to the fillings (meat and cheese or just meat or just cheese) and the pasta sauce you will need a generous 4 - 6 oz hunk of whole milk mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced. Or you can grate it, if you prefer, and an additional half cup of grated mozzarella and a 1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese for the top.
You will need 5 - 6 cups home-made marinara sauce or pasta sauce of choice. Spread about a cup of sauce evenly over the bottom of a 9 x 13 glass baking dish. Cover bottom of dish with lasagna noodles (I like to soften hard ones by placing them in simmering water until they are slightly pliable - no need to pre-cook). You will need 9 lasagna noodles for a 9 x 13 dish (3 layers of 3 noodles). If using fresh pasta sheets, cut the sheets to fit the dish, allowing for 3 layers of noodles.
Whether the first layer is meat or cheese is a personal preference. It doesn't make any difference in the finished product.
Gently spread the ricotta over the layer of noodles. Then layer on thin slices of mozzarella, then add a thin layer of sauce before adding the next layer of noodles. Place a layer of the ragù over the second layer of noodles, add a layer of thin slices of mozzarella, then a thin layer of sauce and top with the final 3 noodles. Carefully cover the top three noodles with sauce. The dish can be prepared up to this point, covered with foil and refrigerated until ready to bake. If refrigerated, let stand at room temperature for at least 45 min before baking in a 350° oven for 55 - 60 minutes. Bake covered with foil for the first 45 minutes. Carefully remove the foil and evenly spread a mixture of 1/2 cup of grated mozzarella and 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan over the top. Return to oven and finish cooking uncovered. Dish should be bubbly with the cheese taking on a little color - don't overcook as it will be dry. Let stand at least 15 minutes before cutting. Serve with additional sauce if desired. A sprinkling of freshly minced Italian parsley makes a lovely finishing touch.
This is a special occasion item. The more often you prepare one, the easier it becomes. Be sure to allow enough time to enjoy the process. Being rushed and/or stressed not only puts undue pressure on the cook but inevitably ruins the final dish. The best food is simple food prepared with joy and love.
Till next time . . . keep on cooking.

































































































Monday, May 14, 2007

The copycat rides again . . .
It should be no surprise to my readers that I'm an unapologetic member of the Heidi Swanson fan club. If Heidi proposes a technique or ingredient that appeals to me, be sure, I'll be right behind her, trying it out or performing my own riff. No surprise then that her recent posting of David Lebovitz's frozen yogurt recipe from his new book, The Super Scoop, was high on my list of must do's!


Heidi made vanilla and so did I—the first batch. It was so good, I had to have more and of course, I had to add my own little fillip. With fresh strawberries available at unheard of low prices, $1.67 for a quart in the market, why pick your own? And I love strawberry ice cream but I've not been happy with commercial frozen ice cream or frozen yogurt laced with big hard rock-like berries. To offset that, I prepared a generous cup of strawberries by giving them a few whirls in my mini food processor and added a couple of teaspoons of Polaner's all fruit strawberry jelly. This added some juicy body to the crushed berries and sweetened them naturally at the same time. I mixed the crushed berries with the balance of the washed, hulled berries that had been sliced.


I followed Heidi/David's instructions for allowing the organic, full cream, plain yogurt to drain overnight in the fridge, then added a teaspoon of vanilla and a half cup of sugar. I let the vanilla base process in the ice cream maker until it was almost finished (about 15 - 17 minutes) then I began adding the sliced berries and their juice, a tablespoon at a time, until I liked the ratio. I was looking for a light pink color with well balanced flecks of berries. This step becomes a matter of preference: add more; add fewer.


Ice cream, sorbet, or Italian ice made in these convenient electric appliances, is done when it reaches a stage very similar to soft serve ice cream. It continues to harden when placed in the freezer, and is just right for making picture perfect scoops after about 3 - 4 hours. Then it tends to get very hard. No mystery synthetic chemical stabilizers to keep it soft. A very reliable method of preventing it from turning into an iceberg is to add a little alcohol at the very end of the mixing. Vodka is best as it has no flavor to conflict with the ingredients or you can use a liquor to complement the flavor. I had no vodka on hand, but I did have some triple sec. I mixed in two generous tablespoons just as the frozen yogurt finished setting up. If the alcohol is added too soon, it will prevent it from freezing properly in the ice cream maker. There was no noticeable orange taste in the finished strawberry yogurt.

If you have an electric ice cream maker, I'd certainly encourage you to try your hand at frozen yogurt. What pleases me most about this is the purity of ingredients. This is nothing more than organic whole milk yogurt with a little flavoring and a little sugar. Read the labels on the commercial products. They sure have to use a lot of strange stuff to produce the end result, don't they?

Till next time . . . keep on cooking.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

On the cheap, again . . .
Here I go with another bargain meal. Couldn't help myself. I had this lonely little eggplant in the vegetable bin. When I bought it the other day, my intention was to make a small batch of caponata. I love the sweet and sour flavor of this wonderful relish to eat on rustic bread or toss into a mixed greens salad. But it didn't come to pass. Instead, I made a petite portion of eggplant Parmesan on the fly.

With no tomato sauce made up, and only a couple of fresh tomatoes on the sill that were still a bit on the hard side, I really had to improvise. I tossed a 15 oz can of organic diced tomatoes into the food processor with two cloves of garlic, whirled that around until it was fairly smooth and then poured it into a saucepan with four of my stash of frozen veggie broth cubes (1/2 cup) and a generous sprinkling of a Penzey's blend of Italian herbs and salt and pepper to taste. Then let it all simmer very gently. I didn't want it to cook down too much, but wanted it to have enough time to develop a little depth of flavor while I prepared the sliced eggplant.

I used the standard breading technique. Dip in flour, then egg wash, then panko (gives a much crustier finish than standard dry bread crumbs). Now here's a little trick I learned from the good folks at Cooks Illustrated. Instead of frying the eggplant slices, while I was slicing and breading them, I preheated the oven to 425° and placed a baking sheet in the oven to heat up. As the eggplant slices were breaded, I set them out on a wire rack. Once the oven had reached temperature, I removed the hot baking sheet (carefully) and swirled on a tablespoon of olive oil, then placed the breaded eggplant slices on the sheet and into the oven. The slices will brown nicely in about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them and turn them over after about 20 minutes. If you are doing a larger batch, use two sheets, switch and rotate them about halfway through the cooking time.

To assemble, spread a generous layer of the tomato sauce in the bottom a baking dish. Layer on the eggplant slices, dollop each with a little tomato sauce and then sprinkle with a combination of grated mozzarella and Parmesan. Return to the hot oven and bake until bubbly and the cheese has browned. About 15 minutes of so.

While the eggplant was in the oven for its final bake, I sliced up some of the ciabatta I baked the other day and toasted it over medium heat in a little garlic infused olive oil and a sprinkling of those same Italian herbs.

This meal did take a little more than 30 minutes, but not more than an hour and most of that time was baking time,waiting for the eggplant to brown, and then for it to heat through with the cheese.


It was a dandy supper, concocted on the fly with a .99 can of tomatoes, a 79 cent eggplant, about a 3 oz piece of store brand mozzarella and a perhaps a quarter cup of grated Parmesan, and let's not forget the leftover bread. Granted this was dinner for one or two, but it wouldn't take much more to make it dinner for three or four. Just buy a bigger eggplant.



Till next time . . . keep on cooking.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

With a little planning . . .

What fun I had recently, mixing up my first batch of Ciabatta dough. Ciabatta is a rustic-looking, light textured oval loaf, perfect for splitting lengthwise to make a pan bagna—stuffed Italian sandwiches or panini—grilled Italian sandwiches.
I've been a novice bread baker for over 40 years. I remember standing in the kitchen after putting the boys to bed, mixing and kneading a cool rise white bread that rivaled Pepperidge Farm. I thought that was an accomplishment. Little did I know that there were far better, chewy, dense, fragrant artisan breads, lovingly kneaded then baked in brick ovens. I led a sheltered life growing up. White air bread was the norm in our house.


Americanized Italian Rustic Bread


After several bread baking classes at Harriet's Kitchen, in the early '90's, and after studying and practicing the methods and techniques of Nancy Silverton and The Village Baker, Joe Ortiz, I was well on my way to producing rustic, full flavored loaves with crunchy crusts and soft, moist interiors. Faithful to each episode of Baking with Julia on PBS, I watched pros measure, mix, knead, shape and bake a wide variety of the basic food that has been with us since man discovered fire.

Bread is served at every meal and in between. When there is nothing else to satisfy, a slice of bread, plain or toasted, slathered with everything from suet, to baked beans, to peanut butter and jelly have provided a fast, nourishing meal or snack. Man probably could live by bread alone, as long as it's made of whole food ingredients and not filled with air and synthetic chemicals. My bread doesn't have a very long shelf-life. It's eat it up or freeze it. Both are easy to do.

There is something so relaxing, almost therapeutic, about working with yeast dough. Is it the aroma or the sensual touch of kneading soft, yielding dough? Is it the miracle of putting together a little flour, salt, yeast and water and watching this blob of dough rise to the top of the bowl? Or the fun of poking a finger into that light airy bowl of dough and watching it deflate like a balloon that has lost its air? Or is it the sense of pride, the soul-satisfying accomplishment as we pull that handmade baked loaf from the oven, the whole house delightfully perfumed with a hot, yeasty aroma?

Millions upon millions of home bakers have mastered the art of baking bread. Some for the sheer joy of doing it; most to keep body and soul together. In this day and age, with so few healthy shelf choices, we bake bread for the sake of our health, but the sheer joy of accomplishment is in no way diminished.


Hot from the oven, Ciabatta dipped in first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil with Italian herbs and freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano, vine-ripened organic tomatoes and fresh basil from the garden is perfect for a light lunch or makes a great starter.


Two steps are required — plan ahead.

1. Starter, (sponge, biga) is mixed up the night before: Combine 1/2 tsp instant yeast; 1/2 cup of tepid water; 1 1/2 cups of King Arthur Organic Unbleached All Purpose flour or White Whole Wheat flour, in a mixing bowl (I used the bowl of the Kitchen Aid mixer). Cover the bowl and allow to rest 12 hours or overnight.

2. Dough: To the biga (above) add: 1 tsp instant yeast; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 3/4 cup + 3 TBS water; 1 TBS olive oil; 2 cups King Arthur Flour (same type as used in the biga).

Procedure: Mix/knead all of the dough ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer (10 minutes), a food processor (90 seconds), or a bread machine (dough cycle). The dough is much too slack to knead by hand, so you need to use a machine. Once mixed, let it rise, covered, for about an hour, it will easily double in size. Then flow the sticky dough into a rough 10 x 15 oval on a lightly greased baking sheet. Let it rise, covered, till very puffy, about 2 hours. Bake the Ciabatta in a preheated 425°F oven for about 25 minutes, until it's golden brown. Cool it in the turned-off oven with the door cracked open.



Till next time . . . keep on cooking.


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BOOK NOOK

Here's the list of books I read (finished) in April.
Burning Bright . . . . . . Tracy Chevalier
One Hundred Year Lie . . . . . . Randall Fitzgerald
The God of Animals . . . . . . Aryn Kyle
Deep Storm . . . . . . Lincoln Child
Obsession . . . . . . Jonathan Kellerman
Daddy's Girl . . . . . Lisa Scottoline
The Watchman. . . . . . Robert Crais
Sick Puppy . . . . . . Carl Hiassen
Body Surfing . . . . . . Anita Shreve
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