I like to think that I have gotten pretty good at finding the right recipe for very specific occasions. It might be a friend's Christmas tree decorating party. Or it might be All the Pears Are Suddenly Overripe Day, which occurs several times through the fall harvest season. (You say that holiday isn't on your calendar? Hm. Very strange.) And sometimes these two fall on the same day, like how Hannukah and Christmas overlap this year, or those weird years where Greek Easter and Protestant Easter happen at the same time. Whatever the holiday, this is not a bad idea for a dessert, courtesy of Melissa Clark's In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite: 150 Recipes and Stories about the Food You Love. (The recipe is also available on the New York Times website, where the author has a regular column.)

While they are baking, mix up some sugar (this is hippy sugar, hence the color--granulated white is perfectly fine) with some eggs, lemon zest, vanilla extract, and (if you happen to have some) a little pear brandy.

Add flour, a little salt, and a lot of melted butter.

Pour the batter over the baked pears, scatted some chopped almonds on top, and bake again until the cake is set.

It should be noted that a 10-inch skillet (what I have) is really not the same thing as a 9-inch skillet (what the recipe calls for). If your kitchen is similarly equipped, make sure to cut down the final baking time by at least 5 minutes--the cake had a great flavor, but was a little overcooked.

The silver lining I'm forcing myself to see about Hurricane Irene is that it forced me to do the annual re-learning how to shop for produce during peak harvest season. Normally, by the time my farm stops delivering, all that's at the greenmarket is potatoes and apples, which means I go back to spending my entire paycheck at the Italian market up the street, where I have my pick of all kinds of non-seasonal and exotic fruits & veggies. But this year, I have spent a lot of time (and money) at the Union Square Greenmarket, opening up my kitchen to a much wider variety of local, seasonal things to cook with. Not that Stoneledge's harvest is a monoculture by any means, but we typically get one variety of potato, 2 alternating kinds of Swiss chard, a few tomatoes, maybe some funky heirloom eggplants in addition to the more usual Italian. And it is all wonderful. But they don't grow yellow carrots*, or purple potatoes, or red kuri squash, the key ingredient in a very tempting soup from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours.

Red kuri is a funny beast. It is a variety of winter squash that can grow quite large. It can be lumpy and kind of intimidating, but it has a couple of secrets, revealed to me by Dorie. One, it tastes a like chestnuts. And two, the skin is edible.

I abandoned the French Fridays with Dorie project after about 6 months, because that was about as much time as I was willing to have other people guide my choice of what to make for dinner (even just two or three nights a month). Also, I felt I had gotten a pretty good idea of the book we were cooking from, and I was just as happy to keep exploring it at my own pace, and at my own direction. Or to retread some ground. (I made her poached spiced pears for dessert just last night, I've done several varieties of the savory cheese quick bread, and I really enjoyed the tomato variation on the mustard tart.)

So I don't know if the group has done this recipe yet, and it's not Friday, but even so, this soup is worth some attention. There are very few ingredients, usually a good sign to my mind, so do try to find the highest quality available to you if you decide to make this for dinner. The squash needs to be washed thoroughly--dirt can very easily sneak into the funny crevices, and you'll be eating the beautiful red-orange skin, so really give it a scrub. Then cut it in half:

and scoop out the seeds & membranes. Kuri seeds are awfully hard & thick, so they are not really the best for toasting, but give it a try if you want (I did not). Then cut it all up into big chunks. The color contrast between the skin and the flesh is much more striking in person than on a computer screen.

Wash and cut up a couple of leeks, too (though possibly not in that order, depending on your preferred leek-washing method). Also big chunks.

Toss the veggies in a big pot with equal parts milk & water, and a good bit of salt.

It'll need to simmer for about a half an hour, until the squash is soft enough to mash up. But instead of mashing it up, run it through a food mill, or puree it in a blender, or with the brand new emersion blender your mom got you as a birthday gift (thanks, mom!). I recommend not blending it TOO much, though, because it's so lovely to be able to see the flecks of dark skin mixed into the lighter base of the soup.

Dorie's suggestion for serving is to add diced apple, toasted walnuts, and a little creme fraiche, and as with so many of her suggestions, it is excellent and flexible. Asian pear would probably be great, or try some other varieties of nuts. And as always in my kitchen, sour cream is a good creme fraiche alternative for this kind of thing. Some other suggested variations are on Dorie's own post about this (along with the complete recipe).

A bit of good bread, toasted and spread thinly with some blue cheese, is also quite nice.

*When I was up at the farm to help with a garlic planting this fall, the farm explained to us that some heirloom varieties just don't grow as well for them, and require a lot more attention--especially the weird colored veggies.