Doerfer - Going Solo in the Kitchen

To my wonderful children ,
Joanna and Andrew Doerfer

Many thanks to my skillful editors, Kathy Zuckerman and Judith Jones, and to all the other creative people at Knopf who made this book possible.

This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc .

Copyright 1995 by Jane Doerfer
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doerfer, Jane.
Going solo in the kitchen / by Jane Doerfer. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-94645-9
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-375-70393-5
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-679-42486-4
1. Cookery for one. I. Title.
TX652.D59 1995
641.561dc20 94-38776 CIP

v3.1

I cook for myself because I like to eat well. I also want to prepare economical meals that are good for me and are centered around seasonal food. Its as simple as that.

Your reasons for solo cooking might be quite different. Maybe youre bored with eating take-out every night, or perhaps youre recently divorced or widowedor on a budget. We may begin solo cooking for different reasons, but we end up with the same reality: Nothing tastes quite as good as a meal youve thought about and taken the time to prepare and enjoy. By cooking at home, you feed both your psyche and palate.

Actually, cooking for yourself isnt difficultlike anything else, it just sounds difficult if you havent mastered the basics. Solo cooking is really much easier than cooking for others: It takes far less time, is less costly, and is less emotionally charged. (If your food doesnt come out well, youre the only one who knows it.) Its probably one of the few arenas in your life where you are totally in control. You can eat when and what you like every night. (When asparagus is in season, and if youre an asparagus freak, you can savor it until your skin turns green.) If youre in the mood for smoked salmon, or a T-bone steakprohibitively expensive if purchased in quantitywhen youre buying for one theyre the same price as a container of Chinese take-out or a big deli sandwich.

And, if youre particular about your health, cooking is just good sense because you know exactly what youre putting in your body. Its a shame to spend hours keeping in shape, and then blow it all in five minutes at the fast-food counter. Most prepared foods get their flavor from fats and sugarand are loaded with preservatives. Even if youre buying healthful convenience foods, they always taste the same.

The first step in cooking solo is to make a commitment to mastering the mechanics: deciding your menus, doing the shopping, learning to store food without wasting half of it, and preparing the meals. Even if youre an experienced cook, you may need to reframe the way you operateand you may need to buy a new set of smaller cooking utensils. However, now that youve purchased this book, the hardest part is over: You no longer have to convert a recipe designed for several persons down to proportions suitable for one.

Ive been cooking for myself for several years. I also teach other people how to cook at my Going Solo in the Kitchen cooking school. In the process, Ive learned exactly which shortcuts and techniques make life easier when youre cooking alone. In the following chapters Ill describe the best ways to make shopping and storage work for you, explain tips for freezing food, and give you more than 350 recipes for all kinds of flavorful foodsincluding ethnic and vegetarian specialtiesas well as some of those old-fashioned favorites, such as roast chicken or pot roast, that you may crave but hesitate to cook for one.

Like many of you, I have a busy schedule. I may enjoy cooking, but that doesnt mean that I want to spend hours in the kitchen. As I believe that the best everyday food is simple food, the majority of the recipes in this book can be prepared in fewer than 30 minutesmany in under 20 minutes. Ive included several meals-in-one and numerous master recipes that can be made on the weekend and recycled into new-tasting meals during the week. Ive also given you recipes for a few breads (such as biscuits), nonalcoholic fruit drinks (great in the afternoon, after work), and desserts that are delicious and use up small amounts of fruits that otherwise might spoil. I suggest ingredients that are readily available in most supermarkets, no matter where you live. Ive also given you some discretion in the portions, so that you can select recipes and adjust amounts depending upon your appetite.

My style of cooking is based on the best of whats seasonally availablelots of vegetables and herbsand little fat. For many years I was Horticulture magazines food columnist. Instead of writing for cooks, I was developing recipes for gardenerswhose main concern was using up the bounty they had produced. This experience convinced me that the very best-tasting flavors originate with fresh vegetables and herbs. It may take a few more minutes to chop raw ingredients, but you always feel good when your food gets its flavor from the earth, not the lard bucket.

I enjoy cooking for myself. I find it a joyous, satisfying experience. I hope that you will too.

You dont need a lot of utensils or gadgets to cook well for yourself. But your pots and pans should be the right scale for small-portion cookingand they should be durable. If youre equipping a kitchen for the first time, its tempting to buy a prepackaged set of pots and call it a day. Sometimes these sets are just what you need (because theyre frequently the smaller sizes)other times, theyre too large in scale to be practical for a solo cook. Taking the time to find exactly what you want will make the mechanics of cooking much easier in the long run.

I have found that cooking in correct-sized pots is far more critical when you are cooking small portions than when you are cooking in quantity. If youre braising a small amount of chicken and vegetables, for example, the flavor of the sauce will be more concentrated when you cook it in a smaller casserole than when you make do with a larger one. This doesnt mean you should rush out and buy the smallest pans on the market. The very smallest sizes, such as 6-inch frying pans or 1-quart pots, are almost too small to be truly useful.

Three sizes of pots that are particularly handy for solo cooks are:

A 2-quart stove-top and ovenproof casserole with a lid

An 812-inch skillet

A 9-inch oval au gratin baking dish

Heavy, durable equipment is always important when youre cooking, but its particularly significant when youre trying to cook with less fat. In a lightweight pan, foods will tend to burn and scorch as the pan will have a greater number of hot spots than a heavier pan. For panfrying, some cooks swear by stainless-steel utensils with a core of aluminum on the bottom; others opt for copper lined with tinor their treasured old cast-iron skillets. (Some of the inexpensive cast-iron skillets imported from the Far East have small surface pitting and cannot be seasoned correctly so that food wont stick.) Aluminum is the least versatile choice because it reacts with acids. With the exception of the baked goods, all of the recipes in this book were cooked in nonreactive pans (stainless steel or enamel).