Answer: b. Preparing the ingredients and then cooking each dish separately will add greatly to your total cooking time. It's often possible to work on preparations for a vegetable dish while the meat or fish dish is marinating. Also, two recipes will often use a number of the same vegetables (in this case, garlic and ginger) and it just makes more sense to get your chopping and mincing completed in one go-round. 

Preparing the vegetables together also comes in handy in the case of recipes calling for odd amounts. For example, if a recipe for pineapple chicken calls for half a green pepper, you can store the remaining half in the refrigerator, or you can add it to your vegetable dish. 

<Back to the Quiz>