Organise a simple meal: everything arrives hot at the same time

✅ The essentials

Cooking is quick to learn. Getting the main dish and the side to the table hot at the same time is what takes a little organisation. The solution fits in one rule: you start with what takes the longest, and what is quick gets done at the end, while the rest finishes.

🍳 How to do it

1. Note the time for each element: the starch, the meat or fish, the vegetables.
2. Start with what takes the longest, often the oven or the starch, and while it cooks on its own, prepare the rest.
3. What reheats well, like a sauce, a gratin or a stew, can be made ahead. What reheats badly, like seared meat, fish or pasta, is done last.
4. Keep warm what is waiting: the oven at 80 °C (175 °F), a covered dish, or the pot with its lid off the heat.
5. Warm the plates for a minute in the oven or under hot water. A dish served on a cold plate goes cold in thirty seconds.

⏱️ How long it takes

Two minutes of thinking before you start, and an evening without running.

🩹 If it goes wrong

The rice is ready and the meat is not: lid on the rice, off the heat, it holds ten minutes without losing anything. The meat is ready first: it rests anyway, covered, and that is even better for it. The vegetables are cold: one minute in a pan with a knob of butter.

🍽️ Make it tonight

Marinated chicken with rice: the rice goes on first, the chicken cooks during the twelve minutes the rice is covered, and everything arrives together.