Serve Yourself

March 15, 2011
Cooking for one has always been a daunting task. Either one buys processed foods and reheats them, or one cooks up a dish that then lasts a week of dinners. Yonan offers recipes that serve just one and that are certain to please the most demanding gourmet. A single Cornish hen gets a sauce of dried cherries and hazelnuts. Yonan devises a full chapter of recipes for tacos, even suggesting exerting the effort to make ones own taco shells from scratch rather than putting up with mass-produced ones. A single poblano pepper serves to hold a vegetarian filling of Swiss chard and black beans. Leftover beans recycle into a peasants bowl of brown rice and cheese. Yonan does not shortchange the single diners sweet tooth. His inventive desserts include tapioca pudding tricked out with a burnt sugar crust fragrant with cardamom. Almond butter makes a base for some intriguing no-bake oatmeal cookies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)