Winter

Pumpkin ravioli is easier to find in the fall through the holidays, when the Halloween mascot is in season and on the minds of cooks. The sauce can also work nicely with any ravioli filling, but the pairing of pumpkin (or another sweet squash) with sage is particularly perfect, especially with the nutmeg and hazelnut flavors. This is truly a seasonal dish; to me, it tastes like autumn—even autumn in Southern California, where I’m from.

I’m really in love with butternut squash these days and I have been finding lots of new ways to use it. Here it brightens up beef stew, which can be a bit dreary looking, turning a tired old standard into something more unexpected and elegant.

I first tasted a risotto similar to this one in South Africa and though at first the idea of adding vanilla to a savory dish sounded a bit odd, I found the flavor combination irresistible. The vanilla adds a lovely aromatic finish but not a lot of sweetness. I consider this the perfect fall dish.

Fennel is best served from fall to spring, when it’s in season, and there are a million different ways to take advantage of its crunchy sweetness. Here, the raw bulbs are sliced and dressed with a nutty pistachio pesto and salty bites of prosciutto. The flavors just pair so well together.

Pomegranates and cranberries are both widely available in the fall, making this the perfect cocktail for any holiday party.

If you are lucky, you own a mandoline (a professional chef’s tool that makes slicing vegetables thin an easy chore) or even an old-fashioned coleslaw slicer. If not, shred the cabbage as thin as you can with a good sharp knife. The amount of salt you use depends on your taste and your cabbage. This makes a great winter salad, by itself or tossed together with salad greens.

If possible, buy only the larger joints of the oxtail, since there is more meat on the bones and less work picking it off. But usually (and almost always in supermarkets) a single tail is cut and packaged together. If you’re ordering oxtail through a butcher, ask him to remove as much of the outer fat as possible, and to cut the oxtail cleanly at the joints. If the tail is cut haphazardly, bone chips can occur, which are annoying and can be very dangerous. It’s always a good idea to pick over the pieces of oxtail before you cook with them, to make sure there are no fine pieces of bone. In the traditional Roman dish of coda alla vaccinara, the cheeks of the oxen are braised along with the oxtails. Because this is a very rich and savory sauce, I do not use cheese to dress the pasta, but some people do. I’ll leave it up to you. If you decide to dress the pasta with cheese, use grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. The braised oxtails, left on the bone, make an excellent cold-weather main course, served with polenta. If you’re serving the oxtails as a main course, you might want to cut the vegetables larger, so they hold their shape during cooking.

If you’re making salad with the tender, inner leaves of a head of escarole, this is a good place to use the tough outer leaves. In fact, they’re even better for this soup. Just remove any bruised or yellow parts of the leaf and shred the rest. If you like, double the amount of beans in this recipe, fish half of them out of the pot after cooking, and save them for the Arugula and White-Bean Salad on page 60. Spoon off all but enough of the cooking liquid barely to cover the remaining beans before adding the escarole and finishing the soup. Whole dried peperoncino or diavolillo peppers are the type of chili peppers that are used, seeds and all, to make the crushed red pepper that you are familiar with. Toasting the whole peppers along with garlic cloves in olive oil brings out their nuttiness and spice. I like to serve them whole right in the soup, where they can be easily spotted and removed.

Sweet, tart, crunchy, and creamy, this dessert is just about perfect, and low-carb to boot! This is perfect for Sunday brunch, or as a light and refreshing ending to a heavy winter meal. Try it with blood oranges when they’re in season, or your favorite combination of citrus fruits.

I often throw holiday parties with a casual theme. This dish was the centerpiece of a holiday-style Make Your Own Take-out gathering. You will never find anything like this delivered to your door in a brown paper sack, but if you do a little bit of chopping you’ll be famous for many holidays to come. P.S. Don’t wait for a holiday to make it.

I make this dinner every Christmas. I have included it in other books, but I cannot finish any year without it. I have made some small improvements in the recipe over the years, so it’s faster and easier to make than ever. You can eat it all year long as do I. For Italians, after all those fishes on Christmas Eve, this dish, with four different meats in it, is especially nice on Christmas night. This is the greatest gift I can give to myself and those I love: a big bowl of pasta with the works. Have a great year! Serve with tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad (the colors of the season and the Italian flag).

This is one of my favorite winter Alsatian vegetable combinations, and a common winter vegetable dish of French Jews. It is best made a day in advance and left to meld the flavors. Serve as an accompaniment to roast goose, chicken, or duck.

Chef Daniel Rose (see page 68) served the following salad with brandade potato latkes (see page 308) at his Spring Restaurant during Hanukkah. The secret to this colorful winter salad is to keep the fennel very cold. This recipe, and all Daniel Rose’s recipes, may change according to the market and ses humeurs (the chef’s moods).

This is a surprising and appealing melding of squash, coriander, and harissa that I tasted with couscous when I was recently in Paris. It is also served on Rosh Hashanah.

This Tunisian holiday chicken soup that Yael calls consommé nikitouche is filled with little dumplings that have become so popular in France because of the growing Tunisian population. Nikitouches, similar in size to Israeli couscous, are today prepackaged. When presenting this recipe for her blog, Yael wrote, “It is winter; you are feeling feverish. Nothing replaces the nikitouche soup of our grandmothers.” Here it is. Just remember that you must start the recipe two nights ahead.

Here is a soup that is perfect for cold winter days, the ginger in it providing lasting warmth. The ginger also helps if you have a cold and acts as a stabilizer for those who suffer from travel sickness. Apart from all its health-giving properties (which Indians always have in the back of their heads), this is a delicious soup that can be served at any meal.