Me, myself & I

Make cooking for one an adventure

WHEN DETERMINING whether cooking solo is considered a pleasure or a chore, a quick canvass among colleagues produced some predictable responses. A sliced tomato on buttered bread was the limit of one person’s endeavours when faced with an evening to themselves; another would stretch to cheese on toast if they had the energy. Many would rather scrape together the remnants of the fridge than set about constructing a meal from scratch.

In contrast to the effort we go to when guests are coming round (pull out the recipe books; set the table; load up the plates with a well-thought-out menu), cooking for one, says the food writer Signe Johansen, ‘just isn’t seen as terribly worthwhile’. It’s an outlook she is eager to overturn with her new book, Solo: The Joy of Cooking for One, a (delicious) manifesto on the plus points of getting into the kitchen with only yourself to feed. It’s good for the body and for the mind, she argues; it’s both therapeutic and liberating – and there’s always the simple thrill of whacking things on toast. ‘I have always cooked for myself because I am naturally greedy,’ Johansen tells me. ‘But I’m also curious, and constantly thinking of ideas or testing recipes.’

An only child, she grew up in Norway and spent a great deal of time at her grandparents’ farm on the west coast, where they instilled in her the importance of using up leftovers. This, perhaps, is the simplest approach to constructing a meal for one, and many of Johansen’s recipes propose ideas for transforming extra portions of roast meat, say (not to mention the rest of a tub of ricotta, or the remaining half of an avocado), into a dish for the next day.

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