Wine Country Recipes (A Wine & Dine Mysteries Cookbook)

By Gemma Halliday and Susie Halliday

From New York Times bestselling author Gemma Halliday, and her mother Susie Halliday, comes a family cookbook featuring the mouthwatering recipes from the USA Today bestselling Wine & Dine Mysteries!

Trained chef Emmy Oak was just beginning an illustrious career as a private chef to the stars when her mother's sudden illness called her home to California's Wine Country to take over operations at her family's small winery, Oak Valley Vineyards. While Emmy anticipated trouble from the corporate giants of the region, just waiting to gobble up small, struggling operations like Oak Valley, what she didn't anticipate were catty Silicon Valley socialites, vengeful business rivals, and a string of murders falling at her door! What's a girl in Wine Country to do when homicide follows her everywhere? Indulge in a glass of vintage wine and little cooking therapy!

This cookbook includes all the recipes featured in the first 7 books of the USA Today bestselling Wine & Dine Mysteries series! Savory dishes, decadent desserts, and affordable wine pairings are featured, along with photos of the delicious dishes. Enjoy glimpses not only into Emmy's adventures, but into the authors' lives as well, through the family recipes handed down from generations of Hallidays to the more modern interpretations of both simple weeknight dishes and elegant dinner party fare.

"Gemma provides marvelous recipes with helpful shortcuts for timid chefs, and suggestions for the perfect wine pairing!"
~ Kings River Life Magazine

"'A Sip Before Dying' revolves around two of my favorite things, wine and a good mystery. Another thing I love about this book is that it includes recipes for some of her best catered dishes. I can’t wait to check out the Brie Fettuccini recipe!
~ Book Review Crew

"The Wine & Dine Mystery series by Gemma Halliday could definitely be a movie on the Hallmark channel. You will savor everything there is to savor, you will be left with a satisfying feeling at the end, and you will LOVE where Halliday leaves the reader with Emmy and Detective Grant..."
~ Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gemma Halliday
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005180386

Gemma Halliday

Gemma Halliday is the New York Times, and USA Today bestselling author of several cozy mystery and suspense thriller novels. Gemma's books have received numerous awards, including a Golden Heart, two National Reader's Choice awards, a RONE award for best mystery, and three RITA nominations. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her large, loud, and loving family.

Book preview

I would love to say that my enjoyment of food started as a young child, but that would be a bald-faced lie. As a kid, I was one of the world's pickiest eaters. At the time my mother might have said I was the world's pickiest eater, but she has since met my sons—so she knows there are some with more finicky palates than my young one! Luckily for me and my very sensitive taste buds, my mother, Susie, was passionate about healthy eating and my father was a pretty darn good cook. Between the two, I was exposed to a wide range of foods at a young age that, while I didn't always love them all, did open my eyes to the word of culinary possibilities. Some of my favorite foods as a youngster included dates with goat cheese, wheat grass juice, and rice cakes with organic butter. What can I say—I was a child of the seventies.

While it took some time for my love of food to develop, my love of wine came right on schedule! Not surprising, as on both side of my family, my ancestors have had a long relationship with wine and other spirits. My father's family came to the US from Alsace-Lorraine, a wine region to the east of France, and my mother's family were some of the first to set up a pub in the colonies in the 1600s. Ancestral enjoyment of drinking aside, I've been fortunate to grow up in Northern California, a stone's throw from California's Wine Country. Sonoma and Napa are some of the most beautiful places in the world, in my humble opinion, so when I set out to write my latest series of mystery novels, I knew the region would lend itself to the type of gorgeous setting I'd enjoy writing about. Never mind how much I'd enjoy the research trips too!

The Wine & Dine Mysteries is the seventh mystery series I've written, and I feel like the number is, indeed, a lucky one. Readers and critics alike have seemed to enjoy reading this series almost as much as I enjoy writing it, which is the ultimate validation for an author. The books follow Emmy Oak, a trained chef who, when her mother gets ill, leaves her up-and-coming career in glamorous Los Angeles to go back home to Sonoma and take over operations of her family's small winery, Oak Valley Vineyards. Of course, being that these are the Wine & Dine Mysteries, Emmy does encounter some troubles along the way. Not only are the corporate winery giants of the region systematically gobbling up small family run wineries such as hers, but on the day Emmy throws her first large event to make sure every wealthy dot-commer and mogul in the Silicon Valley knows her winery's name, she also ends up making headlines for a very different reason—murder. A dead body is found in her wine cellar, and suddenly everyone in town is speculating about the killer, including newly transplanted Detective Christopher Grant of the Sonoma Country Sheriff's Office Violent Crimes Investigations Unit. While Grant may be easy on the eyes, Emmy worries he won't be quite as easy on whoever is to blame…even if it's someone close to her.

While I knew I would love writing about the food and wine Emmy and her friends enjoy in these books, little did I know that this series would also inspire in me a love of cooking…one that has been infectious to my children as well! I have several budding chefs in my house now, and one of my favorite things is when my mother Susie and I can relax with a glass of wine at the dining room table and watch my son Nick work his culinary magic whipping us up a truly gourmet meal. (Check out the recipe for Nick's Smashburgers—they have become one of his signature meals!) Not to be outdone, my preschooler Charlotte will always be in the kitchen as well, chopping, grating, and mixing! Cooking is a family affair in our house…and so is eating! Sunday dinners are a treat, and one of the few times each week that I can get the entire Halliday crew of busy, growing children together in one place. Many of the recipes in this book are family favorites from my childhood, new creations cooked up in our family's kitchen, or old standards handed down to my mother from her mother and her mother's mother!

From the Halliday family to yours, I hope you enjoy the recipes we've gathered together from the Wine & Dine Mysteries novels so far, and I hope they inspire in you love of cooking, eating, and relaxing with a nice glass of wine and your loved ones!

The Recipes from A Sip Before Dying

After coming home to take over the day-to-day operations of Oak Valley Vineyards, Emmy finds the winery's finances are less than stellar. Income is sparse, expenses are too high, and while she dearly loves the staff who have always felt more like family to her than employees, it's clear they aren't enough to keep the winery surviving, let alone thriving like Emmy would like to see the Oak family legacy. Not to worry—Emmy has a plan. With her culinary know-how, she's on a mission to put the financially floundering Oak Valley Vineyards on the map once again. First step: she's invited all of Wine Country's who's-who to the vineyard for a Spanish inspired meal, all cooked outdoors on wood fires, just like the Valencians of the Orange Blossom Coast did at seaside picnics. The VIP guests include local influencers, bloggers, and reporters, as well as socialites, Silicon Valley billionaires, and wine enthusiasts. With the help of her childhood best friend, Ava Barnett, Emmy's aim is to show them all that while Oak Valley puts out wine to rival any of the big boys in town, it's also a charming venue for parties, weddings, and retreats. And the food isn't half bad either!

Emmy's Spanish Style Paella is an all around hit! Even the tough to please syndicated food columnist Bradley Wu is seen scarfing it down as if it were going out of style. However, when his column comes out the next morning, it announces: While the paella at the Spanish shindig on the hill was to die for, the main dish was actual death—served up by Oak Valley Vineyards' own Petite Sirah.

Uh-oh, not sure this is the sort of publicity Emmy is looking for!

Emmy's Spanish Style Paella

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon sweet or smoked paprika

2 teaspoons oregano

salt and pepper to taste

1 frying chicken, cut into pieces (roughly 3 lbs.)

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 Spanish chorizo sausages, thickly sliced

1 yellow onion, diced

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped

2 cloves of crushed garlic

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped (Reserve some for garnish.)

1 (15 oz) can diced or crushed tomatoes, drained

4 cups short grain Spanish rice

6 cups water, warm

generous pinch of saffron threads

8 mussels, scrubbed

1/2 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/2 cup frozen peas

lemon wedges, for serving

In a medium bowl, combine the paprika, oregano, the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and salt and pepper, and coat the chicken in the mixture. Then marinate the chicken in the refrigerator. (This can be done up to a day ahead.)

Heat the olive oil in a large pan or paella pan over medium-high heat. Sauté the chorizo until browned, then remove and set aside. Heat the shrimp for roughly 2 minutes, until pink, and set aside. Cook the chicken, skin-side down, until browned on all sides. While cooking, season with more salt and pepper. When browned, remove from pan and set aside.

In the same pan, prepare the sofrito. Sauté the onions, red pepper, and parsley until onions begin to get soft, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook until the mixture begins to caramelize and thicken a bit. Then add in the rice, coating all of the grains in the tomato mixture. Add in