I know I’m taking a risk here.  Many a Thanksgiving dinner guest insists that the only true cranberry sauce comes out of a can in a jiggly cylinder, ridges and all.  Even those who prefer homemade sauce expect a sweet dish.

But I say there’s just way too much sugar on the menu for Turkey Day.   Something bright and savory would be a much better counterpoint to the mild bird and all those carbs.

This year, I’m offering cranberry salsa as an alternative to the desserts masquerading as side dishes.

It’s a sassy, festive dish designed to perk up appetites overwhelmed by so many sweet offerings. Chopped ginger, chile, onions and red peppers bring lively flavor and subtle heat to the familiar fruit.  And there’s still a bit of sugar to take the edge off the berries’ tart bite.

Adding to its appeal, this dish comes together quickly in a food processor and tastes even better if it’s made a day ahead.

Obviously, switching this salsa for the usual sauce probably isn’t a good idea if your family clings to every tradition. But you might try putting it on the table, too, to shake things up a bit.

At the very least, try this salsa with leftovers.  Turkey sandwiches will never be the same.

Pie season is upon us.  For the next couple of months, even cooks who live in fear of pastry will be putting holiday pies on the table to satisfy their families’ taste for tradition.  Far too many of those pies will be baked in crusts that come from the supermarket freezer.

As a recovering pastry phobe myself, I’m going to share a secret here.  Homemade pie crust is truly a snap if you let the food processor do most of the work.  I rely on a foolproof recipe we found in an old cookbook dating back to the early days of those amazing machines.  It’s been used so many times, the book’s broken spine automatically falls open to “Easy-As-Pie Crust.”

This dough is a miracle.  It’s simple to throw together, rolls out with very little fuss and bakes into a buttery crust that works for every kind of pie from apple to pumpkin.  I used it to make the cranberry-apple turnovers in the photo.

This crust is so good that my mother-in-law, who was legendary for her apple pies, always asked us to make it for her when she visited.  She filled each crust with a mountain of sliced tart apples and folded the sides up over the top like a galette.

The  key to the recipe is an  egg and a little lemon juice.  The egg binds the ingredients together for strength, which is important for these hand-held pies, and acid in the lemon juice keeps the crust tender and makes it easier to handle.  Although many cooks swear by shortening for a really flaky pie crust, I gladly sacrifice a little flakiness to get real butter flavor.

Just be sure to keep your ingredients cold and don’t process the dough too long.  As soon as it begins to clump together in a shaggy ball, it’s ready.

Since this crust isn’t that delicate, you don’t have to worry too much about overworking the dough when you roll it out.  Let it warm up a little after you take it out of the refrigerator, lightly flour a pastry board or counter and roll out from the center to about 1/8-inch thick.  It’s easiest to roll the pastry over the pin in order to lift it into the pie pan.

For these turnovers, I piled raw fresh cranberries and little cubes of  tart Newtown Pippin apples onto one side of a pastry circle, folded the crust over the top and sealed it before brushing with a little milk.  They puffed up and turned golden brown in the oven.

With the right crust, any form of pie is easier than you might think.

I can’t believe I nearly missed the best figs of the year.  I was out of town on family business during the height of the fabulous fruits’ late summer season in September. When I got back, the local harvest was almost over.

With any luck, however, luscious fresh figs should be available for another week or so in farmers markets and through the fall at specialty grocers. Let’s hope this week’s rains don’t wipe them out.  It would be a shame to miss at least one more opportunity to enjoy this easy fig tartlette.

The little tart is so simple that it hardly requires a recipe. The combination of buttery puff pastry, jammy figs and salty Gorgonzola is irresistible and works as well as an appetizer as dessert.  The figs soften and become even sweeter in the heat of the oven, so no sugar is required, although a little drizzle of honey after baking is a nice touch.

I’ve made these tartlettes with an almond cookie crust, which is quite nice, but frozen puff pastry is very good, too.  It’s also a frugal choice right now, when Trader Joe’s is selling boxes of all-butter pastry again for $3.99.

Just roll the sheet of pastry out, cut into squares and line a little tart tin or large muffin cup. Add quartered figs, crumbled blue cheese and a little cream, then bake.  That’s it.  No one will believe it was so easy.

Black mission figs

I’m such a big fan of figs now, it’s hard to believe there was a time when I wouldn’t even taste one.  My loathing stemmed from the squishy, sticky orbs we found rotting on the ground in a friend’s family orchard every summer when I was a child.  They were far better suited for missiles than for food.

As an adult, though, I finally screwed up my courage and took that first bite.   I was stunned by the soft, yielding texture and delicately sweet flavor with hints of honey and vanilla.  It was depressing to realize what I had been missing all those years due to my childish stubbornness.

More than most fruits, figs must be perfectly ripe or they  aren’t worth eating.  The fruit should be soft, moist and heavy for its size and feel a bit like a water balloon in your palm. Some cracking along the sides, slight wrinkling at the neck and a drop of syrupy juice at the blossom end are good signs.

Figs of every variety have two seasons.  The first small crop in late spring grows on branches that sprouted the previous year.  The main crop ripens in the long, hot days of August and September, producing more voluptuous fruit with richer flavors.

If you can’t find fresh figs for this tart, you might try making it with pears, which will be around for months.  The flavor will be more subtle but delightful nonetheless. Every fruit is best in its season.

The way this summer has gone, it looked like there never was going to be a good time to try out my idea for adult versions of the commercial (and trademarked) Popsicle.  But the weather seems to have settled into a nice run of warm days at last and I’ve been experimenting with making ice pops with a kick.

These frozen bars are milder versions of a couple of refreshing summer cocktails made with fresh juice.  It took a little tweaking to get the flavor right while reducing the alcohol enough that the pops would freeze.  They’re supposed to be fun, not seriously intoxicating, anyway.

For my models, I drew on Lynchburg Lemonade, named after the Kentucky home of the Jack Daniels distillery, and a generic peach daiquiri recipe.  I substituted lemon juice and homemade simple syrup for sour mix in the potent lemonade recipe and stuck to fresh peaches rather than “peach-flavored” liqueurs in the daiquiri.

The results are fresh tasting and fruity—with just enough liquor to make the flavors more interesting.

These are easy to whirl together in the blender and freeze in the ice pops molds readily available in most cookware stores these days.  Let them freeze overnight and you’re ready for an impromptu party, complete with frozen drinks.

The first time I tasted a kumquat, I was startled by the contrast between the tender, sweet rind and the intensely sour flesh.

The lingering tang proved addictive, though.  Soon I found myself regularly wandering by my neighbor’s kumquat tree, searching for a tiny fruit or two to filch — just enough to satisfy my craving but not so many that they would miss them.  I’d pop one whole into my mouth and wait for the bright shock of citrus flavor evoking fresh limes and clementines.

That dwarf tree was my only source for years.  I never saw kumquats at the grocery store.  Now, they’re more widely available and one Central Valley grower  sells them at the Santa Cruz farmers market.  I don’t even try to resist, despite the price.  After all, $6 a pound goes pretty far when the flavor is so concentrated.

Although they’re technically a winter crop,  kumquats are available throughout the spring in California.  They’re the perfect accent to rhubarb and strawberries in this classic crisp.

The sharp, acidic flavor plays the same role as lemon juice, complementing the strawberries and playing up the pleasant bite of the rhubarb.

I adore crisps made with spring fruit.  Last year, I offered one made with rhubarb, strawberries and cherries.  While rhubarb and strawberries are traditional companions in spring pies and crisps, kumquats bring a little extra spice to the party.

If your sweet tooth loves a sour contrast, this is the crisp for you.  You can always substitute the grated zest of a lemon or lime for the kumquats if you can’t find them.   I’d cut the sugar by a couple of tablespoons, however.

The topping for this crisp is the easiest yet.  Taking a tip from Dorrie Greenspan’s cookbook, “Baking, From My Home to Yours” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), I’ve melted the butter before stirring it into the flour, oats, brown sugar and chopped walnuts.

Warm from the oven, topped with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream, this crisp is everything I want in a simple spring dessert — just in time for Memorial Day.

I realize that a traditional pie is the first dish that pops to mind when you’re gazing on a shiny pile of  fall apples at the market.  Who can resist fat slices of freshly-picked fruit, dusted with cinnamon and tucked into a buttery crust?

But I get bored with the same old dishes and was intrigued by a reference to apple pizza I encountered while casting about for a new recipe.  It was made with puff pastry, though, which really doesn’t qualify as pizza in my book.  So I began experimenting with fresh pizza dough.

What emerged was this definitely non-traditional dessert pizza, redolent of cinnamon and caramel.  The thinly sliced apples retain some of their crisp character, Red Flame grapes give a satisfying pop when you bite into them, and toasted walnuts add a layer of crunch.

You might call it an open-faced tart, but the base is a yeasted dough rather than the usual butter-rich pastry. The contrast between savory and sweet is part of its charm.

The dough is coated with cinnamon and sugar before being rolled out and then partially baked before being topped with apples and grapes.  This step is essential to avoid the soggy crust syndrome all too common in conventional fruit pies and tarts.

Luscious dulce de leche or jarred caramel sauce and nuts are added after the pizza comes out of the oven.

Cut it into wedges and eat it out of hand like a cookie.  Or, if you’re feeling really decadent, top it with a scoop of rich vanilla bean ice cream.

Note: Dulce de leche—the rich, milk-based caramel of Latin America—is available in many markets now but I make my own in a small slow cooker.  The technique is amazingly simple.

Place an unopened can of sweetened, condensed milk—I use Eagle Brand—in the crock and add water, leaving the top inch of the can exposed.  Put the lid on the cooker, set the temperature to low, and let it simmer slowly for about eight hours.

Because the environment is closed and the temperature is constant, this method is safer than other techniques making dulce de leche in an unopened can. A word of warning, though: Let the can cool on the counter before opening.  Otherwise, a geyser of hot caramel will start flooding out before you get the lid off.

If you don’t have a slow cooker, the WikiHow site offers a survey of different approaches to making your own dulce de leche.

Time is running out.

If you want lovely little sugar plum cakes on your holiday table, you’ll need to preserve the fruit now, while fresh plums are still in season.   A few minutes of preparation today will pay off big at Christmas.

The cakes are a delicious nod to tradition, with much of the character of fruit cake but fresher flavor and a slightly crunchy texture from the cornmeal included in the batter.  They’re super simple to make.  And who can resist the association with the visions of sugar plums  in  “The Night Before Christmas”—even if the original reference was to a confection made with dried fruit.

The crucial step is to preserve your plums now.   At least in Northern California, there are plenty of plums still in the market and you might even find tasty little Italian prune plums at specialty grocers and farmers markets.

I’ve used red Santa Rosa plums here  but I’ve also preserved unknown varieties of black plums from a friend’s tree.  Once they get a dose of vodka and sugar, they all taste good.

You do want small plums for this DIY project, though, or you won’t be able to cram more than a few into the jar.

Don’t bother pitting the plums.  Just rinse them with cold water, stuff them into a jar, cover them with vodka, and add sugar.  If the sugar doesn’t dissolve in three days, turn the jar over a few times and let it sit again.  What could be easier?

By late December, your potent plums will be ready for baking into holiday cakes.

One note, of caution, though.  Don’t use the cheapest vodka on the grocer’s shelf, despite what some people may tell you about all vodkas being the same.  I tried using an off-brand once and the flavor was unbearably harsh.  Stick with a mid-priced vodka from a brand you recognize.

I found this recipe years ago in “Bread and Chocolate” (1999), the autobiography of San Francisco baker and cookbook author Fran Gage.  I baked the cakes in fluted brioche pans, wrapped them, and gave them as presents.  They were a huge hit.

More often than not, though, I don’t think about the cakes until fresh plums have long disappeared from the market.  This year I’ll be prepared when the craving strikes.

As a bonus, when the plums are all gone, there still will be plenty of fruit-infused vodka left.  Plum cosmos anyone?

California mangoes are back in season at last.  Just in time, too.  I’ve been aching to make this black bean and mango salad but couldn’t bring myself to buy imported fruit.

Not only do imported mangoes travel thousands of miles to get to the local supermarket, they’re picked green and are usually bathed in hot water before they’re allowed into the U.S.  California mangoes, grown in the Coachella Valley, spend more time ripening on the trees. Many are even grown organically.

By far, the most common California variety is the Keitt, which is still green when ripe.  Every one I’ve eaten has been sweet and succulent with the silky texture of velvet and a bright, tropical flavor hinting of pineapple.  There’s little of the fiber that mars so many other varieties.

The season is short, though, and only runs September-October.  So you have to eat them while you can.

I found organic Keitts at Whole Foods for $3.99 a pound — and worth every penny.

This flavorful salad, spiked with lime, cumin and chile, is one of the best ways I know to eat mangoes.   The soft, sweet fruit makes a delightful counterpoint to the mellow black beans and crisp red bell peppers and onion.

The recipe comes from my friend Griff Palmer, a data whiz who used to bring this salad to every potluck at the Mercury News.  It was always a hit.

Griff is at the New York Times now but he was kind enough to send me the recipe via Facebook.  He says he found it in Self Magazine in the 1980s but the online archives apparently don’t go back that far.

Although the recipe calls for canned beans, I like it better with freshly cooked beans.  It does take a little longer, but if you soak them overnight, the beans should cook in less than an hour with very little tending.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of cooking with mangoes is removing the flesh.  I’ve solved that by using an OXO mango splitter, one of the few single-purpose gadgets that I find worthwhile.  You also can use a knife to slice the fruit lengthwise on either side of the large pit, but it can be a slippery exercise.  Then score the flesh and push the skin inside out to get uniform cubes of fruit.

Whatever you do, don’t miss this opportunity to experience these great mangoes.  There’s good reason mangoes are one of the world’s most popular fruit.

As much as I adore homemade jam, I’ve always considered it an enormous gamble.  The more I invested in time and ingredients the higher were the odds I would end up with a runny syrup or a rubbery mass better suited for Gummi Bears than toast.  Perfect preserves eluded me.

Neither the old-fashioned cookbooks I inherited from my mom nor the new crop of canning guides and web sites were much help.   Most of their recipes relied on commercial pectin and called for specific amounts of sugar and fruit, stated in cups.  All advised checking whether the jam had set by watching it drip off a spoon or cling to a chilled plate — imprecise measures at best for the uninitiated.

Then I ran across Russ Parsons’ advice in the Los Angeles Times this summer and everything began to make sense.  He offered a simple ratio for making small batches of jam using equal weights of sugar and whatever fruit you have on hand.  Because you cook a limited amount of preserves at a time in a non-stick skillet, it’s easy to tell whether it’s ready just by watching the syrupy mixture become thick and glossy as you stir.  Flavors are also fresher.

Parsons still advocates the dripping spoon method of checking for jelling, it’s true, but the technique is beginning to make some sense to me as I make more jam.  Just to be safe, I’ve also tracked down a couple of references for jelling temperatures to compare against the signs of the spoon.

I fare much better now that I employ an instant read thermometer to check my jam. The base line is 220 degrees at sea level and a couple of degrees less for each thousand feet of elevation — or 218 degrees at my house.

I’ve also given up on commercial pectin, which sets too quickly and firmly for me.

No longer do I make dense and sticky jam that I can barely pry out of the jar.  Instead, my jams are soft and smooth, singing of ripe fruit and spice.

Using Parsons’ technique, making jam is no longer a daunting enterprise involving scary vats of scalding hot syrup and high odds of failure.   Small batches are easy to handle and encourage experimentation with flavors.  The colorful jars on my shelves are filled now with the likes of strawberry, rhubarb and cardamom or blackberry, lemon and Asian pear jams. Most recently I’ve been playing with the season’s plums and pluots — a cross between plums and apricots — spiked with freshly grated ginger.

This method of making jam requires little specialized equipment other than a kitchen scale.  Because you’re only cooking a couple of cups at a time, you can avoid the hot water bath processing altogether if you like and just stash your preserves in the fridge.   If you do opt for canning, you don’t need such a large pot of water since you’ll only be doing a few jars at a time.  I’ve downscaled to a tall stock pot with a folding steamer basket in the place of my massive graniteware canning kettle.  A canning funnel is helpful.

Cooking times are reduced, too, because the fruit and sugar sit unattended off the heat for hours after you’ve brought them to a boil.  When you put a couple of cups of the macerated fruit mixture in a non-stick skillet, it only takes 5-10 minutes to get to the jam stage over medium heat.  Even if you cook off several batches, it doesn’t take long.

I’m giving a formal recipe for the pluot and ginger jam here because it’s often easier to follow a step-by-step procedure the first time around.  But feel free to substitute whatever fresh fruit is in season and any flavor accents that appeal to you.

Many fruits, such as plums, contain so much natural pectin — the thickening agent in jams — that you don’t have to worry about them setting up.  Others, such as blackberries, can use a little help from mixing with a small amount of a high-pectin fruit like apples or Asian pears.  It’s actually better if some of your fruit is a little under-ripe because it will contain more pectin and jell easier.

Have fun and let your imagination run free.  Next winter, you’ll  have the flavors of summer sitting on your pantry shelves just when you need them the most.

When temperatures soar and appetites wilt, nothing is more appealing than a salad packed with cool, crisp greens.  Add a little protein and dinner is ready for the table.

This summer, I’m enamored with the pork tenderloin salad with warm strawberry dressing I found in “The Berry Bible,” by Janie Hibler.  Nominated for a James Beard award when it was first published in 2004, the cookbook is one of the books Amazon Encore is bringing back because customer reviews and other sources indicate they were overlooked and under-appreciated when they were first released.

This cookbook is an encyclopedic reference on every variety of berry imaginable, from the Arctic raspberry to the thimbleberry, with recipes for every course from cocktails to dessert.  I’ve never even tasted or seen most of these berries.  Who even knew you could eat the fruit of the manzanita bush?  But I’ve made several batches of the tasty strawberry, rhubarb and cardamom jam.  And I can’t get enough of this memorable salad

With its brilliant colors and intriguing blend of sweet and savory flavors, the salad is impressive enough for company.  Yet it only takes about half an hour to put together.

The tenderloin, rubbed with rosemary and garlic, cooks in 15 to 20 minutes in the oven.  While it’s roasting, you slice the strawberries and prepare the greens and avocado.  When the pork is done, the dressing is quickly made in the roasting pan with the remaining meat juices.  Slice the pork, arrange everything on a platter and dinner is served.

If you’re expecting a really warm day,  you can roast the meat in the cool of the morning, wrap the cooked meat in aluminum foil, and put it in the fridge until dinner.  Reduce the balsamic vinegar in the roasting pan and refrigerate it, too.  When you’re ready to eat,  just pop the foil-wrapped package in a toaster oven to warm for about 10 minutes while you reheat the vinegar and juices, then stir in the strawberries and olive oil. Assemble the salad and enjoy.

The combination of tender pork, balsamic-spiked strawberries, luscious avocado and chilled greens is guaranteed to hit the spot on a sweltering day.