Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

I believe that food can be a profound means of communication, allowing me to express myself in a way that seems at times much deeper and more sincere than words.

True, some people will say that using canned beans is cheating—like buying canned applesauce instead of making your own—and I understand that point of view. But to get dried black beans tender, in my experience, you have to boil them for approximately six days. You know what I say to that? Give me the can opener.

Over the years I’ve settled on a few basic beliefs, one of which is that whatever we do for pleasure, we should try to do, or learn to do, and practice on occasion, in solitude. A kind of test to gauge our skills and see how deep the passion lies and to find out what it is we truly like, to discover—minus other tastes and preferences—what specifically gives us pleasure. We all have our eccentricities. Alone, we indulge.

Grill-Curried Shrimp Quesarito with Avocado Raita SERVES 1 7 to 8 tiger-tail shrimp 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil 1/2 teaspoon curry powder (or to taste) 1/4 cup yogurt 1/4 cup guacamole (see recipe, page 123) 1 burrito-style flour tortilla 1 ounce Monterey Jack, shredded 1/2 roma tomato, diced 1 handful of iceberg lettuce, chopped Soak the shrimp in a marinade of teriyaki, brown sugar, and toasted sesame oil, dust with curry powder, and smoke on the grill.

Whatever you do, on your first night in the new apartment, do not cook salmon. The fish smell will move in, like an unwelcome roommate. When you return from your first day of your new bad job, it will be there to greet you—hovering in your still unopened boxes, your sofa, your new walls.

Remember. Nobody cooks in Manhattan. But don’t let this discourage you. Many people don’t do anything here but stumble and race and hope, waiting for their real lives to begin.

Make a grocery list instead. Head to the store. Stock up on tinfoil. And before you know it, you have stopped thinking and started doing. Which, as you are starting to figure out, is the first step to making anything become real.

I have friends who begin with pasta, and friends who begin with rice, but whenever I fall in love, I begin with potatoes. Sometimes meat and potatoes and sometimes fish and potatoes, but always potatoes. I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.

My treats and childhood favorites hold no context for them, no afternoon sojourns with Mom, no watching Dad twist the can opener in his trademark pajamas. So I shrug and head for the kitchen. “Nothing,” I reply. “Just food.”