A chill is in the air.
Add autumn's wealth of earthy vegetables - squash, sweet potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower, turnips, mushrooms and more - and the cravings for the comfort foods of fall begin, with yearnings for hearty soups and stews, potpies and puddings.
Which brings us to the intriguing range of seasonal recipes in the first wave of cookbooks to arrive in the annual pre-holiday publication push.
Some of the best come from Kitchen Seasons: Easy Recipes for Seasonal Organic Food(Ryland, Peters & Small, $24.95) by Australian chef/author Ross Dobson.
He offers interesting takes on the season's vegetables with dishes such as red curry of roasted fall vegetables, a lovely Thai-style offering with butternut squash, carrots, parsnips and onions, red curry paste and coconut milk (see accompanying recipe).
"The vegetables here are very earthy and distinctive, sweet and nutty, and the parsnip has that delicious slightly bitter edge," Dobson writes.
Among the fall cookbook offerings, there are also several recipes worthy of trying now, and then revisiting for holiday menus, especially the sweet potato gratin found in Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook: Explosive Flavors From the Southwestern Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, $35) and the Brussels sprouts with apples and almonds in American Masala: 125 New Classics From My Home Kitchen by Suvir Saran (Clarkson Potter, $35).
Saran and co-exec chef Hemant Mathur just took over and reopened Devi, the upscale Indian restaurant that many deem New York's best - and he is talking with Steven Starr about opening a restaurant here.
In Coloring the Seasons: A Cook's Guide (Kyle Books, $29.95), English chef/author Allegra McEvedy reminds us to heed the color cues for fall menus - the yellows, oranges, reds and browns of squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and nuts, in particular.
Buying from local organic farmers and markets, stresses Dobson in his book, is the surest way to know what you are eating and where it came from. Respecting the natural cycle of growing seasons, he says, puts tastier, often more nutritious food on your table.
Dobson won't compromise on fresh foods, but he champions "cheating in the kitchen" to save time and effort, saying that he prefers store-bought curry pastes to blending his own and suggesting frozen ready-made pastry as a convenient and acceptable alternative to scratch-made.
