Dry-brine your way to Thanksgiving happiness: Some salt, a bird and a little time is all you need

By Leslie Brenner

It’s easy. It’s not messy or cumbersome. Besides the bird, only salt is required. Once it’s in the oven, no need to baste. It produces the most perfect, succulent meat and gorgeous, crisp, brown skin. So unless you are one of those brave folks who likes to fry their turkey, why wouldn’t you dry-brine the big bird?

The method — which basically involves rubbing salt all over the turkey and letting it sit for three days — lets time and the salt do all the work for you. It’s a lot less messy and cumbersome than wet-brining, and doesn’t require finding a vessel large enough to submerge a turkey, nor finding a place in the fridge large enough to store that. (A turkey sealed airlessly in a zipper bag takes a lot less space.)

The one important point we are stressing this year is weighing your bird. Last year, we purchased a turkey that was two pounds lighter than labeled. If we hadn’t been paying attention, that could easily have led to an overcooked bird and not enough food — not to mention not getting what we paid for.

When I was growing up, my mom always had — handwritten and taped to the fridge — a turkey roasting timetable, for easy game-day reference. Following the link to the recipes is a timetable for your own easy reference.

The main takeaway: You’ll need to salt the turkey Monday morning, so get your hands on it right way.

RECIPE: Roasted Turkey (Dry-Brined)

RECIPE: Dry-Brined Roast Turkey with Really Good (Cognac!) Sauce

Dry-Brined Turkey Timetable

The weekend before Thanksgiving

• Clean out the fridge to make space for the coming week of cooking. It’s a good thing to do pre-holidays in any case.

• Purchase your bird, so you’ll have it ready to salt on Monday morning. Be sure to weigh it once you’re home.

Monday

• If your turkey weighs more than 8 pounds (which most turkeys do), salt it this morning.

Tuesday

• If your turkey weighs 8 pounds of less, salt it this morning.

• If you salted yesterday, turn the bird over.

Wednesday

• Turn the bird over.

Thursday

• Morning: About 6 hours before you plan to roast, remove the turkey from the zipper bag and place it breast-up on a platter or sheet pan in the fridge to air-dry. Blot with a paper towel, if the bird has any visible moisture on the skin (it probably won’t).

• One to 1 1/2 hours before you want to roast, remove the turkey from the fridge and let it starting coming to room temperature.

• 15 minutes before roasting (or however long it takes your oven to heat), heat the oven to 425 F / 218 C. If you’re going to tie the turkey’s legs together, do that now.

• Turkey in — breast-side down on a rack in a roasting pan. The total roasting time for a 12-pound bird will probably be about 2 hours 45 minutes, but could be a lot faster, depending on your oven.

• 30 minutes after it’s in: Remove the pan and use oven mitts to turn the turkey breast-side up. Reduce the oven heat to 325 F / 163 C.

• 1 1/2 hours after flipping: Use an inatant-read thermometer to test the temperature at the thickest part of the thigh meat. If it’s getting close to 165 F / 74 C, you’ll want to check doneness frequently from this point on. (Note: If your bird is smaller than 12 pounds, start checking about 1 hour after flipping.)

• 45 minutes after first temperature check: Your 12-pound should be done, or close to it — pull it out, or keep checking every few minutes. (An 8-pound bird will done much more quickly.) Place on a carving board in a warm place (tented loosely with foil, if you like) to rest.

• 30 minutes after it comes out of the oven, carve and serve!

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It's a semolina granule, it's a dreamy stew, it's a Mahgreb celebration: couscous!

By Leslie Brenner

To lots of people, couscous is something you buy in a box, add to a pan of boiling water, stir, let sit 5 minutes then fluff with fork. Maybe they’ll zhuzzh it up a bit and call it a side dish.

But couscous can be so much more — as it is in its birthplace, the Maghreb subregion of North Africa.

In countries like Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, couscous is both “grains” of rolled semolina like the ones that come in that box, and a savory meat-and-vegetable stew that’s spooned on top of the grains.

More accurately, those grains are granules. Made from crushed durum wheat (semolina), they are related to pasta, but they’re not exactly pasta. Traditionally they’re made by mixing the durum with water, and rubbing the mixture between your palms into granules. The granules are put through a sieve, and anything small enough to go through has to be rubbed again. It’s very labor-intensive. The granules are then steamed, then dried in the sun.

That’s just the beginning: To serve couscous, it has to be cooked — which involves steaming it several times (traditionally in a dedicated couscous steamer, known as a couscoussier), and spreading it out and rubbing it to separate the granules in-between steamings. After the last steaming, it’s super light and fluffy: the couscous ideal. (Properly prepared couscous is never clumpy or gummy.)

To say couscous is culturally important in the Maghreb is an understatement. “Couscous is considered the most important traditional dish among the Maghreb people,” wrote Oumelkheir Soulimani in a 2020 article in the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development.

The food historian Charles Perry (my former colleague at the Los Angeles Times), wrote about couscous for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in 1989. His paper, “Couscous and its Cousins,” points out that in Morocco and Algeria, “the local word for it is sometimes identical to the word for ‘food’ in general.” He concludes that it was the Berbers of northern Algeria and Morocco who first created couscous, sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries.

So the tradition is very old.

(Of course there’s also the pearl couscous that’s popular throughout the Levant — in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Syria. Those much-larger granules are produced in a similar way, but the aesthetic is very different. That’s another story.)

How is what you buy in the box different than scratch-made semolina rolled between the palms? Soulimani explains that in detail — basically, it’s similar to the artisanal product up to the point where it’s dried.

When you follow the simple instructions on the box, you’re skipping the whole steaming routine that traditionally follows. The couscous tastes fine, but it’s much heavier than the ideal; a box of couscous steamed three times makes twice the volume of one made according to package instructions. And it sits heavy in your belly. That’s why until recently, if I wanted to do couscous right, I’d set up a steamer (I don’t own a couscoussier — pronounced coose-coose-ee-YAY) and spend a couple hours preparing the granules. No, you don’t have to do that to make a great couscous; more on that presently.

Either way, you’re using industrial couscous from the box (or bag, or whatever) — unless, of course, you happen to be in possession of some hand-rolled, sun-dried couscous.

The topper: a festive stew

The stews that go on top are wide-ranging: They can involve lamb, chicken, fish or vegetables, or a combination. Often there’s a sweet element — raisins or caramelized onions, pumpkin or sweet potato; sometimes chicken is brushed with honey. There’s usually cinnamon and saffron, and harissa — which may also be served on the side. Traditionally, fresh country butter (smen or oudi) may be included.

READ: How to make your own Tunisian-style harissa — and why you’ll be thrilled you did.

Since I was a wee twenty-something, I’ve been making a festive rendition inspired by a traditional Moroccan dish: couscous with seven vegetables, in the style of Fes. The seven vegetables are a Berber tradition; they include zucchini, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage and pumpkin. The Fes-style couscous also includes chickpeas, raisins and onions, along with chicken and lamb, cilantro, cinnamon, saffron, harissa. The grains get tossed in a lot of butter.

My couscous includes all of the above except for raisins, cabbage and sweet potato; instead of pumpkin, I use delicata squash because it’s easier and (to me) more delicious. I skip the butter on the couscous — I find it’s rich enough without it, as the broth is rich.

Why do I skip some of the vegetables? Only because I first learned to make the dish from a cookbook in the Time-Life “The Good Cook” series. A method more than a recipe (as was the habit in those excellent books), it gave a basic outline — which worked great. Over the years, I’ve evolved it a bit.

Putting it all together

The basic idea is make a broth with cut-up lamb and chicken; chickpeas are included from the start if you’re using dried ones, or toward the end of you’re using canned (either is fine). The broth is flavored with harissa, cinnamon, cilantro, tomato and diced carrots and onion; big chunks of carrot and turnip are added later, followed by zucchini and roasted red pepper strips. Once everything is tender and delicious (what a gorgeous aroma!) and your fluffy couscous is ready, you put the granules on a platter and lay the meats, chickpeas and veg on top, along with roasted delicata squash rounds. Moisten it all with a little broth, and bring it to the table, along with a sauceboat of broth and a dish of harissa.

Recently, a brilliant solution surfaced for the age-old couscous granule quandary of whether to spend hours steaming and rubbing, or take the 5-minute box-instructions shortcut. In her recent cookbook Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean, the renowned author devised a quick-and-easy method that’s a hundred times better than the box-instructions. (Basically, pour on boiling water, stir, wait five minutes, stir again, wait five minute, drizzle on a little olive oil, then rub the grains between your hands to separate the granules and coat with oil. Cover with foil and bake 10 or 15 minutes. Fantastic!)

One day (maybe soon!) I’ll make a proper couscous with seven vegetables in the manner of Fes. And I did get my hands on hand-rolled, sun-dried couscous from Tunisia; Zingerman’s sells it. I, however, have not yet been able to get satisfactory results cooking it according to package directions or using Roden’s method. I’m going to continue working with the product, and if I succeed, that’ll be another story, too.

For now, I invite you to enjoy a couscous that’s always been a favorite among my friends and family — using the familiar couscous in a box and incorporating Roden’s clever hack. Want to make it super-special? Take the time to make homemade harissa. But even if you use harissa from a tube, I think you’ll love this.

RECIPE: Chicken and Lamb Couscous

RECIPE: Harissa

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Greatest vegetable rehabilitation ever: Brussels sprouts' 23-year rise to culinary power

By Leslie Brenner

[Updated Dec. 22, 2022]

“Brussels sprouts are never going to win any popularity contests.”

That was the dire prediction, printed in The Los Angeles Times in 1999, of its then-Food Editor, Russ Parsons. If you happen to be a Gen Zer, it may shock you to learn that Brussels sprouts were not always the most glamorous members of the vegetable kingdom. Parsons continued:

“They’re the weak member of the vegetable pack, the one everyone likes to pick on. Brussels sprouts are weird-looking, like miniature cabbages. Maybe that’s why they’re usually shoved away in some dark corner of the produce market. Unlike broccoli, which is also weird-looking but seems to be in your face every time you turn around, they’ll never gain acceptance merely through familiarity.”

Two decades later, Brussels sprouts — those ping-pong-ball-sized upstarts of the Brassica oleracea family — are the darlings of, well, just about every omnivore in America. They’re so popular and menu-ubiquitous that no one under a certain age would probably even wonder whether they were ever not a thing.

What’s the explanation for the once lowly vegetable’s meteoric rise?

Most brassica-watchers would point to David Chang, the chef who founded the Momofuku empire that began in New York City in 2004 with the opening of the first Momofuku Noodle Bar. On its menu were Brussels sprouts that Chang pan-roasted with bacon then tossed with puréed kimchi. “Every single table ordered them,” he told GQ magazine in 2009. “It was ridiculous.”

“Cook the shit out of them; just don’t turn them to charcoal.”

He also told the magazine the secret to making them not just palatable, but crave-able: “Cook the shit out of them; just don’t turn them to charcoal.”

Brussels sprouts also made a splash, in a different form, a few years later at his second place, Momofuku Saam Bar. There they were fried and tossed with pickled Thai and Korean chiles, fish sauce, garlic and mint, and topped with fried Rice Krispies. Recipes for both were included in Chang and Peter Meehan’s Momofuku: A Cookbook, published in 2009.

Three years later, Brussels sprouts’ rise to culinary glory was achieved; in fact, it looked like a revolution. “Brussels sprouts’ transformation from maligned cafeteria gross-out fare to foodie luminary is complete,” is the way a Slate article by L.V. Anderson put it in 2012. “Trendy New York restaurants gussy them up with pig fat and sell them by the tiny $8 plateful; David Chang’s Brussels sprouts at New York’s Momofuku were so popular he had to take them off the menu for his cooks’ well-being.”

I remember the moment well: I had moved from Los Angeles, where we’d been enjoying Brussels sprouts for years, to Dallas, where they were just then hitting every restaurant in town — usually roasted with a dose of sugar and a good deal of bacon.

Though Chang certainly did more than anyone to popularize the B-sprout, by no means was he the first to fall in love with them.

From Brussels and Burgundy to Birds Eye and bistros: a quickie B-sprout history

According to the late British cookbook author and food historian Jane Grigson, who wrote more than anything else I could turn up about the history of Brussels sprouts, the vegetable’s past is somewhat mysterious. “It seems they were being grown around Brussels in the Middle Ages; market regulations of 1213 mention them,” she wrote in Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, published in 1978. She continued:

“They were ordered for two wedding feasts of the Burgundian court at Lille in the 15th century . . . . Then silence. They do not seem to have caught on in Burgundy . . . Nor did they appear in French and English gardens until the end of the 18th century.”

Across the pond in America, Thomas Jefferson planted them in his garden at Monticello in 1812.

In the intervening century and a half, not much to report. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s in Southern California, Brussels sprouts made frequent appearances on our dinner table, having been pulled from a Birds Eye box in the freezer and boiled whole. Most people I knew did not enjoy them; I was an outlier, who loved their little tiny-cabbage-ness.

My husband Thierry tells me they were not so reviled and stigmatized when he was a child in France. Perhaps they were treated with more care there. A spin through Julia Child’s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, offers no fewer than eight recipes: braised in butter; braised with chestnuts; browned with cheese; chopped, with cream; creamed; custard mold; and gratinéed with cheese sauce. Volume II, published nine years later, didn’t include a single B-sprout recipe.

They certainly were popular in England. “The great success of Brussels sprouts in this country has been in modern times,” wrote Grigson. “We serve them now with beef, game, poultry, and especially with the Christmas turkey, when they are often embellished with chestnuts. She went on to offer nine ways to cook them.

Could they have been a thing early on at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, which opened in Berkeley, California, in 1971? They make no appearance in the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, published in 1982 (the Washington Post, incidentally, has called it one of the earliest restaurant cookbooks). There is, however, a fabulous recipe in the book that followed eight years later — Chez Panisse Cooking. In fact it’s the recipe that made me fall hard for the vegetable: Brussels Sprouts Leaves Cooked with Bacon and Mirepoix. Yes, bacon!

Brussels Sprouts Cooked with Bacon and Mirepoix, prepared from a recipe in ‘Chez Panisse Cooking’

That recipe has been a fixture on my Thanksgiving table every year since.

The bacon in the light and elegant Chez Panisse dish comes in the form of pancetta, which gets diced and sweated with the mirepoix (diced carrot, onion and celery) before adding Brussels sprouts leaves which get sort of steamed; a hit of white wine vinegar at the end gives beautiful balance.

A pre-Chang boost

Russ Parsons — the California cook who doubted their popularity potential — was actually an influential Brussels sprouts cheerleader a few years before Momofuku’s Chang started charring them and umamifying the bejeezus out of them. Parsons gave his legions of L.A. readers a full chemical explanation for why the hapless veg fell into such disrepute: People overcooked them, producing hydrogen sulfide — a sulfurous stink, and they turned a sickly color thanks to a transformation of their chlorophyll. “To get around it,” he suggested, “try treating Brussels sprouts with the respect they deserve. It takes a little more care in preparation and a little more attention to detail, but the payoff will be amazing. . . . "

Following instructions on how to prep and steam or blanch them, he added:

“What you do with them after that is up to you, of course. They’re delicious simply dressed with olive oil and a little chopped garlic. But they also are assertive enough to hold their own in the company of more emphatic flavors. I really like to pair Brussels sprouts with smoky things like bacon. And when you’re using bacon, it’s usually a good idea to add something sharp, like vinegar, to cut the fat.

Look at it as making a he-man out of a scorned vegetable. Call it the Brussels sprout make-over.”

Bacon and acid: That’s the Momofuku B-sprout blueprint right there. The fact that Chang pushed everything so far — the char, the bacon, the exuberant flavors of chiles and fish sauce — made his two dishes prime for borrowing by chefs all around the country. And there you have it: the cementing of Brussels Sprouts primacy.

Ottolenghi: a bit late to the sprout

Surprisingly, London’s superstar vegetable-loving chef and world-dominating cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi was somewhat late to the Brussels sprout game, which is odd considering the brassica’s longtime popularity in Britain. There’s not a single B-sprout recipe in Ottolenghi’s first, second or third books (published in 2008, 2010 and 2012). Finally, in Plenty More (2014), he offers instructions for Brussels Sprouts Risotto; Brussels Sprouts with Caramelized Garlic and Lemon Peel; and Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pomelo and Star Anise.

I went wild for the Brussels Sprouts with Browned Butter and Black Garlic in his 2018 book Ottolenghi Simple, largely thanks to the black garlic’s serious umami and the creamy earthiness of tahini, all balanced by zingy lemon and herbs. So have our readers: Our adaptation was Cooks Without Borders’ fourth-most clicked on recipe in the last year.

Insalata di Cavotelli (Brussels sprouts salad) prepared from a recipe in the new cookbook from Via Carota

Now trending: B-sprouts salads

This season, Brussels sprouts are trending raw: They’re featured in two of this fall’s most exciting new cookbooks. The first, shown above, is from Via Carota — the new volume from Jody Williams and Rita Sodi’s beloved New York City restaurant, which is Cooks Without Borders first-ever Cookbook of the Year. Tossed with Via Carota’s signature dressing, plus julienned apple, pomegranate seeds and crumbly aged cheese, it’s spectacular.

The second is from Tanya Holland’s California Soul, in which the star of “Tanya’s Kitchen Table” on the Oprah Winfrey Network presents a recipe for Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing. (I know, right?!) It’s one of our Best New Cookbooks of 2022.

And finally, here is a super-easy roasted number studded with pancetta. No thin-slicing or leaf removal necessary!

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Easy, fabulous and just a little boozy: Say 'bonjour' to Apple Calvados Cake

By Leslie Brenner

If you’ve got a few apples, a springform pan and a splash of brown liquor, have we got a cake for you.

Easygoing and pretty much foolproof, this spirited apple cake is majestic enough to impress celebrants around a dinner table, casual enough to nibble with a cup of coffee on a rainy afternoon, and laid-back-festive enough to feature at brunch.

One very much like it first grabbed my attention when Dorie Greenspan published her wonderful book Around My French Table more than a decade ago. In it, I found a dessert called Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake, which Greenspan described as “more apple than cake.” Ah, oui!

Over the years, I’ve played with it — first swapping out half of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour, and then getting rid of both and using spelt flour instead, for maximum ancient-grain goodness. Then I switched Greenspan’s dark rum for Calvados — France’s famous apple brandy. Wowie kazowie! That double-apple thing is spectacular. Apple jack works just as well.

Don’t have apple brandy? And kind of brandy — Cognac, Armagnac, Spanish Brandy de Jerez, whatever you’ve got will be great. Or use whiskey, such as bourbon or rye.

It’s all good. So is the apple situation: Grab four apples, whatever kind you happen to have, including mix-and-match. Cut them into big chunks, and fold them into a quickly whisked batter that doesn’t even require you to plug in a mixer.

Baked up, the apples melt into softness, gently cloaked in cake. It’s so nice that all through fall and into winter, I try always to have apples on hand in case the mood strikes. Thank you, Dorie — and Marie-Hélène, whoever you are.

RECIPE: Apple Calvados Cake

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Sweet potatoes are here! Don't wait till Thanksgiving to celebrate one of earth's perfect foods

By Leslie Brenner

There’s nothing like a sweet potato, hot from the oven, simply roasted till it’s super tender and caramelized syrup oozes out of its orangey-purple skin. Slice it open, push the ends together to reveal the gorgeous, meltingly soft flesh, and send in your spoon. What a treat, that custardy bite: It’s luscious and rich, autumnal sweet chased by an earthy, mineral tang.

How many other plant-foods can you think of that are delicious and satisfying enough to be an entire meal with no added ingredients? Beans and lentils could almost be that, but impossible to enjoy them without salt. A perfectly roasted sweet potato needs no such seasoning.

Naturally, sweet potatoes are also spectacular dressed up — as in the gratin with sage-butter and thyme I love to serve for Thanksgiving.

But I’m not waiting till the holiday to indulge in sweet potatoes: This weekend I’ll roast a few of them, dress them up (or not). and swoon. From now till my favorite food holiday, there are all kinds of ways to enjoy them.

Slather with miso butter and layer on sliced scallions and furikake (Japanese seasoning mix), for something transportingly delicious. One of my very favorite autumn dishes, it makes a dreamy (meatless) dinner, either on its own, preceded by a salad or followed by a soup, or some braised lentils, creamy white beans or soupy mayocoba beans.

Miso butter, if you’re not familiar with it, is a brilliant invention: Just combine softened unsalted butter and miso in equal amounts. (White miso is ideal, but any kind will be good.) Slit open the sweet potato, and slather it on. It’s delicious just like that, or you could grind on some black pepper. Or dress it up as in this photo (and recipe).

RECIPE: Miso-Butter Sweet Potatoes

A sparkling autumn salad

Sweet potatoes are also marvelous in a fall salad, playing off another favorite autumn ingredient: pomegranate. The gem-like, tangy juicy seeds commune gorgeously with the creamy richness of the sweet potato; baby kale provides the perfect deep-flavored, earthy base and and toasted pecans add crunch. Again, great with just a soup to precede or follow it. (Roasted black bean!)

RECIPE: Baby Kale Salad with Sweet Potato

Slice and layer in a gratin

When Thanksgiving rolls around, I always make one of two sweet-potato gratins. The first was dreamed up by food writer Regina Schrambling, a frequent collaborator when I was Food Editor at The Los Angeles Times many years ago. Unlike those candied gratins so popular at holiday time, this one is savory — enriched with cream and butter and heightened with lots of fresh thyme.

RECIPE: Regina’s Savory Sweet Potato Gratin

The second savory gratin turns Regina’s version on its side — stacking the slices upright in the baking dish — and adds the classic Italian combination of brown butter and sage. It’s kind of outrageous.

RECIPE: Sweet Potato Gratin with Sage-Butter

Choose your sweet potato

Wondering what type of sweet potato to start with?

For any of these dishes (and any other I might think of), I always choose the garnet variety: Garnet sweet potatoes are exceedingly moist and sweet, not as starchy as some other varieties, and their flesh stays a saturated orange color when cooked. You’ll recognize them by their dark, purply skins. In fact, I love this variety so much I never buy any other.

Can’t commit to one of these iterations? Just go ahead and roast one plain. No recipe necessary — scrub the skin (you’ll definitely want to eat it), poke the tines of a fork in it in seven or eight places to create vents, so it doesn’t steam inside, lay it on a small baking dish or quarter-sheet pan lined with parchment and roast at 400 degrees till it’s very soft and oozing dark syrup. How long depends on the thickness of the sweet potato; a medium-sized one that’s more long and slim than fat and squat might take 45 or 50 minutes; thicker ones can take more than an hour.

Eat it piping hot, with nothing on it. Incredible how good it is, right?

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Rich, luscious and packed with umami, miso-butter sweet potatoes are a spectacular autumn treat

Roasted garnet sweet potatoes, slathered with miso butter and dressed with scallions and furikake

Miso butter is one of those magical ingredients. Creamy and luscious, rich with umami, it puts richness and incredible flavor anywhere you want it, turning the simplest foods into incredible luxuries.

It’s stunningly easy to make: Combine equal amounts of miso with softened unsalted butter. That’s it.

You can use it in a hundred different ways. Plop it on plastic film, roll in a log and chill it (as you would any compound butter), then use slices as needed to melt atop steaks or chops or steamed, braised or roasted vegetables. (Braised kale! Roasted eggplant! Roasted Brussels sprouts!) Stir it into boiled soba noodles or brown rice. Spread it on salmon fillets or chicken breasts before roasting or broiling. 

The most delicious way to use it, as far as we’re concerned, is slathering it on a hot-from-the-oven sweet potato that’s been roasted till creamy-soft, luscious and caramelized. Three ingredients: butter, miso, sweet potato. Infinite autumnal pleasure, essential winter joy. Sure, it’s a bit indulgent, with all that butter, but it’s so good. And it’s a meal in itself. Sometimes I grind black pepper on top.

Last night, I got a little fancier, skipping the black pepper and adding sliced scallions and a sprinkle of furikake — the Japanese condiment of sesame seeds and nori flakes that has become one of my pandemic pantry essentials. A dash of shichimi togarashi (Japanese red pepper flakes in a tiny shaker bottle) added a happy high note. I didn’t realize it while it was happening, but the furikake-togarashi play was inspired by a José Andrés recipe for Miso-Butter Corn.

You don’t really need a recipe for this, but maybe you’d like one. The pleasure’s all mine. And now yours.

RECIPE: Miso-Butter Sweet Potatoes

What to make this weekend: Baked kofta with eggplant and tomato from Sami Tamimi's 'Falastin'

Autumn is my favorite time of year to cook. The kitchen feels cozy (even if it’s still hot outside, as it is here in North Texas), and the ingredients speak to my soul.

It feels like the perfect time — while tomatoes are still happening — to make these baked kofta from Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley’s recent book, Falastin.

Each kofta is a meltingly tender, intensely flavorful package made by stacking ingredients: a slice of roasted eggplant; a kofta patty made from lamb, beef, onion, garlic, tomato, herbs and spices; a slice of tomato, some rustic tomato sauce.

The aroma as they roast is intoxicating.

Garnished with fresh herbs and toasted pine nuts, it’s a dish that’s at once homey and sophisticated, comfortingly familiar yet gorgeously spiced.

Served with rice, couscous, roasted potatoes or a root-vegetable purée, it makes a smashing fall dinner.

If by some miracle every kofta is not gobbled up, they reheat brilliantly.

RECIPE: ‘Falastin’ Baked Kofta

Inspired by Diana Henry, this ridiculously easy autumn fruit-and-almond cake is a show-stopper

This time of year, when late-season plums are offering one last chance, and black Mission figs beckon plumply, I love to throw them together with juicy blackberries and bake them onto an absurdly easy-to-make cake.

The Autumn Fruit and Almond Cake was inspired by a summer fruit and almond cake from the 2016 cookbook Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors by the British author Diana Henry.

Although it bakes for quite a long time (an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes), the actual work involved is minimal. For the fruit topping, slice figs in half, slice two plums, toss with berries and a little sugar. For the cake, dump all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz them. Pour and spread the batter in a parchment-lined springform pan. Arrange the fruit on top. Bake, cool, remove pan ring, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Not overly sweet, it’s a spectacular treat for lovers of fruit desserts. Almonds in the form of marzipan adds a wonderful toothsome texture, and the almondy flavor marries beautifully with the figs and other fruit. Sour cream keeps it super-moist.

RECIPE: Autumn Fruit and Almond Cake

Glorious and festive, Moroccan-ish couscous with chicken, lamb, chickpeas and veg exuberantly celebrates autumn

My version of Chicken and Lamb Couscous — one of my favorite things to eat in the fall (and into the winter) — is absolutely unpedigreed; I didn’t turn it up from a Moroccan cookbook; it wasn’t taught to me by a Tunisian friend.

Rather, way back when I was 20 or 21, a friend gave me a copy of one of the awesome Time-Life The Good Cook cookbooks — the one titled Pasta, which had just been published. Tucked between sections about rolling out fresh pasta dough, stuffing and cutting ravioli and layering lasagnas was one called “Couscous: A Full Meal from One Pot.” Couscous was included because couscous grains, made from semolina flour, are technically pasta. Pictured and explicated was the process of achieving a magnificent-looking platter of couscous topped with a saffron-and-cinnamon-scented stew of lamb, chicken, vegetables and chick peas.

I was instantly captivated. My only experience with such a dish at that point was feasting on it at two then-well-known Los Angeles restaurants, Dar Mahgreb and Moun of Tunis. The book showed how to dampen the grains, rake the moisture through with your fingers, steam them in a couscoussier (real or improvised), make the stew and serve it with harissa and a tureen of broth.

As anyone who has ever used the books in that (long out-of-print) Time-Life series knows, they are technique-based, with lots of step-by-step photos, and recipes only at the end. So literally for decades, I’ve made this couscous by following that rough guide, guessing at the amounts of ingredients, tweaking and changing things over the years, without looking at an actual recipe. I followed brief and sketchy instructions in a sidebar to make harissa.

When you think about it, it’s actually the way you learn to cook at home, if you have a parent who cooks teaching you: a little of this, some of that, until it looks like this. It’s why I treasure the series, a project that was overseen by Chief Series Consultant Richard Olney.

What I love about this chicken and lamb couscous is that you can make it as simple or as complicated as you like. Make your own harissa — soaking and grinding dried chiles and spices — or buy a tube (it’s really good). Go through the extraordinary process of moistening and rubbing and steaming couscous grains two or three times, or make a box of instant couscous in five minutes flat. Soak dried chickpeas overnight and simmer them for hours with the lamb and chicken, or add a couple cans of chickpeas toward the end.

You can buy harissa — the fiery North African chile sauce — in a tube, can or jar — or make your own.

And you know what? No matter how many shortcuts you take, the dish is always glorious — even if it isn’t faithful to any particular traditional recipe.

So why would anyone go through the trouble of making the couscous the longwinded traditional steamed way? Because it’s much lighter and flufflier. (More about that in a future story.)

Our recipe is a two-fer, offering the easiest possible version and a more elaborate one. Go either route — or choose the elements from each that appeal. Most often, I use dried chickpeas, but take the quickie route with the couscous grains, using instant. Every couple of years I make a batch of homemade harissa, which I use if I have it. (We’ll feature a recipe here soon!) Otherwise, I’m happy to use store-bought, a condiment I always like to have around. My preferred brand is one that comes in a tube, Dea from France; I also like one Trader Joe’s sells in a jar, from Tunisia.

The stew itself is made by simmering lamb and chicken pieces with onion, carrot, spices (including harissa), tomatoes and cilantro, then adding turnips, more carrots, zucchini and roasted red pepper. As mentioned, the chickpeas get simmered with the meats (if they’re dried) or added with the zucchini (if they’re canned). Optional roasted winter squash is added on top, along with grilled merguez sausages (also optional).

Stick with the amounts of vegetables or meats I suggest, or adjust them up or down, depending on what you have on hand. Do you prefer white meat chicken to the legs and thighs the recipe suggests? Swap ‘em. Want to toss in some yellow crookneck squash? Do it.

One moving target for me over the years has been winter squash. I’ve never been crazy about the boiled pumpkin The Time-Life book suggested. At some point I started roasting acorn squash, adding that at the end, but lately I’ve been using delicata squash — which I love because the flavor’s beautiful and the skin is very tender. Other times I do without.

To serve the dish, pass the platter of couscous piled with meats and vegetables around the table, along with a separate pitcher of extra broth, and a dish of harissa. Diners help themselves to the grains and stew, pouring on as much extra broth as they like. Pro tip: place a small dollop of harissa in your soup spoon, stir in some broth to liquify it, and sprinkle it over the stew.

Honestly, it’s pretty dreamy. The batch is gigantic, which is great if you’re feeding a big crowd. Use less meat and water, if it sounds too big for your crew. That said, it is just as delicious the next day. Or two. Or three. I enjoy the leftovers as much as round one.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

RECIPE: Chicken and Lamb Couscous

What to make this first fall weekend: a big pot of shrimp, andouille sausage and okra gumbo

With okra at peak season where we live, in Texas, we’ve been cooking it all kinds of ways lately.

One of our favorites is gumbo. Making this one — featuring Gulf shrimp, smoked andouille sausage and okra — starts with a stock made from the shells of the shrimp that will later go into the gumbo (along with some dried shrimp you can pick up at an Asian supermarket or buy online).

A long-and-slow-cooked roux gives it depth and body, and we roast the okra before adding it near the end, to concentrate flavor and mitigate slipperiness.

The recipe is very forgiving, and much easier than you might think. Serve it with rice; white rice is traditional, but we also love it with brown rice. Filé (Native American sassafras powder) and Louisiana hot sauce on the table are a must!

RECIPE: Shrimp, andouille sausage and okra gumbo