Inherit the Word by Daryl Wood Gerber: Guest Author/Review/Giveaway

THE PERFECT GRILLED CHEESE

By Daryl Wood Gerber aka Avery Aames

Agatha Award-winning author of the national bestselling

Cheese Shop Mystery and Cookbook Nook Mystery series

“Life is good; cheese makes it better.” ~ Avery Aames

Do you love grilled cheese sandwiches? I do. They bring back memories of simpler times. When I was a kid, I used to go to Lake Tahoe in the summer with my family, and my mother would make a really cheese-y grilled cheese. She would also fix tomato soup. Comfort food extraordinaire. We would take a midday break—if we didn’t, we’d be sunburned prunes; my sisters and I loved swimming in the ice cold lake. We would sit on the porch eating our grilled cheese and look out at the water and count seagulls. Fun. Easy.

While writing the next book in the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, I did a lot of research for grilled cheese sandwiches. Why? Because the story revolves around a grilled cheese competition. I wanted to know my stuff. [Don’t I have it rough? LOL]  I’ve always been a good grilled cheese maker, but I wanted to be great. As a result, I’ve changed three aspects of my grilled cheese cooking techniques.

One: My cheese maven [a real person] wrote a blog post a couple of years ago that said, and I’m paraphrasing: “It’s called a cheese sandwich, not a bread sandwich, so make sure you use lots of cheese.” Ever since, I’ve doubled up on the cheese I put in a sandwich.

Two: Thanks to a suggestion in another article, in addition to buttering the outside of the bread, I now add a swath of cream cheese to the inside of the bread. As it turns out, cream cheese heats up fast and encourages the other cheese to melt. Brilliant tip.

Three: Lastly, I invested in a Panini grill. Have you ever handled one? They’re quite big and clumsy. They’re sort of like a waffle iron, but the back side is a little more flexible so that a cook can put in a grilled sandwich that is extra-wide, and it will still fit. Using a Panini grill has made all the difference in my grilled cheese results. Here’s why. I now have to eat gluten-free [I didn’t as a girl…long story…]. Gluten-free bread isn’t the easiest to grill. It’s, um, not very flexible unless you’ve just pulled it fresh out of the oven (which is great!). In fact, it’s stiff and hard. But if you put a gluten-free sandwich in a Panini grill, something about the weight of the two sides of the grill help the gluten-free bread get soft again. It also helps the cheese melt evenly throughout. Perfection.

By the way, while writing INHERIT THE WORD [The Word is a diner in town, short for Mum’s the Word Diner], I did a lot of taste-testing. I made one sandwich based on an appetizer my mother used to make for her bridge club. I’ve included the recipe in the book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

What’s your favorite grilled cheese combination? Have you ever participated in or watched a grilling competition? Tell us by noon EST on March 7, and you will be entered to win a copy of Inherit the Word. U.S. entries only.

Blurb: Jenna Hart moved back to Crystal Cove, California, to recapture her joie de vivre and to help her aunt Vera run the local culinary bookshop and café. But it’s hard to follow a simple recipe for relaxation when murder gets thrown in the mix….

The Cookbook Nook is set to host the town’s upcoming Grill Fest, a tasty tradition which pits local amateur chefs against one another to concoct the most delicious dishes. This year’s challenge: grilled cheese. But with competing chefs bearing grudges from past years, more mouths are running off than savoring the fare.

The expression “too many cooks” proves all too true when the eight-time champ is found murdered in the alley behind the café. Soon a local diner owner (and Jenna’s “second mother”) is suspected of bumping off the competition, and Jenna has to douse the flames before the wrong person gets burned.

Mochas, Mysteries and Meows Review: …Daryl Wood Gerber's second Cookbook Nook Mystery, Inherit the Word, is a feast for the senses as it takes place during Grill Fest with a focus on grilled cheese (just about my all-time favorite comfort food). The competition turns deadly when 8-time champion Natalie Mumford is found dead during a break, whacked upside the head with a discarded panini grill. Diner owner Lola, Jenna's second mother and mother of her BFF Bailey, is blamed as she had recently fought with the victim over a chef that left Lola to work for Natalie.

Jenna is also faced with a second mystery to solve when her kitten Tigger smashes a Lucky Cat statue which is filled with gold coins left behind by her late husband. What she uncovers about him and his mysterious death rocks her to the core, yet also assists in her hunt for a killer.

This is a fantastic story with a delightful cast of characters, a charming locale and a mystery that will keep you guessing. A preview of the next book in the series, Stirring the Plot (October 2014), is included at the end and is set at Halloween. I can't wait!!!