To prepare food faster just make it thinner

 

 

Preserved Lemons

 

Preserved lemons are a Middle Eastern food ingredient. A typical recipe like one in the New York Times calls for slicing them part through in quarters lengthwise, as shown above, and packing them with salt in jars. But then you have to plan ahead and wait for an entire month. I never got around to trying that recipe.

 

But then I saw another one in a book from 2023 by Bee Wilson titled The Secret of Cooking. Her recipe instead calls for cutting the lemons paper thin using the slicer disk on a food processor. And they will be ready in a day.

 

 

 

Griddled Flatbreads

 

Many cultures long have quickly cooked flatbreads on griddles, like the corn tortilla shown above. There also are wheat flour tortillas (called piadina in Italy), and Indian chapatis (made from whole-wheat flour). Other grains are used elsewhere. In Brittany there are crepes made from buckwheat. In Scotland there are oatcakes. On the Mediterranean coast there are chickpea flour cakes called Socca in Nice. And In Norway there is lefse made with potatoes.

 

 

 

 

Schnitzel and its cousins

 

A common entrée is meat pounded thin, breaded, and fried. The classic Austrian one from veal is a Wiener schnitzel. The Israeli variant uses turkey. The Texas beef version is a Chicken-Fried Steak. The midwestern Pork Tenderloin is a deep-fried version served as a sandwich. And the chicken version is called a paillard.    

 

Images of cut and salted lemons, a tortilla, and schnitzel all came from Wikimedia Commons.