Blue cheese lovers, this one’s for you. A zippy sherry vinegar-based dressing is emulsified with a generous amount of richly intense blue cheese. While this dressing might be too heavy and overpowering for a romaine or butter lettuce, it’s the perfect foil for bitter, crisp radicchio. Sweet chunks of roasted squash and bits of fragrant rosemary bring this cozy, perfect-for-fall salad together. Toasted hazelnuts give crunch, thin slivers of shallot offer freshness, and if you’re craving even more blue cheese, go ahead and finish the salad with a few salty crumbles.

This recipe is endlessly adaptable. Any crisp, slightly bitter radicchio will do the trick. And if another squash catches your eye at the grocery store, butternut can be swapped out for delicata, acorn, or even roasted chunks of sweet potato. Hazelnuts bring their own fatty depth, but walnuts, pecans, or even almonds would stand in nicely. While blue cheese is what gives this salad its oomph, another soft, rich cheese would also be lovely if you’re not a fan of the funk. Robiola, goat cheese, or brie would lead you to a similarly glossy, rich vinaigrette. Once it comes time to plate, use your hands to carefully pile the salad into a tall, centerpiece-worthy plate of greens.

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For those uninitiated with the magic of Paris-Brest, let us enlighten you. It is a classic French dessert created in the early 20th century to commemorate the bicycle race connecting Paris and Brest. It’s traditionally composed of a giant wreath made of pâte à choux (the same dough used to make eclairs and cream puffs) and a praline crème mousseline. The ring bakes and expands dramatically in the oven; once it’s removed and cooled completely, the ring is sliced in half and filled with a light and fluffy cream. It’s a showstopping dessert that can’t help but take center stage. This version, an ode to the classic, imbues it with notes of ripe banana and salty-sweet candied nuts for a fun take on banana pudding.

The dessert is essentially three separate recipes: The first, the choux, is a simple yet hardworking dough that gets cooked both on the stovetop and in the oven. The initial stovetop cooking step helps the dough puff in the oven, so don’t skip it. And piping the dough into connected puffs in lieu of one continuous ring allows guests to pull off just the right amount with ease. The banana cream filling gets its bold flavor by steeping the peels (yes, the peels!) in milk before turning it into a pastry cream and lightening it with whipped cream, a concoction known as diplomat cream. To finish it off, candied nuts—made by coating pecans in whipped egg white and sugar, then baking them until crisp—adds a welcomed crunch. (But feel free to use 1 cup store-bought candied nuts to make life easier.) It’s no doubt a project, but you can make one or all of the components at least a day before to get ahead.