The classic American-style sweet potato casserole is a holiday staple. It’s also sweet enough to be dessert. With added sugar and a finishing layer of broiled marshmallows, it can be a cloying dish that obscures the natural flavor of sweet potatoes.

In this recipe from our cookbook “Milk Street 365: The All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year,” we use two Middle Eastern pantry staples to boost the flavor of sweet potatoes. First, we coat the potato wedges with nutty tahini, cornstarch and za’atar, a seed and spice blend known for its balance of tangy, savory, earthy and herbal notes.

Brussels sprouts: Green nuggets, caramelized to a sweet-salty fare-thee-well; classic side dish; go-to appetizer. Credit David Chang of Momofuku for catapulting these tiny cabbages to menu-star status, ubiquitous as French fries or chicken wings in bars and restaurants across the land.

The Brussels sprouts we find in our farmers markets and co-ops now are lighter and tastier versions of the sprouts that came before them. Back in the 1990s, a Dutch scientist identified the chemical compounds that made Brussels sprouts bitter and set agronomists on a path to breed them into their sweeter selves.