Guilt and Ginataan (A Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery)
“a fast-paced mystery with lots of humorous interplay between the characters, crimes to solve, and recipes to try as well.”
“Elena came up with the idea of a fusion elote, taking her beloved Mexican street corn and adding Pakistani and Filipino twists, to match with Adena’s and my respective backgrounds. Not only did Jae give us his mother's recipe for the oksusu cha, or Korean corn tea, but he'd also volunteered to handle all the elote duties, slathering the corn with thick, creamy coconut milk before rolling it in a fragrant spice mix that included amchur powder and red chili powder, grilling it, then squeezing calamansi over the corn before sprinkling it with your choice of kesong puti or cotija cheese.”
Agatha Award-winning author Mia P. Manansala first started the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries cozy culinary mystery series in 2021 with Arsenic and Adobo and now, in her fifth novel, Guilt and Ginataan we find her heroine, Lila Macapagal again solving crimes while cooking at the Brew-ha Café, a restaurant she owns with friends.
Lila originally hoped for an exciting life in Chicago but after having her heart broken by her long-time boyfriend, she’s given up on that dream and returned to her hometown of Shady Palms. But if she thought that small town living would be less stressful and interesting, Lila quickly learns that life in Shady Palms can be a killer, literally.
As usual, solving crimes is personal and this time Lila must prove her best friend and fellow business partner, Adeena Awan, didn’t kill the wife of a local politician who was found dead in a corn maze during the annual Shady Palms Corn Festival.
A murder at a corn festival? Well, Manansala does live in Illinois and, as she says, what’s more seemingly wholesome than a corn festival? Making it, in her distinctive way of plotting her novels, the perfect place to set a murder.
But Manansala isn’t just writing mysteries, she’s in the niche genre of culinary cozies. And since she loves to cook and Macapagal owns a restaurant, well, there are recipes as well in the back of the book. The recipes, such as Lila’s Ginataang Mata Butter Mochi, Ms. Torre’s Arabs de Elote, and Tita Rosie’s Ginataang Gulay, are a mixture of ethnic cuisines reflecting the people who work at Macapagal’s restaurant.
Manansala developed the idea of the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries in part because her mother loved culinary cozies and the idea of one centered around, in part, her Filipino heritage, was appealing.
And so, we get a fast-paced mystery with lots of humorous interplay between the characters, crimes to solve, and recipes to try as well.