The Pleasures of Cooking for One - review

While at a closeout sale for a bookstore (which made me sad - another indication of the shift from paper to electronic. But who am I to bemoan this from a blog post of all things?), I saw this book on sale and the title captured me instantly. A few flips through the page, and I was sold.

Judith Jones was the editor for Julia Child's cookbooks. This book explains how she, as a single woman cooks for herself, and does so in a way that recognizes the importance of the entire process of cooking, from shopping for quality ingredients, to preparing with love and consideration, to consuming in style. Basically, it is a single person's retort to the T.V. dinner.

Most valuable from this book has been the philosophy she presents, a philosophy of reusing a dish to make new ones, which she calls "reincarnations". This was a revolutionary idea for me, which motivated the whole chicken episode that I blogged about yesterday. Rather than making a single dish out of a single boneless, skinless chicken breast, why not roast a whole chicken, then make delicious, unique meals from the leftovers? After all, buying a whole chicken is often more cost-effective than a bag of frozen chicken breasts and tastes better, too. When cooking, Judith likes to use up what she already has and shop with potential reincarnated dishes in mind. This is a wonderful approach because just about any single person who cooks will tell you the most annoying thing in the world is a refrigerator full of molding leftovers or spoiling ingredients.

Second most valuable are her reductions of everyday recipes. I have used her crepe recipe to make a delicious breakfast for myself without leftovers, and I didn't have to do a bunch of math to reduce the recipe myself. Not only that, but her recipes are good. I consider myself able to put together a decent stir fry for myself without a recipe, but her pork stir-fry recipe was amazing. Interesting, too was that she writes from the perspective of someone who cooks and shops seasonally and locally from New England. This unique viewpoint has been refreshing - crepes are delicious when layered with yogurt and maple syrup, and a maple-syrup flavored panna cotta is a great way to use up some milk approaching its expiration date. Also, I tend to cook mostly with olive oil, but she cooks mostly with butter, more Julia Child-esque, I suppose. It's been good to realize you can cook with butter and still cook nutritiously.

For the single person who desires to step up their cooking a notch and do it in a way that works with their lifestyle, I highly recommend this book, not only for the great recipes, but also for the creative and inspirational advice, from ways to store cream sauce and herbs to ways to use up leftover milk. It's also fun to drool over the pictures and fantisize about a lifestyle that could include a weekly trip to an artisan cheese shop. Even two people living together could probably still benefit from this book as I think two people still deal with similar cooking challenges that one person faces.

Trying to stay dry and thankful for a warm and cozy little home,

Karen