So my Murder Mystery Dinner Kit finally arrived in the post last week. Lesson learnt: Amazon Prime is not worth £24.99 per year, or however much it costs.

I had a quick flick through the party planner's guide, and saw that the suggested menu for the evening is:

1. French Onion Soup
2. Beef Bourguignon
3. Brie and grape salad.
4. Coffee

It all sounds very French, which is ideal considering the setting of the evening: 1940s French Occupied Cassablanca.

I spent some time researching different recipes for the main course, because the one provided seemed overly simplistic. (And contains mushrooms.) Two other recipes took my fancy: Alice Toklas' version, which promises to be very authentically french, and the recipe found on Delia Smith's website. Last night I prepared Ms. Smith's recipe, and it paid off.

I didn't actually let it stew for the extra hour, as suggested by Delia, as I had started cooking quite late and everyone was ready to commit murder by 9pm.

It was still delicious though, and I can't wait to experiment with Alice Toklas' recipe next weekend.

Regarding murder.

As Alice Tolkas states, "Food is far too pleasant to combine with horror". (Toklas, PP 37)  And yet, Food and murder are as connected as me and chocolate. One cannot occur or exist without the other, in some form. Animals are slaughtered for consumption, and plants hacked down. Living things are destroyed. I am not saying that I disagree with either of these activities, because that would be hippocritical. But before investigating the links between food and muder in literature, it is important to make this important realisation.

There is a book written by Esterelle Payany and Jean-Francois Martin, called 'Recipe for Murder: Frightfully good food Inspired by Fiction which I absolutely must get my hands on before my next blog post. From what I understand, recipes are taken from literature and transformed into real, edible and appealing food. Just like pigs in blankets on a cold Christmas afternoon. (I know, thats an awful joke.)

References

Toklas, A. (1954) The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. London: Serif.