Must-Own Cookbooks: What We Eat When We Eat Alone

If you're anything like us, every meal you eat is a lavish feast, a celebration of all the finest things in life, boasting an abundance of bold flavors and fresh ingredients. A meal in which all food groups are dutifully represented and a tableful of good friends are close at hand. Well, most of our meals are like this. Quite a few, at the very least. But I suppose there are those rare moments when it's just you. And you're pretty hungry. And no one's gonna see you pour that can of chili into that pack of Fritos and proceed to eat it straight from the bag. Or see you pull a chair up to the fridge and start picking away at various Tupperwared leftovers and takeout containers, supplemented by the odd olive or pickled pepper. Then again, this peckish moment of peace might well be an opportunity to enjoy a little me time; a chance to indulge in a meal as thoroughly luxurious as the aforementioned feast, sans the tableside compatriots.

These very sundry acts of solitary sustenance are the subject of Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarland's "What We Eat When We Eat Alone." It's a refreshing take on cookbookery, exploring a cuisine every bit as practical as a tome like The Big Fat Duck Cookbook's is aspirational, while treating its titular meal with enough deference to make for a rewarding read rather than a mere novelty. At times it feels like a grown-up version of the Typical College Freshman's Guide to Feeding Themselves, with the cans of black olives replaced by tapenades, the english muffins swapped for levain bread, and aged gruyere standing in for pre-shredded cheddar. The recipes themselves are certainly appealing, but the real draw is the insight into the solo noshing habits of various food pros; the chance to see, as though through a hidden camera or two-way mirror, just what these chefs prepare when the goal is to impress none but themselves. What We Eat is a charming and intimate meditation on the meal that typically receives the least amount of reflection, but can often prove to be the most revealing.