The menu sounds like it could be time consuming but it wasn’t. We had Petrale Sole tacos with avocado sauce and lemon risotto cakes with fresh cherry tomato salsa. From start to finish, it was on the table in under 30 minutes. First I made the avocado sauce, cleaned the food processor, and put it away, all in less than 5 minutes. Next I made the salsa, again in less than 5 minutes. I shaped the leftover lemon risotto into balls, melted better in a frying pan, and warmed the tortillas in a second frying pan, all while my handy toaster oven was heating up. I cooked the cakes and set them, along with the hot tortillas, into the warmed toaster oven, melted butter in the bigger of the frying pans and sprinkled the fish with seasoned (just salt and pepper) flour that I keep in a large metal shaker. When the butter was melted and very hot, I added the three fish filets, cooked them for 2 minutes, turned them over, and cooked them for 2 minutes more; I added a big squeeze of lemon juice about a minute before they were done. At this point, barely 15 minutes had passed. Next, I put a risotto cake on each plate, spooned some tomato salsa over it, added the tortillas, set a fish filet on each one and topped it with avocado sauce, and that was it, dinner for three. Had we wanted dessert, which we didn’t, there was a ripe honeydew melon on the counter.

It took a tiny bit of thinking ahead, in that the night before I made more risotto than we needed for dinner and I bought enough fish for two meals, not one. But that was it. No stress, no last-minute trips to the store, no convenience foods, except for the tortillas. I draw the line at making my own tortillas.