Host of Cooking Channel's Kelsey's Essentials and fan favorite on season four of The Next Food Network Star, Kelsey Nixon shares the essential recipes, techniques, and tools that new home cooks need in their back pocket. A young food star and new mom, Kelsey is an invaluable friend in the kitchen to everyone settling into their first kitchen of their own. Her recipes, which are broken down into simple steps, teach readers how to cook, highlighting key tools and basic techniques everyone should know. And yet her flavors are anything but basic; Kelsey gives everyone the confidence to start with the 2.0 version of a recipe instead of the boring standards. For example, she makes her house pilaf with quinoa instead of rice, and her addictive fruit salad is a savory first course instead of a lackluster dessert. With 100 recipes and 60 color photographs, Kitchen Confidence brings home all of the energy and spirit of the Cooking Channel show of the same name, making it an excellent handbook for newlyweds, recent college graduates, and those discovering their kitchens for the first time.

The Confident Cook, invaluable to experienced cooks as well as to beginners, demonstrates that in fact there are only four or five basic methods of cooking food. Once mastered, these basic methods can be used with many different ingredients to create countless dishes. Chalmers shows how beef stew, braised veal, coq au vin, and a vegetable casserole, for example, are similar in their preparation; how a simple beef stew can become a hearty Mulligan, a Belgian carbonnade, a French boeuf bourguingnon, or your own less classic invention. More important, she shows how you can whip up something delectable from whatever supplies you have available without being tied to a recipe with specified ingredients.

Anyone who has ever used a Lauraine Jacobs recipe from the famous Cuisine magazine knows how fantastic they are and how well they work. Celebrating New Zealand's clean green, flavour-filled produce and recommending wine matches from among our huge range of peerless wines, this book by the longtime food editor of CUISINE is aimed at home cooks who want to cook well and expand their repertoire and who are passionate about food and wine. Lauraine Jacobs is the doyenne of New Zealand food writers and in choosing her 133 favourite recipes from over the years at Cuisine she is creating the stuff of many happy dinner parties to come. With beautiful photographs by Kieran Scott and presented in a stunningly handsome layout, this book is destined to become a classic. "I would easily classify Lauraine Jacobs as the high priestess of the international food and wine scene. The Confident Cook brilliantly serves up the ideas, recipes and thoughts that have propelled her to become one of the true leading lights of the gastronomic world. It's one thing to merely love all things food and wine with an extreme exuberance, but quite another to have professorial-like knowledge on the matter. Thank you, Lauraine, for this incredible and inspiring work from the heart!" Charlie Trotter Lauraine has done New Zealand proud. New Zealand food and wine lovers will feel a glow of pride at this collection of lovely recipes that does justice to New Zealand's excellent produce, including its outstanding wines. The photographs are delightfully evocative. And visitors will be steered towards the very best wherever they find themselves.o Stephanie Alexander

Kitchen Confidence is packed with Catherine’s personal selection of recipes, based around what her family enjoys and the dishes she keeps coming back to time after time. Every recipe is accompanied by a full colour photo (which she styled and snapped whilst making her impatient family wait to eat!) as well as including note pages which contain beautiful illustrations by Harry Stone. From breakfast to dinner and dessert, within the pages of Kitchen Confidence, you’ll find loads of ideas that will tickle your taste buds and maybe inspire you to turn the occasional date with the oven into a full-blown culinary affair with your kitchen! Each recipe is straightforward, with a guide as to how long it will take, what ingredients you could substitute and sometimes even a little bit of history. There’s a guide to useful store cupboard ingredients, equipment you might want to invest in and some tips and techniques for success in the kitchen. So whisks at the ready as you keep calm and curry on and discover a new-found confidence in the kitchen!

The key to confident cooking lies not in learning to follow intricate recipes but rather in mastering a select handful of truly appealing yet straightforward dishes that invite experimentation and improvisation to reflect the seasons and the cook's own palate. In Salt to Taste, Chef Marco Canora presents a tempting repertoire of 100 soulful recipes that embody this philosophy perfectly: food that is comforting and familiar but with a depth of flavor and timeless appeal that mark the dishes as true essentials of the contemporary table. Each meticulously written recipe offers insightful lessons drawn both from memories of his mother's cooking and his years as one of New York's most respected chefs, guiding the way to a delicious dish every time. Extensive chef's notes suggest ways to streamline the process and enhance the savory results, marrying the precision of the professional kitchen with the warmth of home cooking. Those looking to elevate their cooking from merely good to truly spectacular will find much here to inspire them, while those in need of culinary coaching will learn that creating greatness is within reach. With a little forethought, care, practice, and observation, any cook can quickly gain the confidence to "salt to taste."

Learn to cook well with this Joy of Cooking for the Instagram generation from James Beard Award-winning cookbook studio Canal House, "the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue of the food world" (Bon Appetit), with 300 simple recipes to rely on for the rest of your life. Canal House's Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer are home cooks writing about home cooking for other home cooks. From a lifetime of making dinner every single night, they've edited their experience down to the essentials: 300 simple and genius recipes that reveal the building blocks of all good cooking, and are guaranteed to make you a better cook. Each chapter of Cook Something helps you master a key ingredient or powerful technique, moving from simple (a perfect soft-boiled egg, and how to make it uncommonly delicious) to ambitious (a towering chocolate souffle). Recipes for salad dressings, sauces, braises, roasts, meatballs, vegetables, and even perfect snacks and sweets help novice and experienced cooks alike reach for the perfect dish for any occasion. Inside, you'll find: Poached salmon with lemon-butter sauce Fettucine with ragu bolognese Oven-braised chicken with gnocchi French onion soup Canal House's classic vinaigrette Classic Italian meatballs Caramelized apple galette And so much more. Filled with step-by-step photographs and indispensable kitchen wisdom, it is a perfect gift for beginners and an ideal reference for confident cooks. Cook. Cook something. Cook something for yourself. Cook something for others. It will satisfy you more than you know.

Today, many people find they don t know kitchen basics, much less know how to cook a meal. Betty Crocker comes to the rescue in Cooking Basics, covering all the information anyone needs to cook, whether they are just leaving home, or discovering a need to cook at any age. Using the 100 appealing recipes here, anyone can learn to cook a complete meal. Nothing is intimidating, and every technique, term and ingredient is clearly explained. Each recipe has its own two-page spread, complete with a photo of the finished food and how-to photos of techniques used in the recipe. It s never been simpler to create a great dish! Betty Crocker interviewed inexperienced cooks, to get just the the right recipes for this book, the ones novice cooks really want: hamburgers three way broiled, grilled or fried; Quick Lasagna; Teriyaki Chicken Stir-fry; Quick Chicken Soup; Shrimp Scampi; Quesadillas; Mashed Potatoes; Strawberry Shortcakes, and other tempting treats. Anyone can cook a dinner -- even entertain -- with these sure-fire recipes. Did you think only gourmets tackled Thanksgiving dinner? Not with Betty Crocker. Included is a complete Thanksgiving feast, with a timetable so everything comes out just right. Whether you want to host the show, or bring a dish to help out your host, this Thanksgiving meal is perfect for everyone. Also covered is how to set up a kitchen, how to read a recipe, a glossary of ingredients and a complete explanation of food preparation terms. Learn about fresh herbs--what they look like and how to use them -- plus complete easy-to-read listings of pasta shapes and salad greens. Sections on grilling, entertaining, table setting, and refrigerator and freezer storage guides complete the book, and make new cooks feel confident on all fronts. No longer does anyone have to be afraid of the kitchen. With Betty Crocker know-how and experience, you can cook up a great dinner!