Fall

Plump, sweet, and juicy—these are the best-tasting plums. Late summer brings with it all the different types of plums—colors of white, black, red and shapes of round and oval. There are too many varieties to list here. And don't forget pluots, a cross between plums and apricots. I love to eat them fresh—and you know they're good when the juices run down your arm. But as you've seen by reading here, I also adore plums in simple, homey desserts.

Instead of the typical preparation, these plums are grilled. Grilling fruit is not a typical technique, but it's great for bringing out the flavor of fruit, especially when it's a bit underripe. Imagine pineapple slices, peaches, or nectarines on the grill. These fruits nicely caramelize, especially when they're brushed with a sugar mixture. And what goes better with warm fruit than ice cream? This is a dessert to savor spoonful by spoonful.

With just three ingredients, this recipe is almost a nonrecipe. Brush the plum halves with a mixture of sugar and butter that caramelizes on the grill. Serve with ice cream, like my lavender-crème fraîche ice cream, which lends a unique flavor to the dessert. Take the opportunity to grill some fruit before summer ends!

What cooking method can be more primal than roasting? When humans discovered fire, it was by roasting over an open pit. Today we simulate this method of indirect cooking in the oven, achieving the best taste by concentrating flavors, retaining interior moisture, and creating a beautiful brown exterior. In gastronomy-speak, this caramelization is known as the Maillard reaction, which is the basic chemical reaction all food undergoes when cooked. But the cavepeople didn't care how sugars reacted with amino acids, all they knew was that fire made things taste good.

I often roast almost anything during the autumn months. Once October comes, roasting is my favorite activity. Meats are of course among the favorite items to roast. Just think of a luscious roast chicken or roast beef. But many seem to forget that pork and vegetables also make wonderful roasts.

Raise your hand if you have an over abundance of apples right now. I thought so! There are many things I want to do with my apples; make apple challah, apple sauce, apple cake, and an apple slab pie. Well, 1 out of 4 isn’t so bad now, is it?

This past summer I made a cherry slab pie and it was so good. I shared it with my friends and, without tooting my own horn, we are still talking about it. So, why not an apple slab pie? The pastry from the cherry slab pie was near perfect. I made another batch of the dough and then simply switched out the fruit. Apples cook differently than cherries, so I adapted the filling from a recipe from The Cook’s Country Cookbook.

Slab pies are great for a crowd. And this pie fed a huge crowd. It was demolished in about 15 minutes. I had one teeny tiny bite. That teeny tiny bite was really good. ;I am going to make this many times over throughout out the next few months. Next time I will pair my apples with some fresh pomegranate seeds!

It can be a challenge cooking for two. When I made a big batch of Baked Garden Vegetable Stack the other day, I had a lot of tender vegetables left over. I turned them into creamy soup in 30 minutes.

The thin slices of potatoes and tender ribbons of cabbage seemed to demand caraway, that distinctly flavored seed typically found in rye bread. I used to love ladling my mom’s sauerkraut dotted with caraway seeds over creamy chunks of boiled potatoes.

I started the soup by sauteing chopped onions and caraway seeds in hot oil. I tried a bit of the Butter Olive Oil I bought at Oh! Olive, a cute little shop in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. The oil is organic with natural butter flavor, but is dairy-free and contains no animal products. I’ve discovered it’s perfect for popping corn, or drizzling over a bowl of hot popped corn. Anyway, when the onions began to turn golden brown, I dumped in all my leftover vegetables (I had quite a bit — only two of us ate a meal from that big pan of veggies), poured in a few cups of vegetable broth and let it all simmer together for about 20 minutes.