Brits Rule!

Well, they may not rule exactly but two Brits are taking over this blog for the day. I’m Shirley Wells and my partner in crime, for today at least, is Clare London.

My mysteries feature reluctant private investigator Dylan Scott. He’s a city boy who had to be dragged, kicking and cursing all the way, from Clare’s neck of the woods up to Lancashire. Dylan, you see, is a bit of a chauvinist. Okay, he’s a lot of a chauvinist. He drives his long-suffering wife and his dope-smoking mother mad. So although his heart’s basically in the right place, and he’s a damn good private investigator, he needs to learn a few of life’s lessons. So I brought him north to the lovely east Lancashire Pennines where I’m lucky enough to live.

He’s skulked off home now so he’ll miss the traditional Christmas serving of Black Pudding or Lancashire Pudding as it’s sometimes called. The soft southerners, if they eat black pudding at all, will eat slices that have been fried or grilled as part of a full traditional breakfast. The more hardy northerners will eat it boiled, and served with malt vinegar out of paper wrapping. Soft southerners will sit down to a Christmas lunch of turkey whereas, in the north, we could easily tuck in to chicken stuffed with Black Pudding and Lancashire cheese.

What exactly is Black Pudding, I hear you cry. It’s a sausage made by boiling blood (sorry, that’s not a typing error), usually pig or cattle blood, with a filler such as meat, fat, suet or sweet potato until it’s thick enough to congeal when cooled. Sounds delicious, right?

Dylan will escape this year. Next year, however, I’m determined to drag him north for Christmas and force feed him Black Pudding.

Me? Ah, well. As it's the season of goodwill, I may just be generous and give my helping to my dogs. I'll probably have to settle for an extra helping of cake instead or maybe more chocolate.

What about you? Do you have a favourite Christmas food? We’d love to know.

As it’s Christmas, we’re giving away copies of our latest books to one lucky commenter. My gift will be Dylan’s first outing, Presumed Dead. 

I’ll hand you over to Clare now and she’ll tell you about her gift.

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Hello all, from the *south* of England, I'm Clare London, pen-named from where I live, love and write. I'm looking out of the window, awaiting our next heavy fall of snow and wondering if it'll be a white Christmas in London. It's a rare occurrence down here in the "soft" south :).

I've been writing for many years about romance and mystery, but a lot of my work has been Americanised for its main audience. It's fun, but I feel the time has come to find my roots - in fiction of course, because I've been a London girl since I was very young, and proud of it.

My Carina mystery murder Blinded by Our Eyes is based in London around fashionable Kensington and the lively, cosmopolitan area of Earls Court. My hero Charles Garrett is a young gay man facing the pressure and excitement of starting up his own art gallery - until one shocking night when he finds the dead body of Paolo, a young sculptor he's been mentoring, dead in the gallery in a gruesome murder scene.

Charles considers himself calm, discreet and practical, not prone to the melodrama and violent passion of the artists he sponsors. A very British man, you may say. But his search for the truth draws him into investigating Paolo's murder. He discovers his friends and lovers all have secrets to keep, and his cool view of the world is about to be rocked to the core. And when he meets Antony Walker, an aggressive, rudely handsome sculptor and a previous close friend of Paolo, Charles is in danger of a very different kind. Is he losing his heart to a new lover - or a killer?

Charles may be fictional but he's drawn from a very traditional background and is London born and bred. So what are the favourite Christmas foods we'll be looking forward to in London this year? Shirley may well have her black pudding - which, actually, I like! - but I'll be serving the traditional turkey with the trimmings: roast potatoes,  vegetables like carrots, broccoli and the infamous Brussel sprouts, lots of gravy and then the side sauces, cranberry and bread.

I remember sending a food parcel to a friend in the US a couple of years ago because she wanted to make a Brtitish Christmas dinner and couldn't easily get the ingedients. All was fine until I tried to send her suet to make a Christmas pudding. It was confiscated by Homeland Security because it had a beef base!

Then we'll have Christmas pudding with custard and cream, followed by watching the Queen's message on TV at 3pm, then it's a race to see who falls asleep first :).

This year, I discovered a warming recipe for London Pie from the 1950s. I've included it below in case anyone's tempted to make one over the Christmas period? Though heaven knows, we shouldn't need any more food ... LOL.

So share the guilt and delight with us this Christmas and let us know what *you're* looking forward to cooking or eating, whether it's turkey, taters or taramasalata :).

And don't forget, as Shirley says, if you comment on this post you'll be entered in the draw for not just one free book but TWO. My gift will be a copy of Blinded by Our Eyes, and you can follow Charles on his scary but determined journey to discover the truth behind murder.

Thanks for visiting and a very Happy Holiday period to you all.

LONDON PIE:

Ingredients: 1lb of extra lean minced beef
1 large onion, peeled and grated
1 coarsely chopped cooking apple
1 tablespoon sultanas
1/8 pint of stock
2b potatoes, cooked and mashed
1 dessertspoon curry powder
Fresh tomatoes, cut in half

Method: Mix the meat with the curry powder, onion, apple, sultanas and stock. Put into a square ovenproof dish. Spoon or pipe the potato on top in squares like a chessboard. In the spaces between the squares, put a half tomato cut side upwards. Cook for 1 hour at 375 degrees F.