Squash

This is a good transitional soup for spring; it’s hearty like winter soups, but boasts the fresh flavors of zucchini, parsley, and dill. Taste often to adjust the myriad of flavors to your liking. Consider making any of the muffins on pages 149 to 151 to serve with the soup.

Cashew butter makes an offbeat, rich-tasting soup base. This luscious soup is good hot or at room temperature.

You’ll love making and serving this earthy medley of colors, textures, and flavors on a rainy spring evening.

Cooked cornmeal makes a delightfully dense soup base. Serve this meal-in-a-bowl with a bountiful salad and crusty bread.

This easy, robust soup, contributed by Marti Hall, has several elements of a certain style of traditional African soups—chilies, sweet potato, and a creamy peanut base. The grain of choice in an African soup like this would likely be millet, but here, quinoa, the nutritious South American super grain, makes for a delightful fusion.

Like minestrone, this is an Italian standard. Serve it with Bruschetta (page 159) or fresh garlic bread.

Gnocchi are dumplings made of semolina and potato flours. They add substance to this flavor-ful stew. At many supermarkets, you’ll find them in the frozen food section near ravioli, tortellini, and other such Italian specialties. Serve with Bruschetta (page 159) and a green salad featuring olives and chickpeas.

This colorful stew is an autumnal cousin to chili, using Native American ingredients. It’s a good dish to try out on older kids and teens who have begun to appreciate more complex combinations of flavors and ingredients.

While fresh local corn is abundant in early fall, the most tempting way to eat it is right off the cob. But cooking with fresh corn can be equally appealing. Its sweetness and crunch can’t be matched by frozen corn kernels. Serve this with Hearty Bean Bread (page 146) and a green salad for a filling meal.

This cheerfully colored soup brings you a hint of sweetness and the pleasant crunch of turnips. Once you’ve got the squash baked, the rest is a snap.

If it’s possible for squash to be considered a “fun” food, spaghetti squash certainly fits that description. Its noodlelike strands contrast nicely with the crisp turnips and snow peas in this stew.

Once you’ve got the squash baked, this Japanese-style soup comes together quickly, and is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the palate. Use chopsticks for “slurping” the noodles.

Make this soup a few hours ahead of time, if you can. The unusual combination of flavors benefits from having time to blend. You can use butternut squash instead of pumpkin, if you prefer.

This delicious stew looks and smells as enticing as it tastes. My sister-in-law, Toni Atlas, provided the inspiration for this recipe.

As everyone knows, greens are good for you, but with its high calcium content, kale is a standout. Unlike many greens, kale does not wilt on contact with heat, but needs a good bit of simmering to get done. Its deep green color and elaborately ruffled leaves, contrasted with the yellow of the squash and the orange of the sweet potato, make this an attractive and nourishing dish for the early autumn harvest.

Onions, garlic, winter squash, and silken tofu are all enveloped in the familiar flavor of potatoes, making this a wonderful vehicle for getting a lot of nourishing ingredients into younger (or fussier) soup eaters.

Modeled after the traditional cheese- stuffed, deep- fried green chiles that I adore so much at Mexican restaurants, this lighter, healthier version is almost as much fun to eat. I like to use a mixture of mozzarella and Spanish Manchego cheeses, but you should use what you like. Often, I’ll use soy cheese substitutes instead of real cheeses to make this a nondairy dinner that’s lower in saturated fats and easier to digest.

My cousin Julie learned this recipe when her sister, Abi, worked in Thailand. Julie throws in whatever vegetables she happens to have on hand, and the results are always outstanding. Instead of tofu, try substituting raw, peeled shrimp or scallops, chicken breasts, or fish fillets. Notice that this recipe does not call for water to hydrate the rice. The coconut milk provides enough liquid to cook the rice and make a wonderful curry sauce. It doesn’t seem to make any difference whether you use regular coconut milk or “lite.” Thai curry paste comes in yellow, red, and green—each works beautifully in this dish. Try the Mae Ploy brand found at Asian markets. Use more or less to taste; the amount here gives mild to medium heat.

Believe it or not, eggplants have genders. Look for male eggplants, which have a shallow scar at their base, rather than female eggplants, which have a deeper indentation like a belly button. Male eggplants have fewer seeds and supposedly taste less bitter.

This easy pasta dish is fancy enough to serve to company, but simple enough for weekday dining. If you like spicy food, double the red pepper flakes (the amount given here is considered mildly to medium spicy). Or you can just leave them out.