On the Steamy Side (38 page)

Lilah let him catch her and pull her onto his lap so she could lean back in his arms, secure in the knowledge that he’d never let her go.

“Oh, Lilah Jane. I think you’d better come here and let me practice.” His warm, aroused voice was like a full-body hug. The naked kind.

“Practice what?” she asked, breathless.

“Showing you how I feel,” he said, his mouth finding hers in a quick clash of teeth and tongues and laughter and so much joy, she was afraid her heart might actually burst.

Well, she thought hazily as he coiled her curls around his fingers and nuzzled into her neck. Practice makes perfect.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The charity Devon chooses for his fundraiser benefit is the Center for Arts Education of New York, and that organization actually exists. Committed to restoring and sustaining quality arts education to all grade levels of New York City’s public schools, the CAE has a fantastic and very informative website at www.cae-nyc.org/. Check it out! Every child deserves a well-rounded education. Find out what you can do to make a difference.

And a quick note on the recipes included in this book: the corn salad is completely new, dreamed up by me and rigorously taste-tested and kibitzed by my husband and best friend, Meg Blocker, but the other two are extremely old family recipes from my mother’s side. They’re so old, I had to update the Cheese Date Rolls to use butter and shortening rather than oleo! And the Delmonico Pudding is technically a blancmange, a style of dish that actually originated in the Middle Ages. My family’s modern version probably dates from the mid 1800s when the Manhattan restaurant of the same name was at the height of its popularity. As Lilah says, it’s traditionally a holiday treat, at least in my family, but with the substitution of candied ginger and pine nuts for the festively green and red candied pineapple, Delmonico Pudding works year-round! I hope you enjoy all the recipes as much as I enjoyed developing them.

MEXICAN STREET CORN SALAD

4 ears corn, shucked

¼ cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons lime juice

¼ teaspoon chili powder, or to taste

3 green onions

1 medium red bell pepper

1 teaspoon salt

pepper to taste

½ teaspoon chili powder

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

chopped fresh cilantro

1 lime, quartered

Cook the corn in a large pot of boiling, salted water for no more than two minutes. You want it to stay crunchy. Drain and allow to cool while you prep the other ingredients.

Mix the mayonnaise with the lime juice and cayenne. Thinly slice the green onions, both the whites and part of the green.

Seed and dice the red pepper—you want about half a cup. Cut the corn kernels off the cooled cobs and add to the green onions, the diced bel pepper, and the mayonnaise. Stir in salt and pepper to taste.

Divide the salad between four plates. Top each with chili powder, freshly grated cheese, and a little chopped cilantro. Serve with lime wedges.

CHEESE DATE ROLLS

1 pound of the sharpest cheddar cheese you can find (white is fine, but orange gives the rol s better color), shredded 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into smal pieces and chil ed 6 tablespoons shortening

3 cups sifted al -purpose flour

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon salt

1 16-ounce package of pitted dates (the biggest, plumpest dates available wil real y take these over the top) Whole pecans, about two cups

Put the flour, cayenne, and salt in a food processor and pulse once to mix. Add the cold butter and shortening, then pulse five or six times until incorporated. Stir in the shredded cheese and let the dough rest at least two hours in the refrigerator.

(The recipe can be made ahead up to this point; dough wil last for several days refrigerated in an airtight container.) Remove the dough from the fridge about half an hour before you want to bake the rol s.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

While oven is heating, stuff fifty dates with one whole pecan each. Pinch off a walnut-sized lump of dough and flatten it between your palms, then mold it around one stuffed date, making sure to smooth out any cracks or holes. Repeat until dough is gone. Place the rolls on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper or a silicone baking mat. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until the rol s have a nice golden color. Remove to a rack to cool.

DELMONICO PUDDING

2 packages unflavored gelatin

2 cups whole milk

5 eggs

1¼ cups granulated sugar, divided salt

1 teaspoon vanil a extract

1 pint heavy whipping cream

3 dozen small almond macaroons (make sure they’re almond, not the more common coconut kind!) 5 tablespoons pine nuts

2 tablespoons crystal ized ginger

Dissolve the gelatin in one cup cold milk.

Separate five eggs. (Refrigerate whites while making custard.) Beat yolks, gradual y adding ¾ cup sugar. Slowly beat in the remaining cup milk and a pinch of salt. Cook over low heat until mixture begins to thicken into custard. (Be patient!

Eventual y, it wil coat the spoon.) Cool slightly and add vanil a. Stir in the gelatin/milk mixture and refrigerate for about one and one-half to two hours.

When the custard begins to set, beat egg whites into a stiff meringue. Gradual y add ½ cup of sugar.

Beat the whipping cream until it forms stiff peaks. Fold the whipped cream into the meringue mixture and divide into two equal parts. Fold one part into the custard. Reserve the other part for a topping.

Line a 9 × 12 inch pan with a layer of almond macaroons. Pour the custard mixture over the top. (If the cookies rise to the surface, push them back down to the bottom of the pan with the back of a spoon.) Careful y spread the reserved cream and meringue mixture over the top of the custard. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours and preferably longer.

When ready to serve, toast pine nuts in a skil et over low heat, stirring constantly for about two minutes until they are slightly brown. Chop the ginger as fine as you can. Arrange individual portions of pudding in serving dishes or martini glasses. Sprinkle the top of each serving with pine nuts and a little ginger.

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Louisa Edwards’ next novel
JUST ONE TASTE

Coming in September 2010 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

The classroom door opened, admitting a young woman Wes didn’t recognize. He frowned. Most of the students in his section had been in overlapping rotations together, through the thicks and thins of the grueling culinary arts program, for the past eight months. They’d wrestled with pasta dough together, learned basic hygiene and kitchen safety together, broken down flocks of chicken, fabricated countless fish and brewed up gal ons of stock together. He knew most of their secrets, their histories and their hopes, and even if none of them knew Wes’s, this group was still about as close as he’d ever found to a family.

But this woman? Was so brand-new she practically squeaked.

Or wait. That was her shoes.

Wes stared at her feet, realizing all at once what was so strange and different about her.

She was out of uniform.

The Academy of Culinary Arts had a strict dress code. The place was famously well-run and hyper-regulated; there were severe consequences for breaking any of the myriad rules and regulations set forth by the Academy’s president. Some of the worst penalties came from code-of-dress infractions.

Everyone at the Academy wore black pants, a white chef’s jacket, and regulation black-leather kitchen clogs. Every single person, from the chef instructors to the students, on up to President Cornell. No exceptions.

Except, apparently, New Girl.

Who was clad in what looked like regulation geek-wear. Baggy khakis that made her appear even shorter than she was, topped with a beige T-shirt featuring . . . Wes’s feet slipped off the rung of his chair. Whoa. Was that a freaking Wookie?

And on her feet, squeaking against the sterile tile floor with a noise like she was wearing Styrofoam panties, were black Converse sneakers.

Wes stared in silence. In fact, the whole classroom went dead quiet, as one by one, the sleepy culinary students registered the stranger in their midst.

New Girl didn’t appear to notice, at first. Clutching a stack of notepads and papers to her chest, she shuffled quickly, head down and shoulders hunched, up to the front of the classroom. But instead of taking a seat at one of the student tables, she kept going.

Wes watched, fascinated by this tiny stick-figure of a person, all jerky movements and shiny blonde hair twisted into two messy braids down her back.

Until she reached the podium next to the chalkboard, where she paused, appeared to take a deep breath in, and turned to face the class.

And Wes got his first good look at her face.

Wide-set blue-gray eyes, her bottom lip was plumper than the top, giving her a permanent pout. And her nose . . . damn it. Wes had to swallow hard. Her nose was interesting rather than perfect, and it was enough to take her face from merely pretty to knockout striking.

Crap. She was adorable. She looked like the beautiful starlet they cast to play the smart girl, who transforms by the end into the gorgeous woman she always was, with the help of contact lenses and pants that fit.

And obviously, she was the newest addition to the teaching staff.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Wes really didn’t need this kind of distraction.

“Oh,” she said, her wide eyes going even wider at the sight of the class sitting there, silently watching.

It was as if she was surprised to see them. “Um. Hello. My name is Dr. Rosemary Wilkins.” She paused, glanced at the chalkboard.

Wes knit his brows. Surely she wouldn’t . . . okay, maybe she would.

Dr. Rosemary Wilkins stepped to the board, grabbed a piece of chalk, and wrote her name in careful, looping script.

Dusting off her hands, she turned back to the class and continued. “I have a bachelor’s degree in Organic Chemistry from Yale, a PhD in Physical and Analytical Chemistry from Johns Hopkins, and a PhD

in Biological Chemistry from Bryn Mawr. I’m here at the Academy to study food. By which I mean, of course, the chemical processes and interactions between ingredients under controlled conditions. The ACA has unparalleled facilities for the kind of research I’m interested in conducting, but apparently, in return for the use of those facilities, I have to step in and take over Professor Prentiss’s class when he can’t be bothered to keep his penis in his pants. So. Here I am. What do you want to know?” Wes looked around the room. He could practically hear the crickets chirping.

Dr. Wilkins arched a brow. She didn’t appear even slightly surprised. “No? Nothing? I told President Cornell this would be a waste of time. You all want to make good food, but none of you wants to know the reasons behind what works and what doesn’t.” She shook her head as if baffled. “You probably all think of cooking as a creative endeavor, as ‘art’.”

Who the hel was this woman?

She looked about Wes’s age, certainly no older than twenty-five. Which meant she must’ve been in her teens when she got that first degree.

Dude. Prodigy alert.

One of the students, Bess, a plump blonde who was categorically not a prodigy, said haltingly, “Are you really our teacher?”

Wes winced. Well, at least she hadn’t asked if Wilkins was a real doctor.

“No.” Dr. Wilkins looked affronted at the very idea. “I’m a scientist. Teaching is a waste of my prodigious mental acuity and valuable research time. As I already told President Cornell. He, however, seems to think there’s something to be gained by forcing a woefully overqualified genius to teach a basic-level chemistry course any monkey could run. I can only be grateful that the semester is almost over. More than three weeks of this nonsense would put me severely behind in my research.”

“Wow.” Wes heard Sloane’s awed whisper. “I kind of love her.”

“That’s because you’re a sociopath,” Nate told her. “This woman is like your soul sister or something.”

“I’m surprised you don’t dig her, Nate,” Wes said out of the side of his mouth. “You usually love being told you’re a moron eight different ways before breakfast.” All eyes followed their new instructor as she shrugged and moved to the podium. Dr. Wilkins shuffled her papers until she had the one she wanted on top, then proceeded to sit down on the floor at the front of the room and read. Silently.

Slowly, like the hiss of steam spouting from a boiling kettle, a buzz of whispered conversation streamed up and out of the students. Immersed in her reading, Dr. Wilkins appeared unaware.

Wes studied her while the others huffed and speculated. He noted the curve of her pale cheek, the relaxed spread of her denim-clad legs as she became absorbed in whatever that paper was. She was short, he decided, but perfectly proportioned. Her skin was like the porcelain tableware they used at La Culinaire, the Academy’s student-staffed restaurant, creamy white and so fine it was almost translucent.

And he could tell it wasn’t faked, that total lack of interest in the physical world around her. For all intents and purposes, she wasn’t in this classroom anymore. The realization got under Wes’s skin like the juice of just-diced Serrano peppers.

He’d never been able to stand being overlooked, and he especially hated being called stupid. It was pride, nothing but pride. He knew that. And pride, which had gotten him in big, bad trouble on more than one occasion, should’ve been kicked out of him years ago. Only somehow, it hadn’t been. It was a given now. He knew himself, knew his own hair-triggers, and accepted them.

The question was, what would he do about it in the case of the incredibly insulting and dismissive Dr.

Rosemary Wilkins?

Smart answer: absolutely nothing. She was his instructor, she held his grade in the palm of her little hand.

But then, no one had ever accused Wes of jumping to do the smart thing.

Slowly, deliberately, Wes raised his hand.