Kitchen Confidence: Home Cooking Tips from Kelsey Nixon — October Maker Talk

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We were incredibly lucky to have the lovely Kelsey Nixon as our headlining guest for October’s Maker Talk. With a long list of accomplishments behind her— full-time mom, cookbook author, Food Network, Cooking Channel, and uLive star — Kelsey still maintains a humble demeanor and girl-next-door charm.

Check out Kelsey’s tips for amping up your kitchen skills in the video above, including the 10 tools you need to have. Also included: a hilarious throwback clip from when she got her start. It’s worth a watch!

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Recipe: Simplest Spiced Lamb Stew — Recipes from The Kitchn

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This is a dish that’s meant to be easy and stress-free. After all, you deserve a break. I like to prepare it during the day while I’m working at home, but if you don’t work from home, you can pull it together on a weekend day or even after you make dinner one weeknight. It will be ready for the next night’s meal and all the better for its time in the fridge.

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How To Make a Candle Out of a Pumpkin — Projects from The Kitchn

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I am not a crafty person. I can’t sew, I don’t scrapbook, and the scope of most Pinterest-inspired projects is so far beyond my skills they may as well be on the moon. But even I can make candles out of little pumpkins, and given how cute and seasonal these are for the Halloween and Thanksgiving table, I wanted to show you how too. If I can do this, anyone can.

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Recipe: Carrot Cake Power Bites — Snack Recipes from The Kitchn

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These snacks are vegan, require no baking, and come together quickly in the food processor — but best of all, they taste like carrot cake! They’re also made from whole ingredients (with just a teeny tiny drizzle of sugary icing on top), so even though they taste like a dessert, they have enough fiber, protein and fat to keep you ticking right thorough the afternoon doldrums.

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squash toasts with ricotta and cider vinegar

squash toasts with ricotta and cider vinegar

Lest you operate under the idea that when I go in the kitchen to work on a new recipe, adorable forest creatures gather around, bringing me my whisks and measuring cups, tiny birds whisper in my ear all the right seasoning notes and then, when I snap my last photo, my team of minions file silently in to wash the dishes while I go out on the deck to ponder my next free-form food essay, the single, completely unexciting reason I am late to share a new recipe this week is because I was chasing an exasperating salted peanut butter caramel-flavored ghost. Five rounds in, I have concluded that while there are no bad salted peanut butter caramels, the one I want isn’t yet within my grasp and it was time to take a break. One cannot live on peanut butter, cream, butter and brown sugar alone, after all, fun as it was for a few days there.

what you'll need + a new non-crooked label for me
peeling the squash

And so I shifted focus to the kind of simple dinner I’d love to eat before or after Friday’s candy deluge, a seasonal, cozy and hearty entry in one of my favorite food categories: meals masquerading as toasts. But don’t be deceived by the name; these are no simple, wan crostini. A winter squash of your choice is roasted in the oven while on the stove, you cook an onion with cider vinegar and maple syrup until it’s soft and jammy. You use a fork to half-mash this tangy confit together with the roasted squash, a pile it on bread you’ve toasted in olive oil and spread with ricotta or soft goat cheese. Don’t forget the mint on top; it makes something already good unquestionably perfect.

sliced squash

… Read the rest of squash toasts with ricotta and cider vinegar on smittenkitchen.com


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