I would really like to meet Anita Lo some day. I’ve seen her on a few competition cooking shows, but this is the first cookbook of hers I’ve gone and picked up. Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One is pretty unique in that it not only focuses on small batch recipes as well as how to use as much of certain ingredients as possible (sometimes saving for another day or recipe), but also is very direct about eating by oneself. I’ve seen off and on in friends’ Goodreads lists this anthology of essays about how eating alone is somehow less enjoyable, and this seems to be the norm. Solo on the other hand includes a preface that’s open about Anita’s personal experiences, and it includes introductions to nearly every recipe that explains somehow/why the recipe was inspired. Often these prefaces include a comment about how making and eating this for herself was positive for Anita. As someone who lives alone and is single more often than not and fine with that, I really appreciated the idea that it’s possible to cook for one and make it chef level. The only minor issue is that some of the prefaces are as long or longer than the actual recipe. I’m fine with personal stories along with the recipes, but a cookbook should be more about the recipes.
The only complaint I have about the premise is that if you’re going to cook for one using recipes designed that way, you won’t often have leftovers, and I’m the sort who cooks several things on the weekend and then lives off the leftovers during the week. Using this book realistically would mean cooking something new every night and really planning and organizing recipes to use whatever you’ve gotten from the grocery store, and I don’t have that kind of time.
Another thing I really liked is that the book is how it’s set up; it’s arranged by protein of general main, and the cool thing is that it start with the vegetarian, and is followed by noodles and rice. This kind of thing is my go to. I’m not strictly vegetarian myself, but I lean pretty close that way. In the veggie section, there’s a recipe for “Roasted and Pickled Radish Tacos”. This is totally something I’d try. The filling is radish, tomatillo, jalapeno {all roasted}, with some spices, and the pickles is sliced radish, onion, jalapeno pickled in vinegar. This would probably take about 25 minutes for me to do, assuming my oven cooperated (sometimes it doesn’t like to heat up as high as its set). This is still a chefy- book though since it calls for things like fregola and flanken (I know what fregola is but I’m not sure what cut of meat flanken is).
Most of the recipes involve pretty standard ingredients that are readily available, although there’s a few that call for something really specific that I don’t have access to without driving two hours to the nearest metropolis. Some recipes call for things like Chinese sausage or squab, which aren’t unheard of but aren’t always available. Sometimes there’s a substitution offered, like Cornish hen for squab, but sometimes not, like Lao Gan Ma (a brand name for a specific sort of chili sauce).
Some of the best tidbits are really hidden, like a sidebar about how the other half of a package of silken tofu can be used as an eggplant substitute in a different recipe on p.122, or how bonito flakes make excellent kitty treats (end of a preface).
The other thing that’s part of why this was fun reading but not something I’ll be cooking out of is that there’s some uneven directions for some procedures that may not be something a home cook knows. There’s an illustrated guide to making dumplings, but not for taking apart a squid which is necessary for at least one recipe; granted that’s something a fishmonger could do for you, but that defeats the purpose of the do it yourself element of a cookbook, at least for me.
Overall, there are some good things in this book, both in terms of the food and the ideas. This is not one of those books that I’ll be cooking my way through, but for both the philosophy and at least a few of the recipes, including the one that suggests you can make ice cream with cream and tahini and your freezer, it’s worth a read. I haven’t tried this yet, but I plan to.