Crime of the Ancient Marinara (A Tuscan Cooking School Mystery, Band 2) - Softcover

Cole, Stephanie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593097815 ISBN 13: 9780593097816

Verlag: Berkley, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

American chef Nell Valenti's high hopes for a successful Tuscan farm-to-table cooking school are in danger of withering on the vine in this delectable cozy mystery.

Nell Valenti is settling into her role of transforming the Villa Orlandini into a superb farm-to-table cooking school, and the time has finally come for a full taste test run. But when Chef Orlandini prepares to reveal his top secret marinara recipe for the first time to a group of American gastro-tourists, Nell realizes she might have bitten off more than she can chew.

Nell begins to suspect that one of the tourists is actually a private detective sent to spy on her by her overprotective father, and the fussy foodies are noisy and disrespectful from the very start of the Marinara Mysteriosa workshop. Even worse, when one visitor appears to be poisoned by the famous marinara recipe, Nell will have to work fast to uncover a killer and keep a lid on bad press before her fresh start is spoiled for good.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephanie Cole is an active member of the mystery writing community. Writing as Shelley Costa, she was nominated for both an Edgar® and an Agatha Award, and she cofounded the Northeast Ohio chapter of Sisters in Crime. She teaches creative writing workshops and lectures on American literature in the greater Cleveland area. For fun, she takes violin lessons, studies art history—and eyes them both for murder plots.

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1

 

Five o'clock

 

Early October

 

There were six of us assembled for final preparations in the common room of the Villa Orlandini on a hillside just outside of Cortona, Italy. The villa was home to Chef Claudio Orlandini, his Cornell-educated olive-growing son, Pete, and an assortment of helpful women of the Bari family-not the least of which was the redoubtable Annamaria, the sixty-ish sous-chef who had been keeping the Orlandini household humming along for decades.

 

Not quite a month ago, I, Nell Valenti, had been transatlanticly wooed by a lawyer representing the Orlandinis to come to Cortona, Italy, and develop a world-class cooking school at their villa. Five hundred years ago the property was home to the order of St. Veronica of the Veil, but that was back in the day when the joint was a run-down convent and not the fine, run-down villa it was today. And now, I thought, here we were, on the eve, on the brink, very possibly even on the ledge, for all I knew. Chef, Pete, Annamaria, Rosa, Sofia, and I.

 

Chef dubbed the theme for our first "intensive" Marinara Misteriosa. This culinary virtuoso had found himself longing for the days of his explosive rocketing onto the culinary world stage back in his twenties when his own secret marinara recipe was introduced to Italian sauce lovers the world over, who instantly proclaimed it the finest advancement in marinara development in the last two hundred years. Love, fame, and money followed.

 

But now?

 

I had my doubts. How many people, I argued, are going to spring for round-trip airfare plus our fees, not to mention clear their own schedules at short notice, for four days at the villa to learn something they could probably figure out at home just by popping the lid on a jar of Newman's Own? The answer came within days of launching the website: five. Five Americans signed up. When I announced to Chef, the Baris, and Pete that Marinara Misteriosa was a go, Chef kissed both my cheeks.

 

And now here we were, meandering around the common room with our hands in our pockets, taking care of last-minute tasks, eyeballing the beautiful changes to the space, on the afternoon before the five Americans showed up who were paying top dollar to be in the presence of the first real celebrity chef-well, from Tuscany, under two hundred pounds, and born less than five years after the death of Mussolini.

 

To make my life a little easier, I decided to go with Cucinavan, owned and operated out of Florence by Manny Manfredi, whose gastrotour services would include handling the money, coordinating airport pickups and drop-offs, transportation to and from the villa-and whatever foodie hot spots and shrines he could offer to our students along the way. At two p.m. the next day, Cucinavan was arriving from Florence with our first class of American gastrotourists. Four days, five students, learning at the sauce-stained knees of renowned chef Claudio Orlandini-how hard could it be?

 

And if we hit a few snags, as Chef himself would say, Tutto fa brodo-Everything makes broth. The first time I heard Chef use the common Italian phrase, I knew we had our brand, and it gave me a little frisson of pleasure. Everything makes broth. Three weeks ago, that outside wall had been stripped of its peeling wallpaper, washed, dried, and painted a bright teal in chalkboard paint. I found a sign painter in Siena who did the lettering in gold leaf centered high up on the gorgeous teal wall: TUTTO FA BRODO, with plenty of slants and serifs to make the Orlandini Cooking School brand glisten with all the agelessness of a fresco.

 

I crossed my arms, amazed at the changes. No more muschio, the moss that had been providing the 3-D effect on the moist walls. No more mildew. Luscious rugs in geometric whites and golds offset the wall hanging, stainless steel worktables doubling as desks glinted in the daylight, and Bauhaus metal and sling-back leather chairs outdid anything I ever owned, that was for sure. For a moment, my heart picked up a beat, and I thought the Villa Orlandini Cooking School might really stand a chance.

 

Today, down at the far end of the wall, near where the American foodies would put up their throbbing feet at the end of a tough day with polenta, Rosa and Sofia, Annamaria's sisters who were members of the order of St. Veronica of the Veil, were fifteen feet off the ground on rickety ladders, hanging a ten-by-twelve-foot tapestry banner in a famous William Morris Oriental design. Clustered below, shouting directions, and gesturing as broadly as a traffic cop, was Annamaria. More this way, more that way, higher, lower, are you drunk?

 

When we all finally agreed that the banner was as straight as we could get it without either a carpenter's level or an infusion of tea, we flopped into chairs and waited for Annamaria to wheel in her tea cart with extravagant antipasti aboard. Nibbling on a peperoncino, the stalwart Rosa thumbed the remote and navigated her way to a cable TV channel, then upped the volume as though she had a twitch, and we all stared at Rosa's daily fix of a close-captioned American show called Stealth Chef. "Ecco Stealth!" she stage-whispered as though drawing our attention to a shadowy image of the Blessed Virgin on the side of an Arkansas barn.

 

Stealth Chef-face obscured by a black bandana, hair obscured by a professional black head wrap, voice distorted by a high-tech voice changer-had hit on a gimmick that was sheer kitsch. But it worked, and it sold, and it topped late afternoon cable culinary shows. I had to admit, Chef Orlandini's merry little Tutto Fa Brodo brand looked a little ho-hum alongside Stealth Chef's brand, splayed across the simple set kitchen: Recipes for All.

 

This anonymous dicer slicer, filming from an undisclosed location in the United States, was dubbed the Robin Hood of celebrity chefs. While waiting for the pasta pot to boil, the disguised voice lost no opportunity to plug the shtick: "Recipes belong to everyone," the figure mincing garlic intoned sincerely, "nothing hidden, nothing withheld, the democracy of a world kitchen, where rich and poor share and share alike." You would swear Stealth Chef was about to break into doomed and righteous song at the barricades in Les Mis. All the PC words got gonged: democracy, rich, poor, world, share.

 

The result in the year Stealth Chef had been on the air was a ratings top spot as unassailable as my own Chef Claudio Orlandini's five-tier tiramis�. But everyone loved Stealthy's mystique. The bandana, the head wrap, the voice changer-pure theater. The problem with all this televised celebrity was that it started to give Rosa Bari ideas. Would Chef consider a gold hoop earring? A fish tattoo? A paisley ascot? A nose job? Thankfully, she voiced these abominations only to Pete or to me, on some level knowing better than to make any direct suggestions to Annamaria or Chef himself.

 

The two times Chef wandered through the common room when Stealth Chef was on the air, he truly stopped dead in his tracks, transfixed as though he had spotted the East African oryx on the Serengeti Plain. He seemed okay with the disguises-after all, Chef's easy charm was probably in the same league as Stealth Chef's bandana-but his eyes widened in shock when the whole concept of Recipes for All got plugged. You would think he was watching either an autopsy or a student with bad knife skills. Right there in front of him. "Cosa sta dicendo?" he declared: What is he saying? Then, hoarsely: "Ricette per tutti?" Recipes for all? He was baffled. With arms open wide, Chef Claudio Orlandini turned slowly, addressing the walls in broken English. Where, then, is the art? The...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berkley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593097815
• ISBN 13: 9780593097816
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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