The Kitchen Tourist

Gingerbread Traditions

My family has an annual problem: too many gingerbread houses. Of course it’s a self-created problem, because every year we like to invite friends over for a sleepover party where we stay up playing with candy, eventually collapse into a sugar coma, then wake up and make a nice brunch before everyone heads out the…

Family Favorite: Roasted Red Pepper Lasagna

If I was going to list my family’s top 10 favorite dishes, I think I could confidently say this would make the top five. It’s the most common dish on the menus I found when I reviewed my family’s Italian Birthday Feasts, and that doesn’t even include our non-Italian birthday menus, which still often manage to…

Ceci Polenta

This garbanzo polenta is an easy, healthy dish you can put together ahead of time and broil quickly to have hot to serve with dinner. Corn, of course, was not a native grain in Italy, so this is technically a more authentic recipe anyway. I find the flavor of using chickpea flour more savory and satisfying than corn polenta, though both are delicious.

Indian Pudding

This is an old-fashioned dish that blends Native American and British ingredients and techniques to make something that is light and delicious and complements a traditionally heavy Thanksgiving dinner very nicely.

Slow-Cooker Coconut Chai Oatmeal

A three-ingredient recipe that goes in the crock-pot and can be made overnight or ahead to have enough for a week of breakfasts (for me anyway). Plus it recreates a dish I’ve been craving for a while.

Kid’s Cookbooks and Trunchbull Cake

A recipe for “The most scrumptious cake in the entire world” and a roundup of the kid’s cookbooks and recipes I grew up making. Do you have a favorite childhood cookbook or recipe?

Marci’s Jack O’ Lantern Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Soft and chewy, with big silly smiles these are pretty irresistable cookies. You can make them just as chocolate chip cookies or you can make them as jack o’ lanterns to match the pumpkin flavor or you can do half and half, making faces until you’re bored and speeding through the rest of the batter.

A Taste of Autumn: Sweet Potato Corn Chowdert

This is the perfect fall soup – I love the blend of colors coming with red peppers, sweet potatoes and corn and the smoky aroma from the bacon. I’ve made it twice in the last few weeks, doubling it the second time since there were complaints about the lack of leftovers the first time. The…

Citrus Sukkot Cake

Here’s another cake recipe, this one a nice bright moist lemon cake. I like cakes that don’t require frosting because they’re tasty enough on their own, though this is more like a pound cake anyway.

Guinness Chocolate Cake and Ice Cream

This is the matured version of the Irish Chocolate Cupcakes I’ve made a few times – it’s been adapted from the Barrington Brewery to Bon Appetit to Smitten Kitchen to (via Kim) me. I decided to add the Guinness Ice Cream by Emeril Lagasse as well, since I had the right quantity in the bottle…