Like a lot of people, I make my cocktails in my kitchen – everything’s that I need is there, why haul things out to the dry bar in the living room?

And it’s easy to grab a drink when I’m cooking.

Today I wanted something different, something refreshing, so I called on Tim Wilz, the bartender at Soco in Thornton Park, to see what he could come up with.

He made a delicious Blue Rebel, and he shares the recipe below. Click here to watch the video then give the recipe below a try.

In culinary terms, a Napoleon is a layered dessert. But at Russell’s on Lake Ivanhoe, the new restaurant in the Ivanhoe district north of downtown Orlando, chef/partner Emmanuel Clement serves a savory Napoleon with layers of roasted red and golden beets and creamy burrata cheese.

It’s an impressive presentation, and it tastes as good as it looks.

It’s also easy to do, even with making the vinaigrette from scratch.

In this episode of Scott’s Kitchen, Clement shows Scott how it’s done. Watch the video, grab yourself some beets, burrata and pine nuts and give it a go.

Careful when you’re toasting the pine nuts – mine got a little too dark, but it all tasted great anyway.

I’ve mentioned before that my main knife is the Wüsthof 8-inch chef’s knife, which I really like. It isn’t cheap but it lasts forever.

But even well-made expensive knives have to be sharpened now and then. A professional knife sharpener is great, but it isn’t always convenient to take your knives to a sharpener’s shop, and besides, they need to be sharpened more often than that.

I could never get the hang of using a sharpening stone because you have to keep the knife at a precise angle. Not easy to do.

But I’ve found a home knife sharpener that I really love and is easy to use. I’m never more than a few minutes from turning a dull knife to a sharp knife.

It’s the Trizor 15 from Chef’sChoice. And by the way, I had another Chef’s Choice sharpener years ago that didn’t work very well. This one, though, is terrific. Watch the video to see it in action.

In this episode of Scott’s Kitchen, executive chef Greg Richie of Soco Thornton Park shows Scott how to make roasted pumpkin soup with chicken and andouille sausage, served in a pumpkin shell.

Watch the video then check out the recipe below.

Note from Scott: Be sure to let the wine simmer until the vegetables are nearly dry before adding the stock and pumpkin flesh. Add more pumpkin and simmer to reduce if you think the broth is a little too thin. Richie says you can add a touch of cream if you like.

Many years ago, I took cooking classes at what was then known as Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School in Manhattan (now the Institute of Culinary Education). I learned a lot of simple techniques to make cooking easy, and this is one I use all the time, so I wanted to share it with you in this video.

When you’re chopping loose herbs, such as parsley, you could just lay it out on your cutting board and attack it.

But here’s a better way:

I have a renewed respect for the pizzaiolas of the world.

Chef Justin Plank of Terralina Crafted Italian restaurant at Disney Springs joined me, virtually, in my kitchen to walk me through making a pizza.

It did not go well.

I explain all that in the video, but there is nothing wrong with Plank’s recipe, just the way I executed it. And executed is an apt word.

Watch the video then check out the recipe. Be sure you use high-gluten flour and not gluten flour. Other tips in the video.

When I was the food editor for the Phoenix New Times, I wrote an article that included a recipe for muffins. I got the recipe from a nutritionist who called them Mighty Bran Muffins (she also referred to them as broom muffins because they had so much bran that they would sweep you clean, so to speak).

I forget what the article was about but I’ve kept this recipe for 33 years and use it often.

Although I don’t mention it in the video, be sure to use golden raisins – they really do make a difference.

I like to prepare the dry and wet ingredients in the evening, cover them and put the wet mixture in the refrigerator overnight, then mix the two together and bake them in the morning. It’s nice to have hot muffins for breakfast.

It’s annoying when you’re trying to chop something and your cutting board keeps sliding around. Watch the quick video for a simple fix.

Have you ever thought you’d like to try cooking an Indian dish but the thought of sourcing all the ingredients stopped you? The recipe may call for spices that you don’t normally keep in your cupboard – turmeric, cumin seeds, coriander – and if you don’t cook Indian dishes a lot, those spices may get old and you end up throwing them out, wasting the spices and the money you paid for them.

That’s why I’m excited about this edition of Scott’s Kitchen. Tabla, the fine Indian restaurant in Orlando and Winter Park, is offering a meal kit with most of the ingredients you need to make its chicken curry, including the chicken, as well as basmati rice pulao to go with it. It’s all portioned out (you’ll still need to measure as you cook) so there’s no waste.

Each Curry Chicken with Rice Pulao meal kit serves three to four people and costs just $30.

Even better, 100 percent will go to Cooking for Cause, a charity founded by Shivi and Sahil Jain, whose parents own Tabla. The Jains have chosen Ekal Vidyalaya, an organization that brings education to rural India, to receive the proceeds from the sale of the meal kits.

And Tabla’s chef Sajan Prem will guide you through the process of cooking both dishes in the video below.

Meal kits must be ordered in advance through Tabla’s Resy page.

The recipes are below. Look them over, watch the video, then order your meal kit from Tabla and cook yourself something delicious knowing you’re also Cooking for Cause.

In this episode, chef and cookbook author Hari Pulapaka shows me how to make bhindi masala, a popular okra dish from India.

It’s a recipe from Pulapaka’s upcoming book, Dreaming In Spice, a Sinfully Vegetarian Odyssey.

Many of the ingredients may be found in your favorite grocery store, but you may need to go to an Indian specialty store, such as Spice House in Longwood, for the curry leaves. (They keep the curry leaves behind the checkout counter, for some reason.)

Watch the video then read Pulapaka’s recipe below. And make the naan, too, it really adds to the enjoyment.

Here’s the excerpt from Pulapaka’s book: