Last-minute strategy bears fruit

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Try to find the small serrano peppers, which taste so good in combination with fruit, to use for this salsa. If you can’t, jalapenos are an acceptable substitute. And don’t hesitate to add more sugar, lime juice, rum or minced pepper, to your taste.

Combine the minced orange zest, minced ginger, sugar and water in a small, nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, chop the cranberries finely in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Transfer cranberries to a nonreactive bowl. Cook the sugar mixture until very thick and syrupy, about 5 minutes. Pour over cranberries, using a rubber spatula to scrape every bit. Add minced peppers, salt, cilantro, lime juice and rum. Mix well. Taste and adjust sugar if necessary. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. May be made up to a week ahead.

Per serving: 57 calories, trace of fat, no cholesterol, 25 milligrams sodium.

It might be time to come clean. Thanksgiving is a mere four days away and I haven’t even begun to think about the meal I will serve the 15 people who plan to gather around our dining room table, card table and weird piece of outdoor furniture that we will disguise with a tablecloth.

Our refrigerator holds geriatric leftovers, and our turkey is still sitting in a case at the market.

It’s true. After more than 20 years of advising readers to think ahead, freeze gravy, clear space for buckets of brine, blanch vegetables and store rolled pie dough between sheets of wax paper, I’ve come up with a far better plan.

I now cook the entire meal on Thursday.

This strategy actually works out quite well. Allow me to walk you through it. I have a great recipe for the turkey, which goes like this: I put it in the oven. And then, about four hours later, I take it out.

I used to fuss more. I brined turkeys for years, with reasonable success. (One did come out a bit springy and salty, rather like an avian canned ham.) Then, I was a big proponent of the “roast upside down” method that requires an adjustable V-shaped rack and a do-or-die moment when you have to flip the hot bird halfway through without injury or disaster.

In recent years, I’ve treated the turkey like a chicken, rubbing some salt on the skin and letting it air-dry in the fridge. The last way is easiest, so I like it best.

My secret to mashed potatoes? I peel them, boil them and mash them with more butter and salt than anyone realizes. I did go through the regrettable early-1990s roasted garlic craze. One year, to everyone’s consternation, I mashed a couple of turnips into the potatoes. Never again.

The dressing will take a bit more time. The bread will need to dry out in the oven as I chop onions and celery and then saute them in my largest skillet with herbs, garlic and more butter and salt than anyone realizes.

I will roast sweet potatoes and mash them up in a baking dish with all the other ingredients (brown sugar, vanilla, nutmeg) to make them taste like dessert. Oh, and butter.

Kids will wander into the kitchen and ask to help, which means they get to snack on the sweet potatoes and leftover dressing. I’ll put them to work trimming and tailing green beans and halving Brussels sprouts. Years ago, I gave up the old family tradition of ripping my fingers to shreds peeling chestnuts for the Brussels sprouts and haven’t regretted it once.

The last order of business will be cranberry relish. Like every family, we have our own version (ours contains lots of ginger, cilantro and serrano peppers) but we always serve a can of the gelled stuff for unprepared guests.

Then it’s time to clean up the kitchen. We’ll have plenty of time to watch TV, take a walk or throw a Frisbee in the backyard.

Our friends will come with the desserts I’ve cannily outsourced to them, and there will be a last-minute rush as beans are boiled and the pan of turkey drippings gets whisked into gravy. (My secret, alas, is a glug of cream.)

Then we’ll sit down, and the food will all look a little plain, very unlike the tricked-up dishes I’ve proposed as a food writer in years past. (One year I actually suggested readers fill roasted baby pumpkins with risotto. Can you imagine?)

This meal may look plain but, of course, it won’t be. The taste of Thanksgiving emerges from the way the components come together on the plate, just as the spirit of the holiday lies in the way the people come together around the table. It can and should be as much of a joy to prepare this meal as to consume it.

For that, I give thanks.