Deborah Madison - What We Eat When We Eat Alone: Stories and 100 Recipes

For a number of years we traveled frequently to Mediterranean countries at the invitation of Oldways Preservation and Trust. During these eye-openingand mouth-openingjourneys, we met many producers and tasted their olive oils, wine, ouzo, breads, cheeses, and countless other foods made according to ancient ways. There were enough chefs, importers, scholars, and food writers to fill a couple of buses on each of these trips, and inevitably there were long rides across dry lands that afforded hours for conversation. On one of those trips, artist Patrick McFarlin found his amusement not in watching a blindfolded camel in a Tunisian village pulling a stone over rancid olives to press a very singular-tasting oil, but in asking people what they cooked for themselves when they ate alone.

I started to inquire into the habits of other peoples private culinary lives on these trips, Patrick explains.The research was entirely unscientific. I simply asked people about their behind-closed-doors food practices. Some were ordinary, some quirky, and others credible and civilized.

People rolled into Patricks research inquiries as if they were on an afternoon televised exposthrowing open the secrets of their cloistered cupboards and refrigerators.

The stories people had stashed up their sleeves were so surprising that we continued asking others on a regular basis what they eat when they eat aloneand writing down their answers. What emerged is a portrait of human behavior sprung free from conventions, a secret life of consumption born out of the temporary freedomor burden, for someof being alone. There are foods that are so utterly idiosyncratic that they would never, ever, be shared with another, and there are some very ambitious undertakings. I pour sardine juice onto cottage cheese while standing on one foot in front of the refrigerator, not putting down the other foot because theres been a meat leak from the vegetable drawer, said one shamelessly, while another admitted to eating while lying on the couch with a newspaper spread over the chest to catch any drips. But there are lots of meals cobbled together during football halftimes that have real possibilities, dishes that can be worked into recipes for tasty and fairly easy-to-make everyday kinds of foods.

Even after our travels, people have continued to speak to us with enthusiasm and candor about their exploits in the realm of cooking for one. Their revelations have made us see how many possibilities there are for feeding ourselves, possibilities that lie well outside the borders of what usually passes for normal, let alone right. When we eat alone we often break all the rules surrounding not only what to eat but when to eat and even where. And this is true regardless of what we know about cooking or about what makes a proper meal. As writer Fran McCullough says, solo meals can be all corn and tomatoes if thats what you like. Solo meals are different, surprising, and they can also be funny, but sometimes predictable.

Some men cook exceptionally well for themselvesroasting meats, opening fine bottles of wine as well as a book, and enjoying their own company, while others are happy eating a sandwich at the kitchen counter. Women, who especially enjoy being liberated from the routine of cooking for others, often see solo dining as an opportunity to eat not only what they want (a bowl of oatmeal with fleur de sel says one who is otherwise quite a sophisticated cook), but whenever and wherever. Do we eat on the couch or set a proper place for ourselves? Sip soup at our computers or wander around talking on the phone while eating? We do all of these things and more when theres no one watching and expecting us to do otherwise.

Theres tremendous variety in the foods we turn to when were alonesnacks, old standbys, adventurous dishes, expensive cuts of meat, or the single vegetable menu. But regardless of the particulars, the minute we include even one other person at the table, everything changes. Our cooking can become more joyful and exuberant, or it can become freighted with such things as the hope of seduction, intentions to nourish, annoyance about having to cook or clean up, and all the other emotions, good and less so, associated with cooking and feeding others.

What We Eat When We Eat Alone is hardly meant to be a definitive study of human behavior. Rather, weve simply been chatting with friends and strangers about the artor choreof feeding ourselves. The solo eating were thinking about doesnt have to do with dashing bachelors and martini suppers, but with any of us who take meals alone, who have times when we cook and eat without another person in mind. We have interviewed people who share our worldsother cooks, farmers, artists, writersas well as random others weve sat next to at a concert or on a bus to the airport, our friends elderly parents or their twenty-year-olds, for age is no barrier to the need for the occasional solo meal.

After cooking many of the dishes people said they made for themselvesand taking some liberties with themweve concluded that what most people want is to be involved in preparing their meals, but to a limited extent only. And this is true whether they are food professionals or work at something else entirely. While some true food maniacs are delighted to spend a few hours making sausage for themselves or boning and stuffing a chicken, most of us want a much smaller investment of time when it comes to dinner. Were simply not going to make lasagna from scratch, as appealing as homemade lasagna might be, but we will happily wash, chop, and cook somethingas long as it doesnt go on too long. And its quite impressive what you can accomplish in a short time without resorting to frozen or processed foods, microwaves, or takeout. After all, when its just for one person, not four or six, theres that much less to do.

Cooking for one, it turns out, is a lot of fun, because recipes suggest rather than dictate, and thats because cooking for oneself is really about cooking by eye, deciding how much of this or that ingredient pleases you, or if you want to build in leftovers or not. We suspect that if you want to undertake a particular dish using special ingredients and techniques and all, you will go to a reliable cookbook to find out how. But here, measurements need not always be exact and the success of a recipe doesnt depend on too much precision or adherence to someone elses standards. More than ever, the specific shapes these recipes take ultimately depend on your likes, dislikes, and the state of your pantry.

Think about short pasta with cauliflower for example. You might ask yourself, for starters, do you love, or even like, cauliflower? Do you want only a small amount of pasta in proportion to the vegetable or the other way around? Do you eat like a bird or feed like a lion? Avoid oil or embrace it? I happen to love a lot of cauliflower and want just a few noodles for textural contrast when I make this dish, but you might want a full 4-ounce serving of pasta decorated with just a few cauliflower tidbits. Both are entirely legitimate approaches, and when youre alone in your kitchen, theres no need to explain or defend the choices youve made.