Dairy

Savory sausage, bitter kale, and sweet tomatoes—is there a better trio? Instead of cooking them in a braise, I throw them on pizza.

When i was a kid, one of my favorite fall activities was hunting for wild mushrooms with my brothers in the woods around our home. For this pizza, make sure the mushroom pieces are all roughly the same size so they cook evenly. The runny egg yolk that sauces this pizza binds all the flavors together.

Fresh spinach and cheese is one of my favorite combinations. Here, the blast of the heat from the oven wilts the greens into the melted cheese. To brighten the flavors, I toss in a bunch of fresh herbs, too. If you have a pizza oven or stone at home, use it here. It’ll char the edges of the leaves and make them crisp.

When basil grows in my garden, I want to make the most of it. To enhance its aroma, I pair it with pistachios and add a hit of chile and lemon zest to brighten it. Be sure to start with roasted pistachios in their shells and to keep the pesto coarse to highlight the crunch of the nuts.

This pasta dish pairs creamy with crunchy, tart with sweet. Summer string beans also offer a little crunch to balance the juiciness of the tomatoes. I especially like using orange Sunbursts from my garden.

This is one of the most requested dishes in my home, especially when we have children over. Instead of making a béchamel sauce, Marja simply blends her ingredients and bakes them into a rich custard that suspends the pasta. Her blend of five cheeses creates layers of flavors in this homey casserole. Marja’s always happy to bake it for a crowd, and everyone’s always happy to eat it.

I could eat bowls and bowls of this. By blending a reduced cream mixture with a fresh one, this pasta tastes ultrarich and light at the same time. The best part of this dish: It’s incredibly fast.

There are countless versions of croque monsieurs and croque madames all over France. My mom cooks the sandwiches in a cast-iron press on the stovetop so that the bread becomes a crisp casing for the filling. I prefer a sandwich that’s hot and moist all the way through, so I bake the cheese on top of the bread and spread béchamel throughout. That’s the key to my version: The bread must completely absorb the sauce. The effort is well worth it.

This will delight vegetarians—and carnivores, too. The warm, meaty mushrooms are so satisfying, especially when topped with pickled chiles, arugula, and Parmesan shavings. Fragrant fresh rosemary, which too often overpowers, adds a subtle depth of flavor to homemade mayonnaise, which is key here.

It’s the surprising combination of sweet, tart, creamy, and crunchy additions that makes me crave this summery soup. This gazpacho is all about the garnishes.

My wife, Marja, counts this simple dish as one of her favorites. The meaty mushrooms are great with the nutty grains and creamy cheese.

This super-savory dressing goes with everything from haricots verts to chopped romaine. But I especially love it in this combination. For parties, I toss the dressing with just the snap peas and spoon the mixture into the endive spears to make a passed hors d’oeuvre.

This is easily one of my favorite fall salads. The creaminess of avocado and sour cream is amazing with the spiced zing of the carrots and the toasted, nutty seeds.

I crave Greek salad year round, so in the winter, when tomatoes don’t taste great raw, I make it with roasted beets instead. This began as a home lunch, but I decided to try it out at some of my restaurants, too, and it’s turned out to be one of our most popular salads.

When watermelon ripens in the summer, I treat it simply to make it shine. Blue cheese turns it into a savory, refreshing salad and black pepper ties the whole thing together. To best match the juicy, crisp sweetness of the melon, I look for strong and sharp creamy cheeses. This tastes even better when the watermelon is cold and the cheese is room temperature and soft. In that case, it’s easiest to use a spoon to flick nuggets of cheese directly onto the melon.

This is something I grew up with, a dish my grandmother and mom always served family-style. For me, this combination—a fluffy, snowy mountain of shaved Gruyère with sliced sweet-tart tomato—is home. In Alsace, we sometimes mixed wine vinegar with honey and spices for the dressing, but sherry vinegar has a similar nuanced sweetness that works very well here.

I’m always looking for inspiration when I shop at farmer’s markets. The heirloom varieties of summer squash, like Goldbar, Paddle, and 8-Ball, are among my new favorites. To highlight their subtle flavor, I splash them with a simple lemon dressing, then surround them with sharp cheese and peppery greens.

Tangy goat cheese makes a perfect salad dressing for wax beans (haricots verts work well here, too). To balance the creamy cheese, I toss the sweet tomatoes with a bright, acidic vinaigrette. Together, they make an amazing summer salad.

My go-to salad for the fall, this simple combination tastes great with just about everything. Fresh, toasted poppy seeds release a delicious, complex nuttiness into the dressing. You can also add avocado and shrimp or chicken to turn this salad into a complete meal.

At my restaurant, we make our own yogurt, carefully culturing milk at 93°F for hours. At home, I pop open a container of good whole-milk yogurt from the store. Just be sure to stir that creamy top layer into the rest of the yogurt before using it. The richness and tanginess pair perfectly with sweet beets. While I prefer boiled beets in this dish, roasted beets work well, too.