5 Ingredients or Fewer

I always remember my childhood summers in Vermont as a procession of summer puddings made with raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, or currants as they came along. This old-fashioned dessert couldn’t be simpler to put together, and you can do a single portion in a small cup mold. You can even make Summer Pudding in winter when you may have bought from the local street stand more berries imported from South America than you can eat up.

Crisps and crumbles—they are one and the same—were always a favorite in our family, and I miss having them on a regular basis. But I found it’s very easy to make just one portion in a small casserole dish (I use an onion-soup bowl).

All of us yearn sometimes for a particular remembered taste, and we want to re-create it. I feel that way about popovers, perhaps because they are associated with memories of family discussions about the way to obtain the perfect popover (they all tasted good to me). My aunt Lucy in Barre, Vermont, was thrilled when she got a new state-of-the-art stove and discovered that her popovers could go into a cold oven the night before. All she had to do was set the time and then press a button so that the oven would turn on magically and have the popovers baked in time for breakfast. But my aunt Marian, seven miles away in Montpelier, insisted that you couldn’t put popovers into a cold oven. And they had a competition that, as I remember, didn’t prove anything one way or the other. In more recent years, Marion Cunningham discovered that the secret to a high rise and a crispy exterior was to use Pyrex cups set at a distance from one another, so the heat could circulate. Naturally, a new popover pan was soon on the market based on that principle. Even more significant,at least for the single cook, was her discovery that if you prick the popovers in several places with a knife as soon as they emerge from the oven, the steam will escape and the popovers will not turn soggy—a valuable tip if you want to reheat one to enjoy the next day. But they don’t keep long, so when I’m alone I make just two in my new popover-pan cups and have one piping hot for dinner (it’s particularly good with red meat, reminding me of our family Sunday dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding) and heat up the other the next morning for breakfast, to be eaten with soft butter and my own gooseberry jam. Who could ask for anything more?

Preparing a fine dish of Moroccan couscous used to be a labor of love—steaming, sifting , and fluffing up the little pearl granules made from semolina durum wheat all required quite a lot of time. But now we get a precooked couscous that takes minutes to prepare. It may not have quite the light finish of the old way, but it is a boon to a cook coming home at the end of a day and wanting to put an easy, well-balanced meal together. I remember Claudia Roden, years ago, introducing me to this North African grain product. We were cooking for a dinner party she was giving , working together in her comfortable kitchen, decorated with Middle Eastern tiles, at Wild Hatch, on the edge of Hampstead Heath in London. She had me fluffing the couscous, teaching me all the steps, as we gossiped and got to know each other better. It reminded me of her description—in her first, ground-breaking book, A Book of Middle Eastern Food—of the women in her extended family in Cairo, where she grew up, who would spend afternoons shaping and stuffing tempting mezze pastries and enjoying every moment. I’m afraid we’ve forgotten how cooking together gives that kind of pleasure. But here’s the easy formula for one serving of couscous.

Wild rice isn’t really a rice—it’s a grain—and the best of it comes from Native Americans in the upper Midwest who harvest it in the traditional way, beating the ripened grains into their canoes at harvest time. The cultivated variety is all right and takes a little less time to cook, but it doesn’t have the texture of the wild variety. Evan, being a loyal Minnesotan, always sent for wild rice from Blackduck, Minnesota, and I have kept up the tradition, ordering Slindee wild rice, as the producers are now known. It takes about an hour for wild rice to cook, so it’s not for a quick dinner. But it reheats perfectly, and I always make extra and enjoy it in a number of ways.

There’s nothing like knowing you have stashed away in your freezer good tomato sauce made from sweet San Marzano canned tomatoes. It comes in handy in so many ways. I usually make 3 cups of thick sauce, to freeze in 1-cup containers. You can easily double or triple that amount if you’re feeling ambitious and have enough freezer space.

This is a sauce to have on hand at all times. It keeps well in the refrigerator for at least a week if you film the top of it with olive oil (and refilm after you have dipped into it and taken some from the jar), and it keeps its bloom for a couple of months frozen. It’s a good idea to freeze it in an ice tray, and then store the cubes in plastic storage bags. That way, you easily can get at just the amount you need.

Endive is an overlooked vegetable in America—at least, few people cook it. But it makes a very special lunch or supper dish when done this way.

Stir-frying a combination of vegetables quickly in a small wok gives them a more intense flavor and a pleasing texture, and they benefit from being cooked together. It’s a good way to use small amounts of vegetables you may have stored away. You can mix and match as you wish, aiming for good color and flavor complements. You can even poach an egg on top of your stir-fry (see page 105).

It is so easy to make a vinaigrette, the classic French salad dressing, that I can’t fathom why so many people living alone go out and buy bottled dressings. Not only do they pay more, but the dressing never tastes as fresh, and you can’t vary the seasonings as you wish. So I beg you to make your own vinaigrette as part of your cooking life. The amounts I’m giving will be enough to dress two or three small salads, but you can double or triple the quantities if you’re an avid salad consumer and want enough dressing to see you through the week. Just refrigerate the extra in a jar, tightly sealed.

Either of these flavorful, earthy root vegetables blends with potatoes to make a beautiful accompaniment to so many saucy dishes. And what could be simpler? You cook the two together and mash them with a little butter and cream, and they’re ready.

There is something pleasantly sensual and mindful about eating an artichoke all alone, dunking each leaf in a tart, buttery sauce and scraping off that little bit of flesh, then getting to the bottom and carefully removing the prickly thistles to the heart. I remember loving this as an adolescent and always asking for an artichoke when I knew I would be home alone and could relish each bite. If you’re feeling in a cooking mood, make yourself a little hollandaise sauce (page 110) to go with this treat.

This is ideal to make when you’ve bought too much watermelon.

Steamed mussels make a lovely dish to eat alone slowly, plucking the plump flesh from the shells as messily as you like and sopping up the heavenly liquor with chunks of French bread.

If you’ve tasted a well-made avgolemono with its velvety texture and lemony flavor, you’ll long to make it at home. And it’s so simple, particularly if you’ve just boned a chicken breast and have the rib cage handy, or if you have some chicken broth in your freezer.

This is a good way to use that extra pumpkin or squash you may have roasted. It makes an unusually pleasing soup.