When autumn arrives and the temperature cools, it’s a great time for families to get together and spend more time enjoying delicious home-cooked foods. This season, look for fun ways to include nuts in your favorite recipes or try new recipes to bring some seasonal flavors into your home.

Here are a few tips from Chef Alex Guarnaschelli to inspire you on how to give a nutty twist to your recipes:

• Make nuts part of your seasonal recipes by toasting them in a little warm olive oil over medium heat.  When the nuts are toasted and coated in the oil, stir in any fresh herbs (for example, rosemary or sage) and allow the herbs to gently crisp up and meld with the nuts. Serve as is with a pinch of salt.
• Slow cooking a piece of meat? Add a few nuts to some of the cooking liquid, blend it smooth and pour it back into the rest of the cooking liquid to naturally enrich the flavor and thicken your sauce.
• Need a new vinaigrette? Roast a handful of nuts, walnuts for example, and blend them with 3 parts olive oil and 1 part lemon juice.
• Healthy greens are a great companion to nuts. Try making a salad of chopped rucola with walnuts or dandelion greens and pecans. Radicchio is delicious with almonds and apples. Using nuts can easily expand your salad horizon.

Start off by trying this recipe for a walnut-bleu date vinaigrette salad.