Fall

If you're lucky enough to have a persimmon tree, you're guaranteed to have plenty of gorgeous persimmons come autumn. Or, if you have a neighbor with one, you're bound to find a bag of persimmons on your doorstep one fall day. The prolific trees are especially striking when the leaves drop and the traffic-stopping bright-orange orbs are still clinging to the bare, gnarled branches, silhouetted against a clear autumn sky. Even if you don't have a tree, or a neighboring one that you can benefit from, you might have seen persimmons at the market. Most likely they were Hachiya persimmons, the most common, elongated-shape variety. It's the one I recommend for this cake. They must be squishy soft before they can be used. If you buy them rock-hard, leave them at room temperature until they feel like water balloons ready to burst. When ready, yank off the stem, slice each persimmon in half, then scoop out the jellylike pulp and purée it in a blender or food processor.

When the cranberries in this buckle bake, they split open just enough to absorb the cake batter while retaining a firm outer shell and a slightly tart bite. Half are folded into the batter and half are distributed on top with the Vanilla Crumb, creating a red-jeweled delight. This recipe is great for a holiday breakfast or brunch.

Be sure to pick up a few extra bottles of hard apple cider to serve along with the stew.

Minestra di porri e castagne Piemonte

This is an incredibly simple recipe with an impressive payoff: Golden roasted chicken is dressed up with beautiful bunches of sweet grapes.

Crunchy sourdough croutons nicely complement the texture of this healthful pureed soup that is made from about a pound of vitaminpacked (and budget-friendly) celery stalks and leaves. The flavor is both savory and incredibly fresh and bright. For an even lighter texture, the whipping cream can be omitted, if you prefer.

Tarte Tatin, the classic French dessert, is made by putting butter and sugar in a shallow baking dish, then topping the mixture with apples and a pastry crust. As the dish bakes, the butter and sugar turn into caramel. The finished dessert is inverted onto a plate, with the caramel sauce on top. In this version, pears stand in for apples and the crust and topping are made separately, then assembled before serving.

This nutty, satisfying puree— enriched with chicken fat for tradition's sake or pareve margarine—makes a nice bed for the roast duck.

Rajas (strips) of crisp corn tortillas and sweet mini bell peppers make a colorful garnish.

Roasting the pork at a low temperature in a spiced salt mixture amps up the flavor of the meat and makes it extra-tender. After cooking the pork, the rack of bones is cut off and used to hold the roast for easy carving.

I met twelve-year-old Frank Liranzo when I was teaching a kids' cooking class at the YMCA's environmental camp in Huguenot, New York. The kids learned how to tap trees to make maple syrup, a process I'd read about but never seen in action. Frank was one of the campers, and he got to experience firsthand the old art of making maple syrup. "You put tubes into the trees so the sap flows out," he says. "When it first comes out of the tree, it tastes like sugary water. Then we went to the sugar shack where we saw the sap boiled down until it tasted like syrup." At the camp, I made this Maple-Glazed Tuna with Pear-Potato Salad for the kids. "I thought it would taste really sugary, but it didn't," Frank told me. "First I tasted the fish, then a hint of mustard, and then an aftertaste of the maple syrup." I love how the syrup adds sweetness and a beautiful caramelized crust to the meaty tuna steaks, while the sweetness of the pears in the accompanying potato salad balances nicely with the glazed tuna.

Editor's note: Serve this salad with Marcus Samuelsson's Maple-Glazed Tuna .

Aim to get your fully thawed turkey into the turkey brine 12 hours before cooking.

What could be more American than candy corn? Try maple pecan popcorn treats, for starters. They're made with three ingredients—maple syrup, pecans, and popcorn—that originated in the New World.

Cooking by color might not be the surest way to devise holiday-appropriate recipes, but who can resist the lure of black linguine on Halloween? Tossing it with pumpkin-hued vegetables lusty with garlic and hot pepper might seem like hobgoblin overkill, except that the flavors work well together. Really well. So much so that you'll be making this pasta combination again and again, long after the jack-o-lanterns have disappeared.

Too often crackers get short shrift as merely vehicles for a slice or smear of cheese. Not here. By incorporating cheese into the dough, along with the tiny crunch of poppy seeds, these crackers become crisp snacks that keep your fingers reaching for another and then another and, well, you know how it goes. In no time, they're history.

You and your guests will be utterly charmed when you see how easily mashed potatoes can be transformed into a gaggle of ghosts. Simply form them into pointy mounds and then personify—no, make that "ghostify"—them with seed "eyes." Don't be surprised if these become a new family must-have for Halloweens to come.

In name alone, a devil's food cake is an obvious choice for a Halloween dessert. This one will far exceed your expectations of deep chocolaty naughtiness hidden under a fluff of espresso-tinged frosting. (If your trick-or-treaters are too young to embrace the slightly adult bitterness the coffee flavor adds, feel free to substitute a couple of teaspoons of good old vanilla extract.) Have some fun with a very tasty spiderweb—you'll want to eat it rather than shriek and brush it off.

Lightly caramelized slices of roasted squash make a tasty and pretty salad, dressed up with toasted almonds, crumbled cheese, and glistening swirls of Reduced Balsamic Vinegar (recipe follows), one of my favorite condiments. Serve this as an antipasto, a first course, or a side dish. With roast meat or poultry, it can be a main course salad too. How about a Thanksgiving leftover salad of roast squash and my roast turkey (page 332) with balsamic reduction and Quince Chutney (page 368)? Any sweet-fleshed winter squash is suitable, but I find the scalloped edges of acorn squash slices look especially nice.