Cozy Squash Recipes for Fall

With the arrival of cooler, cozier temperatures come a few personal guarantees: I will rewatch "When Harry Met Sally." I will buy roughly a dozen cinnamon-scented candles. And, upon seeing the colossal bin of squash that spawns in the produce section every October, I'll instinctually grab a spaghetti or kabocha or honey nut squash and put it in the cart. Autumnal autopilot.

If you also find yourself unpacking a hulking butternut squash from your shopping bag with absolutely zero recollection of putting it in your cart, you too may be entitled to compensation: How's seven recipes?

If you snagged a spaghetti squash for the first time, Ali Slagle's recipe for baked spaghetti squash is the perfect place to get started. Nail the technique for a perfectly roasted, noodly interior with Step 1 and then personalize the dish to your liking, or follow Ali's lead and dress the halved squash with mozzarella and herby panko bread crumbs.

Or maybe you grabbed a kabocha squash, the Elphaba of winter squash. Its thinner green skin can be left on when roasted for Kay Chun's squash and spinach salad with sesame vinaigrette . A savory dressing of tahini, lemon juice, sesame oil and soy sauce balances the squash, which gets only sweeter when roasted until tender. Or peel that green exterior to reveal its deeply orange interior for Kay's squash and chickpea stew with lemongrass .

Squash and Spinach Salad With Sesame Vinaigrette View this recipe.

If you were drawn to the adorably petite honey nut squash, use it for Melissa Clark's roasted honey nut squash and chickpeas with hot honey , another dish that capitalizes on the complementary nature of squash and garbanzos, but this time on a sheet pan.

Perhaps the crown jewel of winter squash, the oblong butternut squash, yearns for browned butter and sage. Melissa's brown butter orzo with butternut squash gives rice-shaped pasta a sort of risotto treatment but saves you all that standing and stirring.

But if you're open to a little bit of a project, I'd recommend Yossy Arefi's butternut squash and goat cheese galette . A tangy spread of herbed goat cheese anchors a sweet layer of thinly sliced squash and red onion.

You thought I made it all this way and forgot about pumpkin, didn't you? Nonsense. Though it's more likely that you impulsively picked up a few cans of pumpkin purée rather than a bulbous squash for eating. (Did you know the stuff in the can doesn't come from those archetypal orange pumpkins? Spoooooky .)

Carolina Gelen uses one scant cup of purée in the dough for her pumpkin dumplings with brown butter and Parmesan . These pillowy, no-knead dumplings take only 25 minutes to make, so you can spend less time cooking and more time debating whether men and women can be friends .

Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Galette View this recipe.

One More Thing! Can a vegetarian dine well in New York ? It's a question Priya Krishna, an interim New York Times restaurant critic alongside Melissa Clark, posed to readers and sought to answer.

Priya, a former vegetarian, ate at a dozen of the top 20 restaurants on this year's New York Times list of the city's 100 best, identifying herself as a vegetarian to servers and sometimes bringing along vegetarian companions. Take a look at the seven basic responses she encountered along the way — from the least accommodating to the most welcoming.