General way of passing make options?

Hi all, I'm curious if there is a general way to pass options to the underlying make(1) (assuming the build phase actually uses make) call? I ask because I use an Intel Core 2 Duo, and if the Makefile allows it, I'd like to pass -j<n> to make when I build. (I realise not every Makefile behaves properly with this option, but I'm willing to live with fiddling with that.) Adding a variant like: variant fast_build { build.target -j2 all } To the build seems to work, but I'm not sure that's The Right Solution. Any suggestions? Thank you. -Denis