Serve everything at room temperature, and serve one hot dish.

Jennifer Rubell: Yeah well I have the timing silver bullet which is such an easy, obvious trick that it’s kind of life altering.  It was life altering for me when I realized it.  You can serve everything at room temperature and serve one dish hot.  And it means that everything will be ready.  And then that one dish that has to be hot, when it’s ready the meal is served.  And in order to do that, you just need to make sure to conceptualize the meal properly.  So you can’t serve a meal where you have mashed potatoes, and steak, and you know, two other things that are disgusting when they’re cold and feel like those can be at room temperature.  Room temperature mashed potatoes are really dodgy.  But if you . . .  Usually what I’ll do is I’ll have a few different vegetables, or grains, or pasta or whatever.  And then I’ll have the protein – whether it’s meat or chicken or whatever – cooked hot.  The other way to get the timing right is to cook a lot of things in one pan.  And I love cooking in the oven when I’m entertaining because then the whole thing is in the oven, on its way.  People come and everything you’ve had to do is done and all you have to do is pull it out of the oven.  Well you can get a lot in there.  You can . . .  I never roast a piece of meat or chicken without throwing in some potatoes, and some other root vegetables, and almost having . . . practically having a whole meal in the oven.

Recorded on 12/13/07