Fall

Pears ... the other fall fruit. Pears just don't seem to get their due respect, taking a back seat to apples, which are the symbolic fall fruit. But pears are exceptional in their own right. And even though they do get compared to apples, pears deserve single attention. If you love pears like I do, you know what I mean. Biting into a ripe, juicy pear is a moment to savor.

Pears are great eaten right out of hand, but they're also great in recipes—in sweet ones, like pies and crisps, but also in savory ones. I particularly like pears in salads, cut into slivers, paper-thin slices, or even roasted. Pear salads make an elegant appetizer for any dinner party, especially if you're celebrating the season like I'm doing. Pears are worth celebrating this season.

In this salad, pears join in with celery, endive, walnuts, bleu cheese, and pomegranate seeds. It's a flavorful combination all tied together by a honey and Dijon mustard vinaigrette. To get the pears so thin, start with very form but ripe pears. Use a mandoline to create the paper-thin slices. You can also cut the pears by hand into thin wedges. Enjoy the season!

Sometimes lettuce is just not good enough. With its peppery spiciness, arugula has a refreshing bite. In Southern California, even though it gets cold in the Winter, arugula thrives in the year-round sunshine, so we're able to buy fat bunches any time of the year for $1.00/bunch.

Persimmons and pomegranates are more seasonal. When they're all available, our favorite salad is a simple combination of all three. <Suzanne Goin created a complex salad with all these ingredients.  I used her recipe as a starting point, choosing to simplify the ingredients and directions.

The combination of tastes is near perfect: peppery arugula, sweet persimmon, tart pomegranate seeds, and crunchy hazelnuts, all held together by the emulsion of olive oil and reduced balsamic vinegar.

Pork and apples go hand in hand, don't they? That image of a whole spit-roasted pig comes to mind with the apple stuck in its mouth. There is something special about the sweet taste of apples and the full flavor of pork that work so well together in a dish. Roasting the pork and apples together is the perfect way to marry the two flavors. That's exactly what I do in this pork roast recipe, which is flavored with honey, mustard, and rosemary. For this perfect flavor pairing, I roast tiny lady apples alongside the pork.

For a roast like this, pork tenderloin is the easiest to prepare and the most flavorful and moist. It's lean, roasts fast, and it stays tender, just as the name would suggest. The juices that collect in the pan go into the making of a gravy that has the flavor of the honey-Dijon rub, the rosemary, and the sweet apple juices. The rosemary sprigs that roast alongside the loins become crispy and are entirely edible, lending bursts of woddsy flavor to each bite. A meal such as this would be great for an elegant holiday dinner or even a simple Sunday supper.

Fall is here and what better way to celebrate it than by baking an apple pie from scratch. Making your own crust is so much more rewarding than using frozen pie shells from the grocery store.

This recipe for hearty apple pie can be put together in minutes once the dough is prepared ahead of time.

And to make the process even easier, roll out the dough between two layers of plastic wrap or parchment paper.

By not using bench flour you will have an even flakier, more delicate crust, plus cleanup is as easy as throwing away the wrap.