Dairy

The crust of this tart is tender and quite crumbly.

A mix of butternut and acorn squash makes this soup silky and flavorful. Keep it bubbling on the stove to warm up any roaming ghosts and goblins as they return home from their Halloween rounds.

Ciro Verde of Da Ciro restaurant in New York makes great thin, crispy-crust pizzas. One Saturday at i Trulli restaurant Ciro gave us a pizzamaking lesson. He told us how he had learned to make pizza in Naples and gave us pointers on how best to use a wood-burning oven and how to improve our technique. A highlight of this session was Ciro's recipe for this tasty pie stuffed with robiola cheese and drizzled with truffle oil, which he claims to have invented. First, the dough is flattened with a rolling pin to elminate air pockets. Then the dough is pierced with a docker, an instrument that punctures the dough and helps to prevent it from puffing up too much in the oven. The flattened disk of dough is baked without any topping. When it is partially done, it is removed from the oven, split in half, and spread with cheese, then baked a second time until brown. Just before serving, the pie is drizzled with truffle oil. Since it is so rich, we like it best cut into wedges as an appetizer. Robiola is creamy cow's milk cheese. Soft fresh goat cheese is a good substitute. If you don't have truffle oil, which is available at many gourmet shops, the pizza will taste great anyway.

This gets its distinctive pink color from the addition of red wine and radicchio.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The recipe calls for both chicken broth and beef broth, but using either one or the other will give an equally good result.

Pumpkin adds beautiful color to the all-American cheesecake while pecan praline makes a southern-style topping. Begin preparing this cake a day ahead.

Kevin Graham, of Graham's in New Orleans, occasionally adds a Parmesan sauce to go with the tomato cream.

New York City's classic dessert gets a luxurious lift from chestnuts.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.