Pecan

Use a store-bought roasted chicken to save time. To take this salad on a picnic, pack it in an airtight container and keep it fresh in a cooler.

We used several varieties of beets, including Golden Globe and Chioggia, for a colorful salad, but you may use any variety you like.

This fast-to-fix faux-fried entrée with its crunchy, herby crust is the perfect foundation to complement one of our sauces or salsas, such as Barbecue Sauce (page 265) or Roasted Tomato Chipotle Salsa (page 269). Pair this dish with Green Beans and Corn (page 236) or Greens with Tomatoes and Parmesan (page 245) to add color to the plate.

Be sure to use regular-size carrots, not baby carrots, for the proper sweetness and moisture in this delicate, lighter substitute for mashed sweet potatoes.

Sour cream replaces mayonnaise as the base for the tartar sauce here. Serve this fish with corn on the cob and chilled slices of melon on the side.

(Can be prepared ahead of time.)

Homemade brownies are a good reminder that easy baking doesn’t always involve a packaged mix or an electric mixer. These brownies require only a saucepan for melting the butter and chocolate. Once that’s taken care of, stir in the rest of the ingredients and the batter is ready. That’s it. The texture of these falls in the middle between the dense fudgy style and taller, cakier brownies. Min always takes her mother’s advice and sprinkles the nuts on top so they’ll toast in the oven. A big pan of brownies can do anything. Pass a platter after a casual barbecue blow-out or dress them up with any or all three of the cheater smoked dessert sauces (pages 197 to 199) and ice cream.

The key to enjoying dense winter squash more often is a time-saving ten or so minutes in the microwave. By cooking them first, you avoid the anxiety and danger of hacking a sturdy squash or your finger in half. Or, look for packages of ready-to-cook precut and peeled squash in the supermarket. After cooking, the other trick is to scoop the flesh into a casserole where it’s easy to char evenly under the broiler in a couple minutes. This way no one has to negotiate an unwieldy squash boat, and everyone gets as much or as little as they want. Make the casserole ahead and you’ll be glad come dinnertime. The trio of squash sauces shows how well squash gets along with a full range of sweet to savory flavors. One sauce is traditional—buttery and sweet with pecans. The second is a sweet-savory exotic beauty blending spicy chutney, dried cranberries, and almonds. The third, a savory tomato, mysteriously brings out the sweetness of the squash without overpowering it. Serve all three sauces with any squash combo and watch everyone duke it out for a favorite.

Any appetizer spread, even this one of conventional cheese ball ingredients smashed into a spread, becomes much more glamorous when paired with all things pale green—celery sticks, thin green apple wedges, or Belgian endive. Don’t underestimate the allure of a generous pile of green grapes, either.

Sometimes, in the middle of fall, usually just before Thanksgiving, it hits me: A desperate craving for pumpkin pie. One year, after a few days of my whining and hinting, pastry chef Roxana Jullapat came up with this delicious cake to shut me up. As comforting as that classic American pie but even better, Roxana’s pumpkin cake was super moist and infused with the spicy flavors of fall. And, knowing my love of all things crunchy, nutty, and salty, Roxana topped the cake with a generous layer of crispy pecan streusel. Though pumpkins have an esteemed place in our childhood memories, they actually aren’t very good to cook with—they’re often watery and usually lacking in flavor and sweetness—so we make our “pumpkin” cake with Kabocha or butternut squash instead. “Winter squash cake” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

This warm salad came about, like many of my dishes, as a way to show off one of my favorite ingredients—in this case, the lovely Kabocha squash. I roast the wedges of squash until they’re practically caramelized and then weave them into a salad of dandelion greens with a tart sherry vinaigrette. Tucked into the greens and squash you’ll find bacon lardons. Not to be confused with bacon bits, lardons are oversized rectangles of chewy, slightly crisped bacon, meaty and satisfying to bite into. Also hiding in the mix are salty toasted pecans and elegant shards of Roncal, an earthy sheep’s milk cheese from Spain.