Friday, April 25, 2014

Lime Margaritas and The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb




For our Friday Drinks with Reads feature, today author Cathy Ace drops by to pour us a lime margarita while she tells us about Cait Morgan and The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb, published by Touchwood Editions. The lovely painting the photo above is the work of Laury Revenstein, a painter in British Columbia.
 

Here's a little about the book:

Criminologist and foodie Cait Morgan was looking forward to her dream vacation in Mexico with her boyfriend Bud Anderson. She wasn't anticipating a fresh corpse on the floor of a local florist’s shop, and she definitely wasn't 
expecting Bud to become the prime suspect.

With Bud’s freedom, and maybe even his life, at stake, Cait has to fight the clock to work out which member of the small community living in the seemingly idyllic municipality of Punta de las Rocas might have killed the locally respected florist, and why. Needing to investigate under the watchful gaze of the local police, Cait has to keep her relationship with Bud a secret, and she soon discovers she’s not the only one with something to hide. Peeling back layers of deceit to reveal even more puzzles, Cait struggles with a creeping sense of unreality, desperate to save Bud . . . and, ultimately, herself.

In the third book in the beloved Cait Morgan Mysteries, The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb, travel to the idyllic Mexican countryside as Cait Morgan works against the clock to clear her wrongly accused partner of murder.




CAIT MORGAN, HER TRIP TO MEXICO, AND TEQUILA

Cait Morgan visits the fictional municipality of Punta de las Rocas, near Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Because her significant other, Bud Anderson, is wrongly accused of murdering a local plantswoman, she finds herself at a tequila-producing agave plantation sleuthing to save her man.

Usually Cait revels in wonderful food and drink—she’s a foodie and happy about it. But, on this occasion, she’s less than enamored of the food she gets too eat, and feels cheated. But her priorities have changed since she arrived. I’d like to think that Cait, at the end of the book, gets to enjoy the vacation she was looking forward to, and also gets the chance to put her feet up with a good book—and one of these lime margaritas. That said, since the victim’s name was Margarita, Cait might not be so keen, and, of course, she’s not mad about tequila….but I think she’d relent. No umbrellas though, please! Not Cait’s style.



Recipe for Cait Morgan’s Lime Margarita – courtesy of Cathy Ace

3 parts tequila – use blanco or silver tequila, and make sure it’s 100% agave

2 parts Cointreau – the consistency and sweetness takes the edge off the tequila/lime mix, and this is what makes the drink palatable

1 part lime juice – use freshly squeezed limes, but feel free to strain it…little pods of lime can be very tart!

Place all three ingredients in a cocktail shaker with a few ice cubes, and shake slowly, and luxuriously, not harshly. You want to shake for a couple of minutes, then set aside.

Take a margarita glass of your choice (the one in the photo above was made, by hand, in Mexico), and wipe the rim with a quarter of a lime. Place the rim onto a plate that you have covered with coarse salt and sugar, mixed together. Twirl the rim in the mix until the rim is coated, add a few lime wedges to the edge of the glass.

By now your cocktail shaker should be showing signs of condensation – this tells you that the margarita is properly chilled. Strain through the lid into the glass. Then add a couple of the ice cubes from the shaker, by hand, so you don’t waste any of the drink.

Drink from the rim, not through a straw – that way you get the sweet and salty rim flavors mixing with the sweet, sour, and tequila-fire of the drink.

Salud!

Don't forget to come back next Friday for another book and drink pairing.













3 comments:

  1. Excellent post. Both the book and the drink sound great.

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  2. Cathy - Thank you for such a great post.

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  3. Thanks for the chance to share this recipe, Deborah...I promise it tastes good!

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