The Recipes You Should Be Cooking This November

There’s nothing easier to make on your Thanksgiving menu than homemade cranberry sauce. Spice it up with dried fruit, juice, citrus zest, and/or spices.

Bright but not too sweet, this relish is great with chicken or turkey—or chopped up and tossed into salads.

Your friends will describe this unexpected combo of shishito peppers and kumquats as “magic.” Hat-tip to Ashley Rodriguez, who features the recipe in her cookbook, Let’s Stay In: More Than 120 Recipes to Nourish the People You Love.

Add an element of freshness to your table with this slightly sweet, crunchy salad, created for us by chef Ryan Pollnow. You’ll have a bit of leftover vinaigrette for your next salad.

When he’s cooking in the wild, Elias Cairo, head salumist of Olympia Provisions in Portland, likes to make a hardier salad using ingredients that stay beautiful even if they get banged around a bit in the cooler.

Anyone who’s attempted to bake with quince knows the knobby and at times rock-hard fruit isn’t easy on the home cook. But there’s a delicious way to enjoy it with less labor-intensive peeling and coring. When you simmer them whole, they soften, and prep becomes a snap for turning them into a sauce.

“The pairing of beets with pistachios and citrus is a classic blend of flavors in the California cuisine repertoire, and we [often] take a twist on this combination with the addition of mandarins that are bursting with salinity, spice, and heat,” explains Bryan Oliver, who is chef de cuisine at a rare California wine country vegetarian restaurant. “Roasted baby beets are tender, sweet, and earthy, allowing the bright flavors of spring mint from the farm to round out the dish. [In the restaurant] we make our own pickled mandarin for this dish using California mandarins, but [here] store-bought pickled lime can be used as a substitute for similar results.”

This salad may be simple–note the very short ingredient list–but it is full of exotic, refreshing flavor.

This soup has two layers of kumquats–cooked in the soup to become mellow and tender, and finely chopped with parsley for a bright topping.

This dish delivers a lot of sophistication for not much time spent in the kitchen. The chicken rests on a bed of mild autumn vegetables, enriched with cream and wine.

Pommes Anna, a classic French dish of thinly sliced potatoes, takes on an appealing sharpness in this turnip version. Although you can use any pie pans, metal ones brown the turnips most evenly; you’ll also need a handheld slicer to get them super thin.

Fennel seeds and rosemary perfume every bite of this tenderest of cuts. You can also roast the lamb in a 450°F oven (meat side up) until it reaches an internal temperature of 140°F, about 25 minutes. Paired with grilled asparagus and long-simmered white beans, it makes a delicious dinner.

We love the play between the delicate, slightly sweet purée of turnips and parsnips and the savory cheese with herb-enhanced meatballs. Serve this soup as the first course for a fall dinner party.

What’s more fall than a salsa made of apples? The apples are seared slightly alongside chopped shallots before being tossed in a dressing of lemon juice, dijon mustard, and fresh herbs. The texture plays nicely alongside the hazelnut crust on a soft white fish like halibut.

Nutty sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes, give this soup a deep flavor. Find them at farmers’ markets and well-stocked grocery stores through late fall.

Chef-athlete Gregory Gourdet gives a healthy, classic meat-and-vegetable combo an unexpected Southeast Asian flavor twist with this paleo pork dish.

This recipe, inspired by a dish we had at Mister Jiu’s restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, is simpler than chef Brandon Jew’s version but delivers the same umami goodness. Serve with steamed rice.

Make the most of your fresh farmers’ market beets with this soup, which uses the delicious leaves as well as the beets themselves.

Tender chicken tops a crisp pancake for a dinner that’s better than takeout, and just as fast.

This buttery, super-rich, show-stopping dessert will satisfy any crowd.

A trip to New York inspired Jeannie Lee of Marin County, California, to develop this rich, cranberry-filled cookie. Plan to make and chill the cranberry filling before beginning the cookie dough. If you have leftover filling, use it as you would a cranberry relish or jam. You can store the cookies airtight for up to two days.

Cooking this homey dessert in your campfire is as simple as moving the low-burning logs out into a frame to create a bed of embers in the center. Whipped crème fraîche gives it a touch of sophistication.

From chef Jenn Louis in Portland, these nut meringues topped with marmalade-like conserva and crème fraîche are irresistible (the dessert’s Italian name, brutti ma buoni, means “ugly but good”). For crisp meringues, bake them on a dry day.

We use Mexican limes (the West Coast name for Key limes) to create these creamy pies. While limes may seem like a summer fruit, Key limes come into season as we get into peak fall.

Addictive chocolate hazelnut spread stars in our two-tone version of chocolate bark. Making bark is easy—just melt chocolate, spread it out, and add your favorite toppings. We added one important step, though: Temper the chocolate (carefully melt and cool it to specific temperatures while adding large chunks of unmelted chocolate) so the bark stays shiny and snappy.

Portland pasty chef Michelle Vernier cooks the fruit ahead so the pie won’t collapse in the oven; a simple trick for the home baker who wants to prep as much in advance as possible.

Kristen Murray, the pastry chef and owner of Maurice restaurant in Portland, learned to candy backyard kumquats with her great-aunt Crys. The day we visited Maurice, she made this simplified version with a kumquat-mandarin cross (mandarinquats), which work well, too. Save extra syrup for flavoring sparkling water.