Top it with the relish before serving and watch your friends enjoy one of the most festive, colorful, and delicious rice dishes I know. The make-ahead nature of this Halloween potluck idea lets you spend less time in the kitchen and more time trick-or-treating. When you’re ready, just slice and bake the tricolor treats. (I highly advise getting an olive pitter.) Once at your destination, drain the feta, sprinkle it atop the rice, and broil it. Get a head start on these buttery cookies by shaping and chilling the homemade dough ahead of time. Before setting out, bake the rice for about half an hour, during which time you make the sweet, tangy, herby, and bright relish. It complements meat but is vegetarian on its own, and when timed right is easy to serve piping hot instead of lukewarm, which is the fate of most dishes at a potluck. Across cultures and age groups, most everyone loves rice. Perfect for any kind of dinner, it’s a particularly elegant addition to a potluck for several reasons. When looking for what to take to a small, “we’re all vaxxed” reunion, I discovered Yotam Ottolenghi’s Baked Minty Rice with Feta and Pomegranate Relish. And that brings me to the subject of my second You’ve Got Time for This, the column in which I scour the archives of Bon Appétit and Epicurious looking for those recipes where the payoff outpaces the effort.

Pot luck dishes