You probably love autumn. All those gorgeous colors. That crisp chill and aroma of apples in the air.

Fine. I accept that. But I have come to dread September. And by October, I’m really depressed.

Why? Frankly, it has nothing to do with the hint of winter or raking the leaves. It has to do with food. Not just any food, mind you. But the food prepared by David Ziff, a chef who spends summers in Maine and returns to the Upper East Side of Manhattan with the first frost.

In fairness to Chef Ziff, he does have a demanding catering business in New York City. So he has to go back. But for me, this is an annual culinary trauma. Ziff does not formally work when he is in Maine in the summer. He simply cooks. And I eat. He cooks some more. I eat some more. And we are both happy. It’s a foodie relationship built on mutual fixation on taste sensation.

And, frankly, it’s also about Maine.

At their cabin overlooking Penobscot Bay in Castine, Ziff and his business and life partner Alan Bell have summer dinner parties nearly every night. The menu capitalizes on the fresh local products in Maine – shellfish, potatoes, berries, big fat tomatoes. “I was born to live in Maine,” Ziff told me once. And he and Bell were born to eat here too. If it’s just the two of them, it’s still a dinner party. If it’s more people, it is a bonanza. If I can’t make the evening event, I go earlier in the day and sit on a stool in the kitchen and watch Ziff prepare food.

One day this summer, he made lobster deviled eggs. That morning, he bought organic eggs from Under Hill Farm in Blue Hill and lobster from a local fisherman. Ziff cooked the lobster for about six minutes and tossed it into the sink, picked the meat out of it, and stuffed the hard-boiled eggs.

“I like to undercook lobster,” he said. “It’s more tender that way. Who wants to play hockey with lobster? It’s always overcooked. That old maxim of cooking fish until it flakes? That’s basically when you throw it away. If it flakes, it’s overcooked.”

When Ziff was done with the eggs, he began making crab quesadillas. He had been to Northern Bay Market in Penobscot to buy crab. “I always ask to taste the crab before I buy it,” he said. “If it’s a few days old, it’s garbage.”

Ziff, who is not a proponent of measuring implements, dumped a pound of fresh meat into a bowl, plopped mayonnaise on top, threw in sea salt, a diced onion and grated Monterey jack cheese with jalapenos. Then he stuffed flour tortillas with the mixture. When it was time for dinner, he would cook each one in an iron pan on the stove.

With dinner hours away, I wondered if the quesadillas would get soggy.

“No,” he said. “Look, I’m going to do it now. I’m a caterer. I prep everything. I don’t want to work when my friends are here.”

One day, when we were at a market together in Blue Hill, Ziff took a bite of raw scallop. The woman behind him blanched, and Ziff quickly explained that he wanted to find out if the shellfish was as fresh as it looked, and that meant getting up close and personal. Tasting, smelling, nudging, poking and squeezing. These are the tricks of Ziff’s trade.

For me, the relationship I have with Ziff is also about entr?e. I’m not just talking about the main course of a meal – although, believe me, you don’t want to miss a Ziff entr?e. What I really mean by entr?e is the access Ziff gives me to understanding the preparation, combinations, and presentations of food. We care about food. We talk about food. And the payoff comes in sharing a meal, with a bottle of wine, good friends and lively conversation.

Now that it’s October, I have dinner parties without Ziff. As far as I am concerned, they are bland. The guests are nice enough. The food is good enough. But the other night, I cleared the table in the dining room and found myself alone in the kitchen. I was lonely. I called Ziff the next morning in New York City.

“I made a great salad last night,” I complained. “I layered lettuce, arugula, juicy tomatoes, green onions, fresh green and yellow beans and topped it with blueberries and truffle oil. You missed it. I missed you. When are you coming back to Maine?”

Ziff was in the midst of preparing for a major catering job in the Hamptons but he had been thinking about Maine, too.

“We can’t wait to get back there,” he said. “Whadya serve for the main course?”