The Pleasures of Cooking for One [Hardcover]

Judith Jones (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 29, 2009

From the legendary editor of some of the world’s greatest cooks—including Julia Child and James Beard—a passionate and practical book about the joys of cooking for one.

Here, in convincing fashion, Judith Jones demonstrates that cooking for yourself presents unparalleled possibilities for both pleasure and experimentation: you can utilize whatever ingredients appeal, using farmers’ markets and specialty shops to enrich your palate and improve your health; you can feel free to fail, since a meal for one doesn’t have to be perfect; and you can use leftovers to innovate—in the course of a week, the remains of beef bourguignon might be reimagined as a ragù, pork tenderloin may become a stir-fry, a cup or two of wild rice produces both a refreshing pilaf and a rich pancake, and red snapper can be reinvented as a summery salad. It’s a fulfilling and immensely economical process, one perfectly suited for our times—although, as Jones points out, cooking for one also means we can occasionally indulge ourselves in a favorite treat.

Throughout, Jones is both our instructor and our mentor, suggesting basic recipes—such as tomato sauce, preserved lemons, pesto, and homemade stock—that all cooks should have on hand; teaching us how to improvise using an ingenious strategy of building meals through the week; and supplying us with a lifetime’s worth of tips and shortcuts. From Child’s advice for buying fresh meat to Beard’s challenge to beginning crêpe-makers and Lidia Bastianich’s tips for cooking perfectly sauced pasta, Jones’s book presents a wealth of acquired knowledge from our finest cooks.

The Pleasures of Cooking for One is a vibrant, wise celebration of food and enjoying our own company from one of our most treasured cooking experts.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From The Pleasures of Cooking for One: Boeuf Bourguignon

Make this rich stew on a leisurely weekend. You’ll probably get a good three meals out of it, if you follow some of the suggestions below. When buying stew meat at a supermarket, you don’t always know what you are getting, so ask the butcher. If it’s a lean meat, it will need less time cooking (in fact, it will be ruined if you cook it too long), but the fattier cuts can benefit from at least another half hour. --Judith Jones

Ingredients

• 2 ounces bacon, cut into small pieces, preferably a chunk cut into little dice
• About 1 1/4 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1- to 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon light olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1/3 carrot, thick end, peeled and diced
• 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
• Salt
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cup beef broth
• Herb packet of 1/2 bay leaf; a fat garlic clove, smashed; a small handful of parsley stems; 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme; 4 or 5 peppercorns 

For Vegetable Garnish

• 3 or 4 baby onions, or four 1-inch pieces of leek
• 3 or 4 baby carrots, or the thin ends of larger ones, peeled
• 2 or 3 small new potatoes

Directions

Brown the bacon in a heavy pot, fairly deep but not too large. When it has released its fat and is lightly browned, remove it to a dish, leaving the fat in the pan. Pat the pieces of beef dry with a paper towel. Pour the oil into the pot, and when it is hot, brown half the pieces of beef on all sides. Remove to the plate with the bacon, and brown the remaining pieces. Now sauté the onion and the carrot until they are lightly browned. Return the meats to the pot, sprinkle on the flour and some salt, and pour the wine and beef stock in. Tuck the herb packet into the pot, and bring to a boil; then reduce the heat, cover, and cook at a lively simmer for about 1 hour or more, depending on the cut of the meat. Bite into a piece to determine if it is almost done (it will get another 20 minutes or so of cooking with the vegetables).

When the time is right, add all the vegetables, cover, and cook at a lively simmer again for 20–25 minutes--pierce the veggies to see if they are tender. Serve yourself four or five chunks of meat, with all the vegetables, and a good French bread to mop up the sauce.

Second Round

Use three or four pieces and some of the remaining sauce to make a quick Beef and Kidney Pie (page 34 of The Pleasures of Cooking for One) later in the week. The recipe follows Veal Kidneys in Mustard Sauce because you want to use the leftover kidneys to put this dish together.

Third Round

Use what remains to make a meaty pasta sauce for one, breaking up the meat and adding three or four squeezed San Marzano plum tomatoes. Simmer the sauce as the pasta cooks.

(Judith Jones photo © Christopher Hirsheimer)

From Publishers Weekly

Longtime Knopf editor and executive Jones follows up her recent food memoir with this civilized, unfussy guide to cooking—and cooking well—for solitary diners, for those... who want to roll up [their] sleeves and enjoy, from day to day, one of the great satisfactions of life. Forming and revising cooking strategy is a cornerstone of her digressive, folksy approach, so she provides lists of equipment deemed essential, suggestions for dealing with packaging that coerces individuals into buying—and then wasting—more than necessary, and tips for storing spoilage-prone foods. Her other key to enjoying cooking—while reducing the costs of eating—is flexibility. She shares her personal credo about culinary language and exactness, and with many protein-based dishes includes ideas for variations and second and third rounds, as she refers to leftovers. She doesn't skip desserts, entertaining or self-indulgence, and best of all, her whole book benefits from the diverse and cumulative gleanings of work with many of the great cooks and cookbook writers (including Julia Child, of course) of the latter half of the 20th century. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; Fifth Printing edition (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307270726
• ISBN-13: 978-0307270726
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Professional Cooking > Quantity

More About the Author

Judith Jones is Senior Editor and Vice President at Alfred A. Knopf. She joined the company in 1957 as an editor working primarily on translations of French writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. She had worked before that for Doubleday, first in New York and then in Paris, where she was responsible for reading and recommending The Diary of Anne Frank. In addition to her literary authors, she has been particularly interested in developing a list of first-rate cookbook writers; her authors have included Julia Child (Judith published Julia's first book and was her editor ever after), Lidia Bastianich, James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Rosie Daley, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, Scott Peacock, Joan Nathan, Jacques Pépin, Claudia Roden, and Nina Simonds. She is the coauthor with Evan Jones (her late husband) of two books: The Book of Bread: Knead It, Punch It, Bake It! (for children); and The Book of New New England Cookery. She also collaborated with Angus Cameron on The L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook. Recently, she has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 163 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Cooking for 1 cookbook October 4, 2009

By Cathy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have several other "cooking for 1" cookbooks and have found many good recipes there. But this is the cookbook I've been waiting for. Ms. Jones has shown me how to take ingredients that cannot be purchased in small quantities and re-use these imaginatively to create entirely different meals.

For example, a pork tenderloin becomes a small roast, scallopine, a gratinate, hash, and stir fry. Her examples have encouraged me to improvise myself. I can envisage a BBQ pork sandwich, a pasty with leftover pork tenderloin, skirt steak and potatoes.

She encourages playing with the recipes to create a meal exactly to your own tastes. Several of her recipes also include vegetable substitution recommendations allowing for seasonal meals. Or, if you're like me and can't stand a particular vegetable then you can swap it for something more palatable.

This cookbook creates a solid foundation for enabling a cook's creativity. Highly recommended.

151 of 158 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Rest assured, this is not just for singles. October 1, 2009

By Edie Sousa

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Judith Jones is truly "having a moment," which is a wonderful thing. This new book is sort of an offshoot of her earlier memoir, which had a short but terrific recipe section. It is a sublime book--thoughtfully designed, detailed but not pedantic, practical, accessible, utterly personal, and completely charming. I'm not sure there is another book out there like this one, which takes us shopping and then into the kitchen to make the most of both common items and ingredients or dishes it might never have occurred to us to try. I can't wait to try most all of them. Of course, a little simple math will ratchet up a recipe for 1-2 to a recipe for 3-4 and so on--so this is absolutely a book for all cooks. The author does, however, sympathize with the plight of the single shopper and eater--supermarkets usually work to package more than we can possibly eat at one sitting. Short of a perpetual dinner party, what is the solution? Stretch the goodies over two or three completely different meals (trust me, this is NOT the same thing as just having leftovers). The title says it all--cooking for one should be every bit as pleasurable as cooking for others--maybe better, as the gaffes become your little secrets (and they are no less tasty). I would add that although the book is beautifully printed on high-quality stock and will make a truly fine gift (I do not work for the publisher--honest), it's no coffee table book. The size is perfect--it'll fit on the counter easily, although you might want one of those stand-up plastic stands to keep it open (and protect it, if that's important to you). All in all, one of the most thoughtful and user-friendly cookbooks I've ever encountered. I read it cover-to-cover, like a novel. Next I'm going shopping.

79 of 80 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring October 23, 2009

By D. G. C.

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is absolutely perfect for anyone who finds themselves cooking for one or two people. Not only are the recipes absolutely wonderful, the recipes for using left-overs are also great. Jones shows you how to shop, stock your pantry and freezer, and make wonderful meals for yourself that don't take forever yet taste like they did. I have over 50 cookbooks, and this is the one I find myself turning to again and again for my daily meals. This is real food - no processed shortcuts, no sacrifices. If you like to cook but think its too much trouble for just one person, get this book and you will have fun in the kitchen again.