COPYRIGHT

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in the Netherlands by Uitgeverij Podium 2016

First published in Great Britain by HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Copyright © Janneke Vreugdenhil 2017

English translation © Colleen Higgins 2017

Janneke Vreugdenhil asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978-0-00-825667-8

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008256685

Version 2017-11-30

Photographs by Floortje van Essen-Ingen Housz

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

DEDICATION

For me, myself and I

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

7 tips for the solo chef

Your very own golden pantry

QUICK FIX

A kind of pisto Manchego

Spicy lamb pittas with hummus & garlicky yoghurt

Miso soup with noodles, shiitake mushrooms, spinach & an egg

Ridiculously easy spaghetti caprese

Frittata with red onion, baby kale & goat’s cheese

Griddled white tuna with cucumber, avocado & ginger salad

Tagliatelle with prawns & smoky whisky–tomato sauce

Lemon couscous with salmon & cherry tomatoes

Salad of butter beans, tinned tuna & shaved fennel

Good old steak sandwich

SMART COOKING

Baked sweet potato with olives, feta & chilli

Sweet potato soup with coconut & fresh coriander

Soft polenta with mushrooms & spinach

Polenta pizza with blistered cherry tomatoes & anchovies

Mash with baby kale & chorizo

Patatas a lo pobre

Warm lentil salad with grilled goat’s cheese

Spicy lentil soup with yoghurt & rocket

Cod in ginger–tomato sauce with gremolata & rice

Best-ever fried rice

Chinese egg noodles with steak & oyster sauce

Cold noodle salad with cucumber & sashimi salmon

NETFLIX DINNER

Quinotto with fennel, almonds & avocado

Gnocchi with broad beans, brown butter & crispy sage

Quick aubergine & lamb curry with warm naan

Pasta aglio olio my way

Green curry with chicken & peas

Warm salad of baby potatoes & peppered mackerel

Spaghetti with cherry tomatoes, nutmeg & ricotta

Orecchiette with Tenderstem broccoli, anchovies & fennel seed

Courgette soup with tarragon

Bowl of rice with Chinesey vegetables

FREEZE YOUR FAVOURITES

Chilli con everything

All-round chicken soup

Comforting little casseroles

Roasted squash & carrot soup

Pasta sauce with fresh sausage & fennel seed

Pork loin stewed with red wine & bay leaves

Marcella’s sugo

Pesto at your fingertips

Ratatouille

Surinamese masala chicken

Basic nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice)

CLASSICS FOR ONE

Steak Béarnaise with chips & salad

Sea bass in a salt crust

Cheat’s pizza Margherita

Solo chicken with rosemary & Roseval potatoes

Cassoulet

10-minute pho

Caesar salad with crispy pancetta & avocado

Lamb chops with red wine & thyme sauce & green beans

Steak tartare

Risotto ai funghi

Too-good-to-share cheese fondue

BE SWEET TO YOURSELF

Blackberry mess

Instant mango–coconut ice cream

Lemon mug cake

Warm apple tartlet with vanilla ice cream

Coffee–ricotta parfait

La mousse au chocolat pour toi

Rosemary–honey figs with Gorgonzola

A fantastic raspberry dessert

Pear–yoghurt swirl

Tiramisu for one, please!

SOLO TREATS

Oatmeal congee

Parma ham–Taleggio toastie de luxe

Scrambled eggs, griddled asparagus & salmon on toast

Stir-fried prawns with harissa mayo

Potato gratin with a whole load of cheese

Calf’s liver sans etiquette

Party for one

Oysters, Champagne & a good book

A word of thanks

List of searchable terms

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The high point

On the kitchen counter are a steak, two lumpy potatoes and a head of lettuce. My evening meal. I slice off a chunk of butter and drop it into the pan. Plop. Turn on the hob, sizzling sounds. The butter bubbles furiously and then, slowly but surely, the foam dies down and a hush descends over the pan. White flakes form on the bottom of the pan. I grip the handle and pour the contents on to a piece of kitchen paper that I’ve placed in a sieve. The glass measuring jug fills with clear yellow liquid. My laptop is on the counter, too, opened out and tuned in to Spotify. My fingertips conjure up the sounds of John Coltrane. I rinse out the pan and pour in a splash of white wine. An equal amount of vinegar. I peel and finely chop a shallot, pluck the pointed leaves from two sprigs of tarragon. I fill a glass with wine, and as I drink from it, I let the liquid in the pan evaporate until there’s no more than a tablespoon and a half left. I peel the potatoes, slice them into thick matchsticks, rinse them under the tap, then dry them in a tea towel. I put a frying pan on the hob, add a splash of oil, then the potatoes and cover with a lid. It’s a mild April day, the promise of summer, and I open the kitchen window. Coltrane blows his My Favorite Things, and I sing along. First softly, then louder. Louder and louder and more off-key. No one can hear me. I’m alone. I’m making myself steak Béarnaise with chips and salad. And then I don’t feel so bad.

I wash and dry the lettuce. Mix together a dressing of mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil, pepper and salt. Hot and sharp. Probably too hot and too sharp for any guest who might taste it, but just the way I like it. I strain the reduced wine into a bowl. Crack an egg, separate out the white and drop the yolk into the bowl. Rinse out the pan again, fill it with water and bring it to the boil. Place the bowl over the pan. I start to whisk and then very gradually add the clarified butter in a thin stream. My finger glides through the custardy sauce and moves towards my mouth. Mmmm. A squeeze of lemon, a sprinkle of salt, then some chervil and a little more tarragon. Take the lid off the potatoes, turn up the heat. Sputtering oil, sizzling chips. Coarse salt on the steak. Griddle pan on the hob. When the air above the pan begins to quiver, I place the meat on the steel ridges. One minute only – I like it bloody – then the other side. Beautiful black stripes burned into the dark red meat.

Man, do I love Coltrane. While the meat is resting, I hum as I look for my favourite plate, a flea-market find made of white porcelain and decorated with delicate blue blossom sprigs, a dragonfly, a butterfly and birds. I get a napkin from the cabinet, grab some cutlery from the drawer and lay the table. Even though it’s not dark yet, I light a candle. What do I care? This is my party. Dinner for one.

The low point

There I was, in the doorway of my new place, eating cold soup from a plastic container. I’d oiled the wooden floor that day and didn’t have any furniture yet. Well, nothing except the landlord’s brutally ugly leather sofa, to which for reasons that were beyond me he’d grown attached and would come to pick up in a week’s time. Because of the floor, I’d dragged the sofa out on to the roof garden. It was August, and the weather had been sunny for days on end. Carrot soup with ginger, from the refrigerator section of the nearby upmarket foodie supermarket. I was just about to empty the container into a pan to heat it up when I realised that my cooker wasn’t yet connected. Damn. I thought about pouring the soup into a glass, but why? Does it feel less pathetic to drink cold soup from a glass than from a plastic container? If so, would that glass be able to save me from the ominous sensation that my life was a complete failure? ‘Are you taking care of yourself?’ people close to me had asked over these past few months. I was gradually getting scarily thin. How can you eat when you’ve got a knot the size of a beach ball in your stomach? Since my marriage had fallen apart I’d been living on smoothies, bananas and soup. Anything I didn’t have to chew. As long as I didn’t have to cook. I only did the latter on the days I spent with my sons – a sad, monotonous succession of pasta with gloop and rice with gloop. I found it hard to force down even a mouthful.

The soup tasted fine, even cold. Not that this improved my mood, but at least my taste buds noticed. And my mind noticed that my taste buds noticed. I observed that something inside of me was still capable of making observations. And as I sat there in the doorway eating my soup, running circles inside my head, the sky suddenly turned black. Really black. As if Judgement Day were upon us.

A storm of apocalyptic proportions came rolling in over the rooftops of the neighbours at the back, and within a minute it was blowing and raining harder than I’d ever seen it blow and rain during a Dutch summer. Damn – the sofa. I ran out with some plastic sheeting. Pelting rain. Galeforce 3 million. Plastic sheeting fighting back. A four-storey roof garden with no railing. It flashed through my mind that if I fell off now, I would be rid of it all. In the meantime, my body was, luckily, doing its utmost to save both my landlord’s sofa and my own skin.

I sat inside, on the freshly oiled floor. I cried. Pretty hard. With mucus and sobs, the whole works. I didn’t think I would ever stop, but then all of a sudden I did. I stopped crying and started to laugh. Sounds pretty hysterical, I know, but that’s how it was. Then I thought: I’m still alive. Yes, it all sucks big time, and, yes, everything’s down to me from here on out, but I’m still alive.

As I drank down the last drops of the cold carrot soup, I resolved that, first thing the next day, I would go out and buy a hose so I could hook up the cooker. And soup bowls. And a few pans. A cutting board. A knife. If I was going to be on my own, I was at least going to take good care of myself. After all, no one else was going to do it for me.

What I’ve learnt along the way

For more than a year and a half now, I’ve been on my own part time – my sons live with me half of the week, so that bit doesn’t count as alone. The other days I live solo. I put out my own rubbish, replace lightbulbs, top up the boiler, do laundry. And I cook. Do I wish there was someone who would do one of these jobs for me, even if only now and then? Well, sure, sometimes I do.

But more and more often I don’t. It took a while, but I’ve discovered I can live on my own just fine. I have to admit, though, that cooking was the hardest thing of all. For the first nine months my evening meals consisted of supermarket soup, bags of crisps, toasties, fried eggs, mayonnaise, avocado and anchovy sandwiches (which are delicious, by the way!), Indonesian takeaway from the shop around the corner and sometimes just a bowl of oatmeal. Thank god, friends would invite me over from time to time and lovingly feed me healthy home-cooked meals. Then, slowly but surely, as the rawest of my grief over my broken marriage began to recede, my interest in food returned, and with it my enjoyment of cooking. I no longer bought ready-made soups but made them myself. I cooked rice and stir-fried vegetables that I flavoured with ginger, chilli and soy sauce. I sautéed a piece of salmon or fried a steak and ate this with a salad. I cooked spaghetti and made a sport out of getting the sauce ready in exactly the same amount of time as it took to boil the pasta. I ate fewer meals in bed, staring at my laptop, or sprawled on the sofa in front of the television, and more of them sitting at a proper table. I started to stock my new kitchen with a decent supply of basic ingredients so that on busy days, when I came home late, I could still throw together a quick meal. And I started to have fun with it. ‘Check me out!’ I would say to myself as I sat there all on my lonesome, digging into a delicious plate of risotto. Candles, music, glass of wine. There in the kitchen, during the second half of those first eighteen months following my divorce, I learnt to take care of myself again. I was used to cooking for other people – for my husband, my children, my relatives and my friends – crikey, sometimes I even cooked for the entire street. Cooking was my way of giving pleasure to others, and now I was learning that I deserved that kind of pleasure too. Now I know that cooking for yourself is nothing less than an exercise in loving yourself.

Solo is the new togetherness

More and more people are living solo. Young people, old people, people of all ages. Like me, some of them are divorced; others are widows or widowers, or simply haven’t yet found the love of their life. Whatever the reason, more and more people are consciously choosing to live on their own. According to Statistics Netherlands, there are currently more than 3.3 million one-person households. This number is only expected to increase in the decades to come. So, singles are on the rise, and not just in the Netherlands. In Britain the number of people living alone doubled in a generation. More than half of all North Americans are single – that’s nearly two and a half times more than in the 1950s. This kind of demographic shift will inevitably have far-reaching economic, political, sociological and cultural consequences.

Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the statistics, what I’m concerned with here are the culinary consequences; all those singles who – maybe not every night, but very often – are tucking into their grub on their own. So what does this look like? There’s a persistent, clichéd image out there of the single man or woman sitting slouched in front of the television and shovelling down microwave meals night after night. Or worse yet, eating leftover baked beans straight from the tin by the cold light of the fridge. When I asked around among my single friends, I was relieved to find that things weren’t quite so bad. People in single households actually do cook, but almost everyone also admitted that they found it hard to keep their solo meals somewhat interesting, healthy and varied.

Although my little survey may have been totally random and unscientific, the findings are consistent with bona-fide research. On the whole, the meals of people who eat alone are less nutritious than those eaten by people who share their table with others. Singles generally have a more limited diet and eat less fruit, vegetables and fish. These facts are quite disheartening. Statistics also show that singles throw away more food than families. This isn’t so strange when you consider that supermarkets still focus mainly on families, with most pre-packaged products intended to serve two to four. So, many of those who eat alone are often obliged to eat the same thing two days in a row. Which is, of course, fine now and then, but does not exactly contribute to the enjoyment of a meal. At the same time, there are hardly any one-person recipes in cookbooks, magazines and newspapers or on cooking blogs and websites.

Cooking for one really does require a different approach from cooking for a family or an entire army and is not simply a matter of quartering a recipe meant for four. Solo cooking requires an approach that is both smarter and simpler. The challenge is to make a proper meal using just a few ingredients (because you want to throw away as little as possible) and not spend too much time doing it (because you don’t want to spend an hour in the kitchen every day making something that will take 10 minutes to eat).

Now that solo seems to be the new togetherness, I feel it’s high time to finally take the single cook a bit more seriously. Whether you’re alone by choice or by chance, whether you eat alone every night or just now and then, I hope this book will help you discover that cooking for yourself can be very satisfying. Perhaps precisely because it’s just you. You’re essentially your own ideal guest – you know exactly what this person likes to eat.

7 TIPS FOR THE SOLO CHEF

1. DISCOVER WHAT YOU LIKE TO EAT AND AIM TO PLEASE YOUR OWN PALATE. One of the most wonderful things about cooking for yourself is that you don’t have to take anyone else into account. It doesn’t matter what you make as long as it sounds good to you.

2. EXPERIMENT! See cooking for yourself as a chance to try new things. Even if what you come up with turns out to be inedible, there’s no harm done. That’s why they deliver pizzas.

3. STOCK YOUR VERY OWN GOLDEN PANTRY. Cooking for yourself also means you have to do your own shopping, and it’s nice if you don’t have to leap that hurdle on busy days. Here you’ll find a list of food items that are good to always have on hand.

4. CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK. There’s nothing wrong with beans from a tin, mayo from a jar, lettuce from a bag or hummus from the refrigerator section of the supermarket. You really don’t need to make everything from scratch.

5. EMBRACE THE ONE-POT MEAL. Cooking for yourself also means you have to do your own washing up …

6. CHERISH THE EGG. Fried, boiled or scrambled, you can whip up something nourishing in less than 10 minutes. You never have to go hungry if you have eggs in the house.

7. DON’T GO TOO SOLO! Invite friends over for dinner as often as you can. Cooking for yourself is good, and pleasurable, and cool, but I still don’t believe that we were meant to eat alone.

YOUR VERY OWN GOLDEN PANTRY

coarse + fine sea salt

black peppercorns

dried herbs + ground spices (in particular thyme, oregano, bay leaves, cumin, coriander, chilli flakes + curry powders)

olive oil + rice or peanut oil

red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar + balsamic vinegar

Dijon mustard

harissa or sambal (Indonesian chilli sauce)

soy sauce

fish sauce

stock cubes and/or stock pots

Thai and/or Indian curry paste

pasta

basmati or jasmine rice + risotto rice

tins or jars of beans, chickpeas and/or lentils

tinned coconut milk

instant couscous and/or bulgur and/or quinoa

instant polenta (if you like polenta – some people hate it)

tins of peeled tomatoes

tinned tuna + anchovies (+ sardines, if you like)

olives in jars or tins

capers, packed in salt or vinegar

nuts (if you freeze them, they’ll stay fresh longer)

peanut butter (so you can always make a peanut butter and sambal sandwich)

onions + garlic

eggs

lemons and/or limes

fresh root ginger (you can also cut this into pieces and freeze)

fresh chilli pepper (at least, if you’re a chilli-head like me)

butter

yoghurt

Parmesan cheese (can also be frozen, grated or otherwise)

bread

pitta bread and/or tortillas and/or naan (all three can also be used as a base for pizza)

frozen peas and/or spinach

at least 1 portion of meat, chicken or fish

QUICK FIX

Say you come home hungry and tired after a long day at work – cooking yourself anything more than a simple meal would be a challenge, right? To put it mildly. On a night like that all you want to do is kick off your shoes, pour yourself a glass of something and get a plate of food in front of you as quickly as you can. Enter the refrigerated supermarket ready meal. Enter the takeaway.

But the thing with those meals is that they get awfully boring after a while. And do you know why? Because they’re prepared by someone who doesn’t know you. Someone who doesn’t know how hot you like your curry, how salty you like your soup, how velvety you like your mash or how al dente you like your pasta. They’re made for the average palate. They haven’t been created with unique little you in mind. Which is why a home-cooked meal, no matter how simple, is always more satisfying than an anonymous one. The good news is that it’s not that hard to throw something together in 15 minutes – 20 minutes tops. Something that tastes much better and is far more enjoyable …

Cooking for yourself is a chance to figure out what pleases your palate. Or, to paraphrase Nicolas Cage in Wild at Heart, see it as a symbol of your individuality and your belief in personal freedom.

A kind of pisto Manchego

Preparation Time

15 minutes

olive oil, for frying

1 small (or ¹/₂ large) onion, sliced into half rings

¹/₂ long red pepper, deseeded and sliced into strips

4 slices of Serrano ham or chorizo, chopped

¹/₂ courgette or 1 baby courgette, cut in half lengthways and sliced into half moons

10 cherry tomatoes, halved

2 eggs

a few fresh basil or flat-leaf parsley leaves (or a pinch of dried oregano)

salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

bread, to serve

Heat a small splash of olive oil in a frying pan, add the onion and a pinch of salt, and fry for 2 minutes over a high heat until the onion begins to brown. Add the pepper and fry for 2 minutes more. Add the ham or chorizo and fry for another minute. Add the courgette and fry for 2 more minutes. Add the tomatoes and fry for another 2 minutes.

Make two depressions in the vegetable mixture and break in the eggs, then cook for 2–3 minutes until the eggs are set, covering the pan for the last 30 seconds. Sprinkle over a little more salt, if necessary, and in any case with a generous amount of freshly ground pepper and finish with basil or flat-leaf parsley.

Serve immediately with some kind of rustic bread, or just use whatever bread you’ve got on hand.

Spicy lamb pittas with hummus & garlicky yoghurt

You can make these lamb pittas in the time it would take you to go out and get a takeaway doner kebab – and these are much nicer!

Preparation Time

10 minutes

1 tsp harissa paste

olive oil, for frying

125 g lamb fillet

2 pitta breads

¹/₄–¹/₂ garlic clove, crushed or pressed

2 tbsp Greek or Turkish yoghurt

a pinch of salt

100 g hummus

a small handful of lettuce leaves

Place a griddle pan over a high heat. Mix the harissa with half a tablespoon of oil and brush this on to the lamb fillet. Set the fillet on the hot griddle and cook for a total of 2–3 minutes, turning regularly – the inside of the meat should still be pink. Place on a cutting board and let it rest.

Meanwhile, cook the pittas in the same pan and stir the garlic and a small pinch of salt into the yoghurt.

Cut the rested meat into thin slices. Slice open the pittas and fill them with hummus, meat, lettuce and a dollop of the garlicky yoghurt.

Miso soup with noodles, shiitake mushrooms, spinach & an egg

Preparation Time

15 minutes

100 g Japanese ramen (or other noodles)

1 egg

300 ml vegetable stock (from a cube)

100 g shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1 scant tbsp red miso paste

soy sauce, to taste

a small handful of spinach leaves

¹/₂ sheet of nori, cut into ribbons with scissors or a knife

Prepare the ramen according to the packet instructions.

Soft-boil the egg in a pan of boiling water for 4–5 minutes. Plunge the egg straight into a bowl of cold water to stop it cooking and leave until cool enough to handle. Once cool, peel and cut in half.

Meanwhile, bring the stock to a boil in a small saucepan, add the shiitakes and boil for 1 minute. Put the miso in a bowl, stir in a small splash of the hot stock, then add this to the saucepan. Turn off the heat and stir in soy sauce to taste.

Place the noodles, spinach and the egg halves into a bowl, and pour over the stock and mushrooms. Garnish with nori ribbons to serve.

Ridiculously easy spaghetti caprese

Resist the temptation to add extras like garlic, balsamic vinegar, olives, capers and the like, this dish is all about simplicity and the contrast between hot and cold.

Preparation Time

15 minutes

125 g spaghetti

3 ripe medium-sized vine tomatoes

1 small ball of buffalo mozzarella

a small handful of basil leaves

a generous splash of olive oil

salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Cook the spaghetti until just tender in a pan of boiling salted water according to the packet instructions.

Coarsely chop the tomatoes and mozzarella. Tear the basil leaves into small pieces. In a bowl, combine the tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, a generous splash of olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper.

Drain the spaghetti and mix it into the tomatoes and mozzarella while it’s piping hot. And that’s it! Eat immediately.

Frittata with red onion, baby kale & goat’s cheese

Preparation Time

15 minutes

2 eggs

olive oil, for frying

1 small red onion, sliced into half rings

40 g baby leaf kale

few drops of balsamic vinegar

75 g soft goat’s cheese

salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Preheat the grill. to high Beat the eggs together with a little freshly ground pepper and a small pinch of salt. Heat a small splash of oil in an ovenproof frying pan over a medium heat, add the onion and a small pinch of salt, and sauté for about 10 minutes. Turn up the heat to high halfway through so that the onion caramelises a little. Then add the baby kale and a few drops of balsamic vinegar, and let the leaves wilt for 30 seconds.

Add the beaten eggs to the pan and make sure the onion and kale are distributed evenly. Dot the goat’s cheese over the egg mixture and put the pan under the grill. Leave for a few minutes until the cheese has melted and the omelette is nice and puffy, and cooked through. Serve hot or cold.

Griddled white tuna with cucumber, avocado & ginger salad

Oh, what a wonderful solo supper this is. And what a salad! The spiciness of the chilli pepper, the heat of the ginger and the sour of the lime juice are nothing less than thrilling. The avocado acts as a cool and creamy foil for all of these intense flavours, and if your avocado is very ripe, give the salad a stir and it almost forms a sauce. It might not look all that great, but it tastes divine.

Preparation Time

15 minutes

juice of 1 lime

1 tbsp olive oil

coarse salt, to taste

a small pinch of chilli flakes

1 white (albacore) tuna steak, around 150 g

¹/₂ cucumber

¹/₂ red chilli pepper, sliced into thin rings

1¹/₂–2 cm root ginger, minced or grated

1 ripe avocado, cut in half and sliced

soy sauce, to taste

Combine the juice of half the lime, the olive oil, the salt and chilli flakes, and marinate the tuna in this mix for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the salad. Halve the cucumber lengthways and pull a teaspoon down the middle to scoop out and remove the seeds. Cut the cucumber into thin slices and place them in a bowl. Add the chilli rings, ginger and avocado. Sprinkle with the remaining lime juice to taste. The salad should be quite hot and sour. Lastly, add a tiny bit of soy sauce (around a teaspoon) and a pinch of salt.

Heat a griddle pan over a high heat until it’s very hot, then add the tuna steak. Griddle for 1 minute on either side until griddle marks appear but the tuna is still pink inside.

Transfer the tuna to a plate and spoon the salad alongside.

Tagliatelle with prawns & smoky whisky–tomato sauce

Preparation Time

15 minutes

100–125 g (fresh) tagliatelle

200 g raw prawns, peeled (but with the tail left on) and deveined

olive oil, for frying

a splash of whisky

1 small garlic clove, crushed

a pinch of chilli flakes

2 vine tomatoes, finely chopped

a knob of butter

a small handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped

coarse salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Cook the tagliatelle in boiling water until just tender, according to the packet instructions.

While the pasta is cooking, sprinkle the prawns with a little salt. Heat a small splash of olive oil in a frying pan and sauté the prawns over a medium–high heat for a few minutes until they’re pink and cooked through, then add the whisky to the prawns over the heat. Shake the pan a bit and if you’re using a gas hob the contents will ignite on their own. Stand back and let the flames die down, then turn out the prawns on to a plate.

Put the pan back over the heat, add a little more olive oil, if needed, and sauté the garlic and chilli flakes for a minute. Add the tomatoes and cook until they soften and get a little sauce-like, around 3–5 minutes. Add the prawns and the butter, and season with salt and pepper. Add a tiny splash of the pasta cooking water to the sauce, then drain the pasta in a colander.

Add the tagliatelle to the sauce, stir to coat in the sauce, then heat through for another 20–30 seconds. Tip out on to a plate and sprinkle with parsley.

Lemon couscous with salmon & cherry tomatoes

Preparation Time

20 minutes

80 g instant couscous

a small handful of frozen peas

juice and zest of ¹/₂ unwaxed lemon

a small knob of butter

150 g salmon fillet, with skin

olive oil, for frying

150 g cherry tomatoes (cut any big ones in half)

a small handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Put the couscous, frozen peas, lemon zest, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, the butter and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Pour in 125 ml boiling water, cover the bowl with a plate or cling film, and allow to swell for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, sprinkle the salmon with salt and pepper. Heat a small splash of olive oil in a frying pan and cook the salmon fillet, skin-side down, for a few minutes over a medium–high heat. Turn over and cook for another 1–2 minutes. Make sure you don’t overcook the salmon – the middle should still be coral coloured.

Remove the fish from the pan, add the cherry tomatoes to the same pan and cook for 2–3 minutes until soft, shaking the pan occasionally.

When the couscous is ready, fluff it up with a fork then stir in the parsley and taste to see if it needs more lemon or salt. Turn it out on to a plate, place the salmon alongside and spoon over the softened tomatoes.

Salad of butter beans, tinned tuna & shaved fennel

Preparation Time

10 minutes

1 small shallot, sliced into thin rings

1 small tin (about 200 g) of butter beans

1 small fennel bulb

a small handful of rocket leaves

2–3 fresh mint leaves, finely chopped

1 tbsp capers, rinsed, or 1 tbsp finely chopped peel from a preserved lemon (lemons preserved in salt)

juice of ¹/₂–1 lemon

a splash of olive oil

1 small tin (120 g) of tuna in olive oil

salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Sprinkle the shallot rings with a little salt and let them stand for a bit. Rinse the butter beans under cold running water and drain. Clean the fennel and shave it paper thin on a mandoline, or slice it very thinly with a knife. Squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the shallots.

Mix together the beans, fennel, shallots, rocket, mint and capers or preserved lemon peel, and dress the mixture with lemon juice, a splash of olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper. Drain the tuna and flake it over the salad in large chunks.

Good old steak sandwich

Preparation Time

15 minutes

1 shallot, sliced into rings

a small splash of red wine vinegar

1 entrecôte steak (around 150 g)

¹/₄ baguette or a crusty bread roll

1–2 tsp Dijon mustard

1¹/₂–2 tbsp mayonnaise

1 head Little Gem, leaves separated

salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/Gas 6. Put the shallot rings into a small bowl, add the red wine vinegar and let it sit for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, place a griddle pan over a high heat until it’s very hot. Rub some salt into both sides of the entrecôte. Fry the meat for 1–1¹/₂ minutes on each side. Place it on a cutting board, grind over some pepper and let it rest for a bit.

Warm through the baguette or bread roll in the hot oven (or slice it open and toast in the steak pan). Meanwhile, stir the mustard into the mayo in a little bowl, to taste. Slice the warmed bread in half lengthways, then spread both halves with a generous amount of the mustardy mayo and add some lettuce leaves.

Slice the entrecôte on the diagonal and arrange the slices in the sandwich. Squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the shallot rings and sprinkle them over the meat. Top with the other half of the bread, and dinner is served.

SMART COOKING

One of the things I came up against when I started cooking for myself was that I always ended up with leftovers. I had been used to sharing my table with three hungry men, so I was still figuring out how much I actually ate myself. Does this sound familiar? In my experience you gradually get better at this, but it’s still easy to cook too much, especially of things like rice, potatoes and noodles. That’s why I’ve written this chapter, featuring recipes that you can use to turn leftovers from Day 1 into something entirely different on Day 2. Because you don’t want to waste food, and you also don’t want to eat the same thing day after day. What’s more, cooking with leftovers saves time, because rice and potatoes easily need 20 or 25 minutes to prepare. Do it all on Day 1 and that’s time you can save on Day 2 so that you’re done in 10 or 15 minutes. When cooking solo, it pays to be smart!

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