I have just one word for you, Lucy.
Prep.
Dividing up the cooking tasks makes the final preparation quicker and easier.
To wit:
Take a couple of large eggplants. Cut off the ends. Slice into ½-inch rounds. Take two cookie sheets, line them with parchment paper. Place the rounds on sheets. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Both sides.
Bake at 375 degrees for around 20 minutes, flipping rounds once and switching cookie sheets at 10 minutes, top and bottom in the oven.
You can use the cooled and stored rounds for all sorts of things: Parmesan, baba ganoush, stuffing.
You can also divide the eggplants in half the long way and then roast. Now you can go Google “Ottam eggplant.” Enjoy.
To wit:
Take three or four kinds of winter squash. Cut them up any way you want. Scoop out the seeds. Roast them on parchment-lined cookie sheets at 400 degrees until they are pierced easily with a knife.
You can use the cooled squash pulp for soup, filling, stuffing, side dish. Enjoy.
To wit:
Make polenta the real way (course ground cornmeal cooked slowly in chicken stock). When cooked, pour it on a parchment-lined cookie sheet to cool. After a night in the fridge, cut the polenta into squares and freeze. Then you take a square out when you want to fry it up nice and crispy, and use as a base for anything wet and hot. Enjoy.
Funny aside, here’s what my wife said when I told her what I was writing about this week:
“It still doesn’t reduce the number of dishes I have to wash!”
— LOU
I am surprised you didn’t mention turkey with the big day coming up and all. What kind of “prep” did you do for that?
Cooked four turkeys? Made turkey stock? Made three gallons of turkey gravy? Come on, Lou, don’t lie. How many turkeys are you cooking this year?
I have a coupon you can have. Seven bucks off a turkey! You know you want it. Turkey, Lou. Turkey!
— LUCY
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers. Even to those who just came across this by mistake.