Apple

No more dry pork chops! Just “sandwich” the chops between layers of dressing and bake, leaving them tender and moist. Serve with green beans tossed with lemon zest.

Apples cooked in orange juice and flavored with fresh ginger and spices—the combination smells as delicious as it tastes! Serve the chutney with roast pork, chicken, or turkey.

Refreshing and crunchy, this fruit salad makes a good brunch dish with Turkey Sausage Patties (page 166).

Assemble the ingredients for this oatmeal in the slow cooker before you go to sleep, and a heart-healthy breakfast reminiscent of apple pie will await you in the morning. Unless you have a large family, you’ll even have enough left over for another breakfast later in the week.

Adding fresh apple gives this gingerbread a deep sweetness.

For a double dose of spice, serve this “scent-sational” dip with crisp gingersnaps. The combination is perfect as a slightly sweet appetizer or a bite of quick dessert.

Tarte Tatin is a French upside-down apple tart named for the two sisters who invented the dish. This version is topped with puff pastry and baked in a wood-fired oven or by indirect heat on a grill. It can be topped with slightly sweetened whipped cream, or better still with a frothy sabayon infused with an aromatic late-harvest Riesling. The sabayon is also terrific on its own or with berries. Choose a good baking or pie apple such as Gala, Pink Lady, Gravenstein, Braeburn, or Jonathan.

This dessert captures all the smells and tastes of fall. Similar to its cousin, pineapple upside-down cake, it is easily prepared in a cast-iron skillet, then turned out on a plate along with its syrup. Sweet potatoes serve as a binder and sweetener in this cake. Serve it with a dollop of tangy crème fraîche or a little warm caramel sauce.

For those who love to make simple seasonal fruit desserts, making a rustic tart is one of the most enjoyable ways of creating a beautiful dessert. A proper dough is important, but the overall shape created for the actual tart is up to you. In this recipe for an Italian tart, the pears and apples are first roasted until lightly caramelized, which increases their flavor.

Fran Gage is a wonderful pastry and bread maker as well as a cookbook author. She shares her special recipe for a marvelous fruit tart here. It is simple to make and quite delicious with its classic French apple and prune filling. Fran’s recipe for a sweet crust is wonderful and can be used for other fruit tarts.

Good freezer management makes it so much easier to get away with two-timing. When the freezer door won’t close, we know it’s time for a couple bags of sauerkraut for an Alsatian choucroute (pronounced shoo-KROOT) garni. A French peasant dish from the Alsace region, choucroute garni means sauerkraut “garnished” with an abundance of pork products, or occasionally goose or duck. It’s the perfect freezer purge for using up all manner of cheater pork plus any sausages, bacon, or ham bones. Whatever you find in there will pretty much work with this dish. Choucroute (the sauerkraut) is traditionally slow-baked in a heavy casserole with slab bacon or a ham hock, carrots, onion, garlic, apple, and wine or beer. The seasoning mix depends on the cook (or the pantry), but usually includes juniper berries, bay leaves, cloves, black or white pepper, even cumin and coriander seeds. The sausages, ham, and other meats are added near the end of cooking. Get the bagged or jarred sauerkraut for the freshest taste. While the sauerkraut turns French in the oven, thaw the trove of frozen meats. A fruity, dry Alsatian Riesling is traditional for both cooking and drinking. French and German beers are also a good match. To complete the meal, add boiled potatoes and a green salad.

Min’s Cranberry Fruit Salad is the result of her crusade to bring vibrant colors and crisp textures to those brown winter meals—including plenty of the cheater pulled and chopped meats. Bright cranberries and fall fruits make a drop-dead gorgeous salad with body, color, and crunch. Smoked turkey, chicken, pork loin, and brisket are always better with a bright accessory. Freeze extra cranberries in the fall to whip this up throughout the winter.

During my college years, I’d return home to Los Angeles every summer and promptly—you guessed it—look for a restaurant job. One summer, I did a stage at L.A.’s premier French restaurant, L’Orangerie. I started my stage in the pastry kitchen with Chef Yves. He taught me the classic techniques of crème brûlée, chocolate puff pastry, and soufflés made to order. But my favorite of his desserts was sautéed apples with caramel sauce and crème anglaise. A little less formal and traditional than the rest of his repertoire, that dish was simple, straightforward, and all about the apples. To make our own version of Chef Yves’s apples at Lucques, we cut the apples in half, toss them with lots of butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and Calvados, and roast them, basting all the time, until they are a deep golden brown and glistening with spicy juices. With a scoop of cinnamon ice cream melting over the apples, this easy-to-make dessert is an elegant way to finish a winter feast.