I had a small pork tenderloin in the freezer, so decided to try the recipe for same on page 42. It's a simple enough recipe, yet, when push came to shove, I didn't bother with the marinade. I hadn't thought about it early enough - like in the morning before work - and wasn't interested in waiting around for the marination.
I seasoned the meat with a little salt, pepper, garlic powder, and placed the meat in a pan for roasting along side parsnips, turnip, and a itty bitty winter squash.
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| Small Squash |
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| Small Roasted Pork Tenderloin |
The next night I moved on to one of two "recipe two" choices that Jones offers: Pork Stir-Fry With Vegetables. I confess I didn't add as much ginger as the recipe called for. I don't think I added the full amount of freshly minced garlic either. I also confess that that's probably why the sauce wasn't so flavorful.
Even with my personal failings, by adding sugar-snap peas, bell pepper, mushrooms, cashews, and a few shakes of sesame oil, this was a winning recipe.
And it was the perfect amount for one person (who wanted leftovers for tomorrow.)
The chapter on cheese is indispensable. The advice on nine ways to use turkey is fabulous advice for the holiday season; Jones suggests soup, tettrazini, pilaf, strata, salad, croquette, sandwich, crepe, and finally hash - all with suggested accompaniments and spices. The book is packed with little nuggets of information to savor.
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| Opening pages of the cheese chapter |
Honestly, none of recipes that I tried blew me away. What they did, though, was give me confidence, and a certain sense of home. A comfort zone.
It's as if you're in the kitchen with Jones, and she's passing on her knowledge to you - and only you. About her Vermont garden's never-ending supply of zucchini, Jones writes...
'Anyone who has a garden knows about the pressure to eat up the zucchini you've planted. You hate to see it go to waste. But the advantage to growing your own is that you can harvest the zucchini while they are still very young and have a more intense flavor (and you can use the male blossoms, too.)"While I was reading and cooking from the book, more than once I thought to myself (or said aloud to the cats,) "wish I would have known this when I was..."
So if you've got to buy a gift for someone just learning to cook, consider The Pleasures of Cooking for One. It's the type of gift that will certainly reverberate through the years. It will definitely not be leaving my crowded cookbook shelves.
First, let me tell you that I look forward to your blog posts! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHowever, and I am probably missing the point here, but cooking for one isn't all that big of a challenge, but it's using up leftover ingredients! One cannot buy a cup of soup for instance, 2 eggs, or 3 celery sticks. Even if I buy a half dozen eggs, which cost nearly as much as a dozen(!), they get old (flat yolks, watery whites) before I can use them. It sounds like a lovely book, but even the sample recipe on Amazon for Boeuf Bourguignon says, "You’ll probably get a good three meals out of it..." In my book, that translates to cooking for 3, or at least eating for three. Cooking For One should be just that: one meal, one serving, no leftovers!
I'm glad you enjoy the blog; it's always fun to put a post together (and often tasty as well.)
ReplyDeleteI definitely sympathize regarding the challenge of using up leftover ingredients; it can be so frustrating to have pricey organic produce rotting in the bottom of the fridge because I'm not sure what to do with it. Quite often it's a little bit extra of one ingredient, but not enough to turn into a meal (and let's not talk about the moldy stuff that I push to the back of the fridge, ok?)
Cooking for one seems to have different definitions to different people or cookbooks. The very first sentence of the introduction to Cooking for One by Judith Jones sets her version, "After my husband, Evan, died in 1996, I was not sure that I would ever enjoy preparing a meal for myself and eating it alone."
One meal, one serving? To me that's eggs for dinner, or a big green salad with a variety of ingredients. If I'm going to cook, I'd like at least one additional meal out of my efforts -- usually lunch for work the next day. Jones's book is a good guide for that type of cooking.