Autumnal Appetite (Winter squash hummus, Baharat)

I love slipping into autumn for a number of reasons. On the culinary side, Fall brings the warmth of richer, heartier flavors. It's a joy to roast and stew things, again, and the amount of butter and baked goods also spikes, precipitously. With the oncoming onslaught of holidays, it can at times be a bit much to each so much heavy food.  That's why it's important to find autumnal foods that are full on flavor (and fill you up) but be on the lighter side. Julia Child is absolutely right that more butter can solve almost anything, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially if one is predisposed to counting calories. As such, I present to you "winter squash hummus", which makes an appealing snack or appetizer that's pleasingly sentimental in its embrace of fall flavors while pleasantly lighter than most holiday fare.

Snack happy

By the Slice (White pizza with pancetta and arugula)

While I, in a robotic devotion to efficiency, could be quite content to eat the same meal most days, Aaron demands variety. Except with pizza. Aaron, and perhaps most of the free world, will always be happy to have pizza. We once made mostly pizza for dinner for a few months as a "diet," because it was easy to standardize, control portions, and could be spun into infinite variations. One key element was to always pair with a salad, though who doesn't remembering arguing that pizza was a balanced meal in grade school? This particular pizza, white pizza with pancetta and arugula, has both. 

One-stop shop

Curried Away (Massaman Curry)

To Aaron's distress, I absolutely love Thai food. Not that he doesn't, but I tend to take things to extremes. I'll recommend we order Thai takeout multiple times per week, sometimes on consecutive days (Aaron usually says no to that). I simply can't get enough. Thai food utilizes a number of flavors somewhat unique to Southeast Asia: fiery, licorice-y Thai basil, sour tamarind, darkly sweet palm sugar, citrusy notes from lemongrass and kaffir limes, and a somewhat surprising lilt of seafood from savory shrimp paste and salty fish sauce, which end up in almost everything. These ingredients combine to give Thai cooking, like many Asian cuisines, a spicy, sweet-and-sour character that was once prevalent in European cooking throughout the Middle Ages, but fell out of fashion in favor of the simply savory. One of the most familiar dishes to a Western audience will be curry - a dish decidedly lacking a Western analogue. Curries are soup- or stew-like dishes with rich flavors imparted from curry pastes or powders, themselves made from copious amounts of spices. Common throughout South and Southeast Asia, an Indian curry can often be identified by use of more dried spice powders and a thicker, richer texture, whereas Thai curry is often a bit soupier and relies more on fresh, moist seasonings (curry paste).

Nom

Simply Salmon (Baked Salmon, Dill Yogurt Cream)

Simple, classic, foolproof. There are some combinations so basic and endemic across cuisines that writing about them seems almost like cheating. In the pursuit of fresh simplicity, however, I think an old standby is in order. Salmon and dill were made for each other. Salmon is an undeniably oily fish; it's buttery and delicate, the perfect base for dill's bright, clean herbaceous flavor to play against.

Herbaceously amazing

Pigging Out (Herb-Crusted Pork Loin)

Pork is a slightly neglected and unappreciated meat in the U.S. Coming in third behind chicken and beef, it can be easy to overlook. Bacon aside, Aaron and I were never huge pork eaters, but when his sister Sarah and her husband Seth started raising and butchering their own hogs, we suddenly had a lot more pork on the menu. The other white meat has a lot to recommend it. It's easy to cook and features a mild, sweet flavor that's more distinctive than chicken and readily lends itself to all sorts of permutations, though they often feature fruit, sugar, and spices to play off the natural sweetness of the meat. To welcome the Spring green leaves, I chose to employ a melange of fresh herbs and a sprinkle of lavender blossoms for extra floral goodness. The end result is a tender, flavorful pork loin perfumed like fresh Spring.

Of course, now it's summer, but you get the idea

Hot Potatoes (Sweet Potato Chipotle Soup)

Lately, I've been obsessing over soups. The perfect answer to blinding snow and biting cold, they make a timely and seasonally appropriate companion. The winter pantry offers no short stock of roots like onions, potatoes, and garlic, and hardy greens like cabbage and kale, but today I extoll the virtues of the humble sweet potato. Naturally bursting with flavor and nutrients, sweet potatoes make a thick, velvety soup with a color sure to brighten up the end of the day. Some of the oldest evidence of human sweet potato consumption dates from Peru 8,000 years ago, spreading to the Caribbean by 2500 BC and Polynesia by 1000 AD. Europeans weren't lucky enough to first taste sweet potatoes until Columbus' famed voyage of 1492. I embraced a general Meso-American theme by including Mayan sweet onion and the smoky spice of chipotles in adobo.

Colorful, flavorful

A Time for Teriyaki (Beef Teriyaki)

As winter plows on and buries us in polar vortices, I'm always on the lookout for fast, easy dinner recipes that can be finished quickly, without having to sacrifice flavor or quality. I've been borrowing heavily from Nigel Slater's excellent recipe book Real Fast Food, and even begun to ponder Rachael Ray's milieux in a new light. The beef teriyaki recipe I share today, however, is purely a creation Aaron and I jiggered together over much practice of laying a speedy weeknight table. A little leeway taken with a package of minute rice turns this into a quick "one pot meal," and leveraging a hot oven cooks all the ingredients at once with minimal hands-on time. The end result is tender and flavorful, with the luminous gloss that gives teriyaki its name. This recipe feeds a family with ease and can be scaled up to feed an army as needed, but the real beauty, aside from the vivid colors, is speed of assembly.

In a jiffy

Taking it Slow (Pork Carnitas)

One of the things people tend not to realize about working in a bakery is that it is hot. Those cheerful, toasty ovens feel like blast furnaces on days when it's already over 90 in the shade. The never-ending quest for cool leads us to all manner of salads, ices, and chilled soups, but there's still something inherently more cheering and satisfying about warm food. The trick, then, is to produce a hot meal without raising the temperature of your kitchen, and for that the slow cooker is a hero once again. Throw in the ingredients and they can gently braise all day as your house remains marvelously cool.

Marvelous

We Secretly Love The Heat (Salsa Fresca)

We're heading into the peak of summer, so what better time to post a classic treat enjoyed in cultures throughout the world: salsa! The Spanish word for sauce, salsa can actually refer to a number of sauces in Hispanic cuisines; however, in the U.S., it typically refers to a spicy tomato-based sauce, often enjoyed as a dip. There are a number of types of these salsas (Wikipedia lists over 15), but the two main categories break down to cooked versus raw. In this case, we're focusing on the raw side, and making our own salsa fresca, or "fresh sauce". And given it's the time of year when those of you with gardens should be seeing ripened tomatoes and peppers, this is a perfect idea for what to do with some of your harvest.

Can you handle the heat?

Thanks for the "no, thank you" (Saffron Chicken Tenders)

As a child, I was a relatively finicky eater, much to the chagrin of my mother (who regularly handed out "no, thank you portions" in an attempt to broaden my palate). As it turns out, it was more a matter of time and maturity, and with age I've come to taste and experience wonderful new flavors and dishes that I'm absolutely certain 8-year-old me would never have dreamed of trying.

Would you say "no" to this?