Squash

Eating fresh produce in a variety of colors is key to good health, and this autumn medley of carrots, butternut squash, rutabaga, parsnips, and shallots provides an abundance of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.

Firm, buttery-tasting edamame stand in for lima beans in this all-American side dish. If you can’t find fresh edamame, frozen work just as well.

Rather than relying on store-bought curry paste, this dish uses a quick homemade version that’s incomparably fresh and vibrantly flavored. For a thicker curry, mash some of the squash with the back of a wooden spoon.

Think of this recipe as a basic formula for making rice bowls, and then vary the beans (use canned ones to save time), squash, and greens, as desired.

Wheat berries, the whole unprocessed wheat kernels, are most often ground to make whole-wheat flour. Like other grains, these kernels can also be cooked—as in this recipe—until they are tender yet pleasantly chewy. An excellent accompaniment to meat or fish, this dish is also substantial enough to serve as a meatless main course.

This nutrient-dense salad capitalizes on fall and winter’s best produce, while delivering ample health benefits. The squash and cranberry beans (also called borlotti or Roman beans) provide fiber, which helps lower cholesterol; the kale prompts the liver to release enzymes that may fight cancer. Other types of winter squash, such as butternut or acorn, would also work in this recipe, as would cannellini or navy beans.

Roasted garlic serves as the base of the salad dressing. The allium not only adds depth of flavor but can also help lower cholesterol. Pumpkin is rich in potassium, fiber, and vitamin C.

Calabacitas (Spanish for “little squashes”) is a traditional side dish that I’ve converted into a delicious taco filling that celebrates summer bounty. All squash are native to the New World and, with corn, beans, and chiles, one of the “four magic plants” (as I call them) of the Southwest. Squash and corn not only like to grow together in the garden, they have a natural ecology that helps fix the nitrogen content of the soil, and they taste wonderful when cooked together. You can add fresh or frozen baby lima beans or fresh or dried green beans here for added color and nutrition. Be sure to cook the vegetables very slowly to capture all their natural sweetness and complexity.

These tacos are a great way to enjoy the harvest from your late summer garden. The delicate orange-and-yellow flowers of squash plants are a prized treat through out Mexico and the southwestern United States. Squash blossoms are an ideal partner to the green chiles grown in Hatch, New Mexico, widely available in the Southwest during late summer and early fall (see Sources, page 167). If you can’t find New Mexico green chiles, you can use Anaheims, their slightly less robust California counterpart, found in produce markets throughout the country. I like to serve these tacos with a cold, citrusy beverage—margaritas for the adults and limeade for the kids. The tartness of the limes beautifully complements the warm, buttery cheese that oozes out of the taco with each bite.

When prepared properly, Japanese-style deep-fried vegetables are light and crisp and not at all greasy. Baking powder in the batter helps it to puff up in the hot oil, while cornstarch keeps it from being too dense (as it can be when made with all flour). Ice-cold batter is the secret to successful tempura, so be sure to use ice water (drained of ice). You can use any type of vegetable in this recipe, as long as you slice the vegetables thinly and uniformly so they cook evenly. Root vegetables should be sliced a bit thinner since they take longer to cook.

This sauté makes good use of an abundance of summer vegetables, the small amount of cream adding a touch of richness without overwhelming the fresh flavor of the produce. A chopped ripe, small tomato would be a colorful addition.

A tian is a Provençal creation named for the traditional earthenware baking dish. Be sure to drizzle generously with oil to impart flavor and keep the vegetables from drying out (remember, there’s no other liquid in a tian); you can spoon off excess oil after cooking.

Winter squash makes a very beautiful, fine-textured puree, and there is no need to strain it to finish.

The squash filling in the recipe can be replaced with virtually any precooked vegetables you like. You can also omit the goat cheese and sprinkle on more grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Asiago, or use Gruyère cheese instead.

To intensify the flavor of the squash, you can roast it before simmering in the soup: Halve squash lengthwise and scoop out seeds, then season squash halves with salt and pepper; place cut sides down on a lightly oiled baking sheet and roast in a 400°F oven until tender when pierced with a knife, about 30 minutes. Scoop the squash from the skins and discard skins, then proceed with the recipe, simmering in stock for 8 to 10 minutes, to let flavors meld.

The onion can be substituted with one leek or two large shallots (this is true for the variations, too) and the spinach with other leafy greens, such as chard, kale, watercress, or sorrel. For a soup with brighter color, the leafy greens are added in the last five minutes of cooking, just so they are given a chance to wilt.

Vegetable stock is an essential ingredient in many vegetarian soups, but it also provides incomparable flavor to many well-loved vegetable (but not necessarily meat-free) soups such as this one. Minestrone has become so familiar in the American kitchen that it might be easy to forget its Italian origins. But the name—minestre is the word for soup, while the suffix (-one) indicates bigness—hints at its universal appeal as a simple pantry-based soup that is also hearty and substantial. The foundation of flavor, called a soffritto, is a common element in soup-making: a trio of celery, carrots, and onion is sautéed first, then stock and more vegetables are added and slowly simmered to coax out their flavors. Beans are what distinguish minestrone from other vegetable soups; the type varies by region, as does the addition (if any) of pasta or rice (this version has neither). The beans are also what give the soup such heft, making it a good option for a meatless one-pot dish (if you leave out the prosciutto) that can stand as the centerpiece of any casual dinner. The beans need to soak overnight in the refrigerator, so plan accordingly. Then they need to boil for at least a half hour, so use that time to prepare the rest of the ingredients for the soffritto and soup.

Ribollita is a classic Tuscan soup traditionally made with leftover minestrone thickened with chunks of stale bread. This version is something quite different, and it’s based entirely on the one they serve at Ristorante Da Delfina, a wonderful ristorante in a tiny village nestled in the hills just outside Florence. It was described to me as a fried soup, so the first time I ate it, I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they’d turned the soup into something wholly unsouplike that I could eat with a knife and fork. The way we make it, after cooking off the liquid, we thicken the soup with bread, we chill it, and then shape it into patties that we pan-fry in olive oil. We serve it as an antipasto but it could be a side dish or, served with a green salad, a light meal. I often recommend it to vegetarians, and to make it vegan, just omit the Parmigiano rind. One of our inveterate recipe testers, Tracey Harada, tested this recipe about eight times to get the flavors perfect. Cavolo nero, a variety of kale, is one of the defining ingredients of any ribollita. You can find it at specialty food stores and health-food stores, but if you can’t find it, use another variety of kale.

Little Gem lettuce, a smaller, sweeter, very crunchy variety of romaine, appeared recently in Los Angeles the way burrata did: one day nobody had heard of it and now it’s everywhere. Also like burrata, I love it so much that I have found multiple uses for it in my restaurants. The first time I saw Little Gem lettuce was at the Atelier of Joël Robuchon in Paris seven or eight years ago, when I took my daughter Vanessa there for her birthday. A large percentage of Robuchon’s perfectly simple, perfectly executed dishes came with a dressed quarter of this tiny oblong-shaped lettuce with a beautiful, pale green color; I fell in love with Little Gem at first bite.

When you’ve worked with food as long as I have, and have come up with as many desserts as I have, you get to a certain point where many of the dishes you construct are compilations of things you’ve done previously. When we opened Mozza, I had done a cream-filled date tart that I really loved, so I urged Dahlia to rearrange some of its components, and to her credit she came up with this sophisticated rendition of pumpkin pie. We serve it with walnut cookies that are a twist on a Greek walnut cookie that I included in a previous book. Pumpkin purée is one of the few canned items that I endorse, the reason being that it is totally pure—there are no weird ingredients in it, just pumpkin. Also, from my experience, roasting a pumpkin and puréeing it myself doesn’t yield more delicious results than canned. You will need an 11-inch flan ring (a straight-sided bottomless tart ring) to make this.