Here we are — the first day of fall. It’s an exciting time for cooking (Apples! Pumpkins! Gourds, both decorative and edible!), and we’ll be diving into those recipes headfirst the way a kid does into a pile of leaves. But let’s start the season off with something simple and soothing, with a touch of warming spices and toasted, nutty crunch. Let’s kick off fall with cumin and cashew yogurt rice (above).
Cumin and Cashew Yogurt Rice
Priya Krishna’s new recipe is a fuss-free dinner for those nights when you have no time and the fridge is basically bare (and fall tends to include a lot of those nights). Cooked rice is folded into a swirl of tangy yogurt and sharp ginger, and that creamy mix is then topped with cashews and spices that have been sizzled in ghee. It’s a comforting dish that’s there for you when you need it — “I eat yogurt rice over the sink at 9 p.m.,” says Priya.
Fall also means watching sports on TV while eating substantial snacks. We’re thinking here of chicken wings, specifically these sticky harissa chicken wings. In this recipe by Mansour Arem and adapted by Eric Kim, the wings are cleverly dry-roasted to achieve thin, crackly skin, and are then tossed in a simple harissa-balsamic-soy (read: spicy-sour-salty) glaze. If you’d like to bust out your air fryer for your wings, Melissa Clark has a recipe for you.
Speaking of feeding a crowd, here’s golden brown, douse-me-in-syrup easy baked French toast. The recipe as written feeds two to four; our resident recipe wizard Alexa Weibel suggests doubling it and using a sheet pan if your breakfast crew is a big one.
We’ll finish off with two worthwhile weekend cooking projects. The first, Kay Chun’s one-pot braised pork ragù, is so simple it could hardly be considered a project; all it requires is some chopping and stirring before it bakes in the oven and fills your house with beautiful smells. Yewande Komolafe’s concord grape jelly — a recipe adapted from one by Sarah Sanneh of Pies ‘n’ Thighs — is a little more involved, as you’ll need some cheesecloth for straining your indigo-blue grapes, and some pectin to help your jelly set. But the result is very much worth the effort: You’re rewarded with a gorgeous jelly to anoint your P.B. and J.s all through the fall.
