It isn't fair.
You like to cook. You enjoy reading cookbooks and especially the food section of your local newspaper. But you live alone, and all the recipes you see are meant for at least four people, sometimes six.
It just isn't fair.
So today I made food for solo eaters, for those who cook and dine alone. And if you live with a significant other, family or roommates, you can just double the recipes _ or quadruple them, if need be.
All of the five dishes I made were excellent _ I wouldn't mention them if they weren't. But one, I will admit, really caught my eye.
I made a mini loaf of Irish soda bread.
Loaves of bread are not the kind of thing that solo diners cook; they involve too much time, effort and energy, and when you're done you have so much bread that half of it is bound to go stale.
But this small loaf is just the right size for one (it makes four servings, so you can enjoy it over several meals). And you can make the whole thing, from start to finish, in only about 50 minutes.
To look at it another way, I could make 20 of these loaves, one after the other, in the same time it takes me to make my other favorite kind of bread.
Best of all, it tastes amazing; I'm afraid I had two of those four servings at one sitting, and I would have had more but a couple of other people were sharing it with me. It's pleasantly dense (no yeast), subtly sweet and studded delightfully with raisins, all under a gorgeous golden crust.
If the soda bread was the most fun, and frankly most amazing, of the dishes I made, the most fulfilling was Chicken Under a Brick. It is a dish that is sometimes served at restaurants, or a version of it is, that you can easily make at home _ for just one, if you like.
Two simple restaurant tricks are used to make it. The first makes the chicken's skin crisp: It is pressed down on a hot skillet as it cooks. You could use bricks, of course, as the name implies, but I just wrapped foil around the bottom of a heavy cast-iron pan and used that.
The other restaurant trick comes after the chicken is done. You make a very simple pan sauce by reducing first wine and then chicken stock in the hot pan, dissolving all of the flavorful bits that are stuck to it. The sauce is fairly intense, but because it incorporates the flavor of the ingredients in the pan, it is a perfectly compliment to the chicken.
The next dish for one, a Monte Cristo sandwich, is essentially a turkey-and-cheese sandwich on two slices of savory french toast.
Dipping bread in a mixture of egg yolk and milk and then griddling it always makes it taste better, and the rich, custardy flavor goes particularly well with turkey and a mildly assertive cheese (I used havarti, but it would be just as good with gouda or muenster).
One additional advantage is that the cheese melts a bit while you cook the bread, so you get an extra hit of gooeyness, which only makes a memorable sandwich even better.
My next dish was a Five-Minute Vegetarian Burrito Bowl, which is something of a misnomer. It does indeed take only five minutes to make, as long as you already have brown rice cooked and ready to go. Otherwise, it takes 50 minutes _ and you can make a mini loaf of Irish soda bread in 50 minutes.
As it happens, I was prepared. I made some brown rice the day before and refrigerated it so it would be ready when I wanted to make the Sort-Of-Five Minute Vegetarian Burrito Bowl.
The dish is just rice and beans with a Tex-Mex, seemingly healthful twist. Into the brown rice, you mix black beans, salsa, Greek yogurt and shredded cheddar cheese. Microwave it for 45 seconds and you have an unexpectedly satisfying meal.
I topped mine with chunks of avocado for an extra thrill.
My final dish for one was a delightful pasta salad, Orecchiette with Mixed Greens and Goat Cheese. It, too, came together remarkably quickly and was equally remarkably satisfying.
The hot orecchiette (it's an ear-shaped pasta) is mixed with lettuce, which wilts a little, but what makes this dish soar are the other ingredients: creamy goat cheese, piquant sun-dried tomatoes and a light sprinkling of Parmesan for salty sass.
It's fresh and fun. Sometimes, dining by yourself can be its own reward.
