November 2010

In an NPR tradition, the Friday before Thanksgiving is the time for Susan Stamberg to share her mother-in-law's weird-sounding – but delicious – recipe for cranberry relish. This year, she's found a real fan: food writer and editor Ruth Reichl. The pair looked over some of the ingredients: sour cream, sugar and horseradish – preferably red horseradish.

This dish stands well on its own, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil, or with any of the following sauces. Also, some tasters liked spiced versions made with either curry powder or chili powder. Simply stir 2 teaspoons of either spice into the oil before seasoning the cauliflower in step 1.

Infusing the chicken broth with the squash's seeds and fibers helps to reinforce the earthy squash flavor. We found that a 2-pound squash consistently yields a cup or so more than the 3 1/2 cups in step 1; this can be added to the skillet along with the squash scrapings in step 2. To make this dish vegetarian, vegetable broth can be used instead of chicken broth, but the resulting risotto will have more pronounced sweetness.

No-knead bread is easy because it eliminates kneading, the mechanical process that forms the gluten (a strong network of cross-linked proteins that traps air bubbles and stretches as the dough bakes) necessary for bread structure. Our starting recipe (first published in the New York Times) uses two approaches to replace kneading: a very high hydration level (85 percent—meaning that for every 10 ounces of flour, there are 8.5 ounces of water) and a 12-hour autolysis period that allows the flour to hydrate and rest.