Rosemary

Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 20 min

Two favorite fall fruits turn up in an interesting, herb-scented side dish.

These also pair nicely with beef or lamb.

Serve with: Toast (especially when cheddar omelets are on the menu), potato pancakes, waffles, pancakes, or French toast. Combine with: Crusty bread and blue cheese. Use as: A dessert topping for pound cake (serve with vanilla ice cream).

Pancetta, the salty Italian bacon, forms a crust around the chicken. Offer a bottle of Pinot Grigio, a crisp Italian white wine, with this entrée. For dessert, try spumoni and sugar cookies.

A cracked peppercorn and rosemary coating accents this luscious cut of meat, which is topped with sautéed wild mushrooms and served with onion rings. Start the meal with a salad of mixed greens and tomatoes with your favorite blue cheese dressing. A rich chocolate cake is the perfect dessert.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

(Mele Cotogne in Giulebbe) Poached quinces in a clove-and-cinnamon-scented syrup are served at Rosh Hashanah and to break the fast at Yom Kippur. In this version, the quinces are left unpeeled for the preliminary cooking in water, and then peeled and cooked in syrup. In La cucina livornese, Pia Bedarida recommends peeling the quinces, letting them rest to take on a reddish brown color as they oxidize, and then cooking them in syrup. Other cooks peel the quinces and cook them immediately, but suggest saving the peels and seeds and cooking them along with the sliced quinces. Still another recipe uses wine instead of water.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The extra marinade keeps up to three weeks in the refrigerator and is delicious used with chicken, lamb or beef, too.