Holiday Sides for Two

Is there anything that speaks more to autumn than apples? We enjoy apple pies, crisps, and brown betties for dessert and add apples to braised cabbage. I'm particularly fond of stewed apples, an incredibly easy dish to prepare even when you get fancy as I do here. You could serve these hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert and they're great wrapped in buckwheat crepes with a dollop of mascarpone cheese, but I like them as a side dish.

Carrots are an underrated vegetable, but they have a delightful natural sweetness that complements a wide array of main dishes. This recipe is simple, fairly quick, definitely easy, and spins the classic dish of glazed carrots in a new direction.

Potatoes Savoyarde is a classical French dish - a [i]gratin[/i] - perfect with any meat prepared almost any way. I've served it beside Beef Daube, Smoked Salmon, and Chicken Saltimbocca. Whatever you serve it with it's delicious - although you may want to vary the herb to more closely complement the main dish or other sides dishes.

This is hardly worthy of being called a recipe, and yet it's one of my favorite dishes, not least because it's so quick and easy. You can also do this with steamed asparagus, but broccoli is really the best - the blue cheese complements the broccoli perfectly. I've also used the Marie's Blue Cheese dressing (available in the produce section at your supermarket) but it's not the same as my dressing recipe.

When I was growing up rutabaga was served at Thanksgiving far more often than sweet potatoes. It's a sweet vegetable (albeit more like a winter squash than sweet potatoes) with a hearty texture. Growing up we usually had them just mashed with butter, but I've gussied up this version and it makes a nice change from ordinary mashed potatoes and from sweet potatoes. Best of all, they can be made a couple of days in advance then heated in your microwave.

Roasting cauliflower totally changes its character, providing a wonderfully nutty undercurrent of flavor. You may wonder at my use of granulated garlic as opposed to fresh garlic, but I've found that the fresh garlic ends up in the pan while the powdered garlic clings to the cauliflower, ultimately providing more garlic flavor.

I grew up eating pureed rutabaga, but a few years ago discovered the joy of roasting it. Roasting rutabaga concentrates and highlights it's natural sweetness. In this recipe I season the rutabaga with a dried Italian Herb mixture (you can find one in the spice section at the grocery), which also highlights the sweetness. I also add a teaspoon of sugar, which actually has little effect on the sweetness but encourages browning.

Brussels sprouts are terribly misunderstood, mainly because they're often terribly overcooked. But this recipe has won over more sprout-haters than any recipe I've ever served. In fact, I served these at a dinner party and one guest who bragged he'd only eaten one brussels sprout in his entire life ate half a dozen.