Cooking the Books: Death of a Kitchen Diva by Lee Hollis
By Doreen Sheridan
April 24, 2019
Hayley Powell is a 35-year-old single mom of two teenagers who works as the office manager at the Island Times, the smaller of two newspapers based in Bar Harbour, Maine. Her deadbeat ex-husband’s alimony checks don’t come as often as they’re supposed to, so when her boss, Sal, offers her a weekly cooking column for extra money, she finds it hard to say no.
Her food is always a hit with family and friends, but Hayley isn’t really a writer, so she’s plagued with self-doubt. Her insecurity isn’t helped by Sal taking a strong dislike to her chatty debut. When positive reviews start pouring in, however, even he’s won over to her conversational writing style.
One person who isn’t happy about Hayley’s success is Karen Applebaum, the food-and-wine columnist at the rival paper. Part of her anger stems from her certainty that Hayley stole her crab-stuffed mushroom recipe for Hayley’s first column. Of course, Hayley didn’t, but Karen’s revenge culminates in a bake sale food fight that has Hayley loudly proclaiming before dozens of witnesses that she will kill Karen.
These are rash words that mean little—until Karen turns up dead and Hayley becomes the prime suspect. For all that Karen wasn’t well-liked around town, no one else seemed to have disliked her enough to want her dead, much less make public death threats against her. When Hayley realizes that she’s being framed, she goes all out—with some help from her friends—to bring the real killer to justice.
Death of a Kitchen Diva is a light-hearted romp of a culinary cozy, as Hayley and her friends and family dash around Bar Harbour investigating Karen’s murder. Hayley is a very relatable protagonist with a delightfully quirky and diverse supporting cast. I also really enjoyed the format of her columns, which are included in their entirety in the book. She lays out a seven-course meal over as many weeks, leading into each recipe with charming anecdotes regarding her life as a mom and pet owner and murder suspect. Cocktail recipes often accompany each course. I decided to try out this entree for our own column this week:
Creamy Chicken Marsala
Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
¼ cup chopped green onion
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
⅓ cup Marsala wine
⅓ cup heavy cream
⅛ cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Sauté chicken in a large skillet for 15 to 20 minutes or until cooked through and juices run clear when pricked by a fork.
Add green onion and mushrooms and sauté until soft.
Add the Marsala wine and bring to a boil.
Boil for 2 to 4 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the cream and milk and simmer until heated through.
I first learned to make chicken marsala in an Italian kitchen using chicken that had been pounded flat and lightly breaded, so I was a little hesitant to use just plain old chicken breasts here. I shouldn’t have worried, though. They turned out perfectly fine.
I did make a few small adjustments to how the recipe wanted them cooked, seasoning the chicken with salt and pepper before adding them to the skillet, then only sautéing them for 7 minutes on each side before adding the vegetables, etc., as I was concerned the chicken would dry out if cooked for too long. The end result was a very delicious dish that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Italian restaurant where I once worked. I served the chicken with a side of spaghettini, to the acclaim of everyone who tasted it. I’m definitely going to make this dish again!
Next week, we stick around Bar Harbour to check out the latest in Hayley’s ongoing misadventures—and to try out some nutty pastries. Do join me!
See also: Cooking the Books: Murder in Tranquility by J.D. Griffo
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Death of a Kitchen Diva is a cookbook full of flavorful dishes and helpful cooking tips. The book is separated into four chapters. In the first chapter, Hollis provides a little background on herself and the cookbook. In the second chapter, Hollis gets to the heart of this cookbook by providing recipes that are easy to follow and that elicits a mouth-watering response. In the final two chapters, Hollis goes into a little more depth about a) good kitchen tools and materials to have on hand and handy cooking tips and tricks, and b) how to have a successful, well-rounded meal. Hollis’ passion for cooking is clear as she discusses all of these topics.
The kitchen is often the heart of the home, but what happens when things go wrong? Serious emotional stress can lead some to take drastic measures. Death of a Kitchen Diva by Lee Hollis is a novel that grapples with this question. The book follows the story of some of Palm Beach’s wealthiest socialites, which Hollis dubs the Kitchen Divas. The Divas are made up of wealthy wives and grandmothers who take care of their children and grandchildren while running businesses and charitable organizations. The novel isn’t all drama and infighting, however.
People come into the world with their own set of challenges. Whether it be physical, mental, or emotional, these challenges can be difficult for some people to overcome. Lee Hollis’s book, Death of a Kitchen Diva, tells the story of an ordinary woman who faces adversity of all sorts. The story follows how this woman was raised, the struggles she faces in her own life, and how she is able to overcome them when the time is right. The story of Death of a Kitchen Diva, follows Carol’s life from childhood when she was sent to live with her Aunt in order to avoid being infected with polio, to her own children when her own daughter, Emily, is diagnosed with autism.
It took me a while to get over my reservations about using regular chicken breasts in this recipe since I learned to make chicken marsala in an Italian kitchen where the meat was pounded flat and softly breaded. Instead, I used thinly pounded and lightly breaded chicken.