Our Verdict: Dinner in One

Kirstin: I have so enjoyed this month!

Maureen: Me too. It hit all the things we look for weeknight meals: delicious, relatively quick and/or easy and interesting. The fact that cleanup was so straightforward was a huge bonus.

Kirstin: I know what you mean. I don’t know how Melissa does it but she’s definitely done it again. And she does much more fish in this book than her previous books.

Maureen: I am going to miss cooking from this book.

Kirstin: SAME! I have so much more I want to cook from it, so I’ll be continuing to cook from it during the next few months at least. And I’ve already given a few copies to friends. Melissa is so wondetful and dependable too. I love that about her recipes. You know they are going to work.

Maureen: This is one of the few books that made it onto the high rotation shelf within a few recipes.

Kirstin: I hear you. A classic.

“Spicy Turkey Larb” from “Dinner in One”

Kirstin: We do love a larb. We really do. We’ve tried a good many recipes over the years for them, last month’s version from Persiana Everyday was a particular fave. Larb, although eaten throughout South East Asian countries, according to wikipedia is the national dish of Lao and is described as a meat salad. We ate ours in gem lettuce leaves alongside rice, lime and coriander. And it was yum. So yum that even though I had doubled up the recipe so we could have some leftovers with a fried egg for lunch the following day, we had eaten the lot! Next time!

“Orzo Minestrone” from “Dinner in One”

Autumn: The best of all the seasons.

If you catch the weather right, it’s neither too hot nor too cold. The trees are ablaze with colours. Sweaters can be worn every single day. And soup goes back into regular rotation for dinner.

Which brings us to Orzo Minestrone. I chose this purely because I had many of the ingredients on hand already (corn on the cob– I’m looking at you) and I knew it would be delicious for lunch the next day. Like all the best vegetarian dishes, this one required a fair amount of prepping and chopping of vegetables. That wasn’t a problem, though, as I just put on the News at Six on BBC’s Radio Four. I mean, there wasn’t much news to discuss, but they managed to fill the 30 minutes nonetheless.

This was a fairly standard minestrone, but delicious just the same. I felt more virtuous with each bite, given the amount of vegetables in it. The one twist is that you toss cherry tomatoes with pesto before adding them to the soup, which gave the dish a nice undercurrent of basil.

Another winner– both the season and the dinner.

“Spicy gochujang chicken stew” from “Dinner in One”

Kirstin: This was one of the recipes that I knew immediately that I would want to make from this book; it’s an instant pot meal with chicken, carrots, potatoes and gochujang. My poor friends have had to listen to my excitement about making it FOR DAYS now; all the preparation, the marinating, the wine I also put in the fridge to marinate alongside (a Riesling from America) and an alcohol free beer if I felt that way inclined. It’s been a whole exciting drama. And of course it was absolutely perfect. Spicy, hearty and bonus it warmed up well the following day. Melissa, thank you for yet another winner!

“Easy chocolate fudge torte” from “Dinner in One”

Kirstin: As you all know I am no fan of baking. But when I find a recipe that works which my oven doesn’t overcook then I associate it with a baking tin. So I have the tin I always make the chocolate guinness cake in (thank you Nigella), the tray for making the pomegranate yoghurt cake (thank you Rukmini) and now the tin I make this cake in. Because I can’t be bothered to get the tape measure out every time I need to see what size tin I need. I just like to KNOW which tin I need.
Anyways. I digress. Why did I love this recipe? It is super easy, worked a treat, used one tin and was especially lovely served with creme fraiche (she also has suggestions for people who are do not tolerate gluten). Maybe I will even break away from my usual Edd Kimber tiramisu recipe to make this occasionally. The fact I have annotated the recipe (I will try baking it for less time to get it more fudgey in the middle) is also a sign that this is a winning recipe. And as you can see from the picture above, Tom loved it too.

“Roasted cod with buttery potatoes and anchovy” from “Dinner in One”

Kirstin: We have some very dear friends who we like to share a bottle of fizz with on Fridays. We call this event a Fizz Friday. We’ve all been so busy over summer, that the Fizz Fridays have been not as frequent as we all would like them to be but we were finally able to get a date in the diary to look forward to. And ecause one of them is a vegetarian (but will eat fish),I am always on the lookout for recipes that will suit us all. So when I saw this recipe in Melissa’s book I KNEW this was the one I wanted to try on a Fizz Friday. Roasted cod with a lovely garlic and anchovy paste that melted into the dish of potatoes was quite something else and we all enjoyed it while catching up on our news. I served it alongside a green salad with the dressing that Melissa recommends (you can’t go wrong with garlic and mustard). And I love that even though I had never made this recipe before I trusted Melissa that I knew it would work first time. It was a wonderful Friday and lovely to catch up.

“Roasted Tuna with Brown Butter Corn, Tomatoes and Chile” from “Dinner in One”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: One of the best things about our Empty Nest is the ability to buy really expensive ingredients, knowing that you only need it for two people, not four.

Enter Tuna Steaks (above).

We are lucky enough to live close to a brilliant fishmonger– Ellis & Jones— and we like to make full use of them. This sushi-grade tuna was such a beautiful shade of bright pink that it could have walked down the runway in the Valentino fashion show.

You will not be surprised to hear that it was delicious. We’re also at the tail end of the fresh corn and tomato season, so I could get a few ears of corn, along with some beautiful cherry tomatoes. I also had some spinach in the refrigerator, so I took the option to stir it through the brown butter at the end, which was a great addition.

I keep waiting to have a dud of a recipe out of this cookbook, but it hasn’t happened yet.

“Spiced chicken and couscous soup” from “Dinner in One”

Kirstin: Melissa is continuing to deliver all the goods on Mission Soup at our home for this month. This soup has a healthy dose of baharat to spice things up along with a cinnamon stick to add complexity and the giant couscous are a lovely hearty addition. I suspect this will be even yummier tomorrow as the flavours mellow and deepen.

“Crispy Chicken Thighs with Puttanesca Green Beans” from “Dinner in One”

This is another genius recipe from Melissa Clark.

I know the title says “green beans” but anyone who’s looked at the photo can see that there’s also tenderstem broccoli in there. Don’t worry! Melissa said they can stand in for the green beans, so I went half-and-half. The broccoli was about two days away from being unusable, so I was pleased that I could eat it just in time.

The genius thing about this recipe is that after you crisp up the chicken, you cook the greens, shallots, capers and olives together, then put the chicken back on top and roast it for a further 20 minutes. What happens is all the lovely chicken juices cook out over the greens and olives, which makes a huge flavour bomb when it’s all done.

Also, as I’m now beginning to appreciate, as this is one container cooking– the clue is in the name– clean up is a doddle, and who doesn’t love that?

We definitely will be eating this again. Delicious and easy– all the best things.

If you’d like to try this yourself, Epicurious has the recipe available, which you’ll find when you click through here.

“Spicy Stir-Fried Pork with Green Beans and Tomatoes” from “Dinner in One”

I finished working late and my husband was hungry for dinner. (One of the perils of having an Empty Nest is getting dinner on the table at a reasonable time feels less urgent.)

“Don’t worry!” I said. “Melissa said this recipe can be cooked in 20 minutes!”

“I’m skeptical, but okay,” he said.

With all the braggadocio of a person who really ought to know better, I replied, “Time me!”

Reader, it did not take 20 minutes. It took 30, which is still pretty quick for a weeknight meal, but would be torture if you were hungry for dinner. He was nice about it, but still, overconfidence over something you’ve never done is almost always a bad idea.

It was, however, delicious. I think I might have been slightly quicker if I had prepped all the vegetables and other spices beforehand, like I do with most stir fries. I will do that the next time.

If you’d like to try this yourself, click here to read the recipe at The New York Times, where it is behind its paywall.