Vegan Cooking for One: Over 150 simple and appetizing meals

Most cookery books, vegan or otherwise, are aimed at a family of four, and dividing ingredients to make them suitable for one is often not feasible. Of course, the same dish could be eaten four nights running, but who wants to do that? Or you could freeze the remainder, but only certain types of dishes are suitable for freezing, and it still means eating leftovers. Also, many of the recipes found in ordinary cookery books involve a degree of time and effort which may be appropriate for the preparation of a meal for a family, a partner or friends, but does not seem worth the bother when cooking just for oneself.

It is not just the amount of time needed to cook a meal that counts either; the planning involved is often the most off-putting thing. Yet to stick to the same tried and true recipes day after day is very boring indeed – no wonder so many companies are now producing convenience meals for one person! Some of them aren’t bad at all, but they rarely match up to a home-cooked meal, and they are much more expensive.

This book is designed to overcome those obstacles to cooking for one. Each week begins with a Sunday lunch. Dinner on Sunday night is slightly more time-consuming than on other nights of the week, as this is likely to be the one day of the week when some extra time can be afforded. And for this meal a dessert recipe is also provided. From Monday to Friday the assumption is that lunch will be had out. The recipes for evening meals are all quick and easy to prepare, while at the same time providing lots of variety. For Saturday a lunch recipe is given, but the likelihood is that one night a week a break from cooking will be desired, and a meal had at a restaurant or with friends. By the end of any week all perishable ingredients will have been used up, and, to make the planning as simple as possible, a shopping list precedes each week’s menus.

The book does not, however, have to be utilized in the way described above; it can be used in the same way as any other cookery book, since each recipe stands on its own. Nor does it have to be used for single people only; ingredients are far more easily doubled, or even quadrupled, than halved or quartered. And although the recipes are all vegan – for even vegans not living alone may have to prepare separate meals for themselves – the menus aim to be interesting and varied enough to satisfy vegans, lacto-vegetarians and omnivores.

Given the importance of starting the day with something nourishing, one can’t really not mention breakfast, although no recipes are provided. Vegans have plenty of choice these days with dairy-free mueslis and the like (however, some cereals are not suitable because they are fortified with an animal-derived vitamin D). Porridge is a nice starter for a cold winter’s morning; or for a savoury hot breakfast, scrambled tofu, or thinly sliced and fried tofu, fits the bill nicely. Breakfast is one meal that causes no problems to single vegans.

As indicated in the introduction above, the assumption is that the majority of people using this book will not be concerned with preparing a daily lunch. Every vegetarian restaurant now caters for vegans, and even non-vegetarian restaurants often have vegan salads and/or baked potatoes, etc. Eating lunch out in many parts of the country is no longer a problem for a vegan.

If daily restaurant lunches are not easily affordable then it is easy enough to bring a packed lunch in to work. There are an increasing number of vegan pâtés and spreads for sandwiches, as well as vegan biscuits. A number of the Saturday and Sunday lunch dishes in this book – such as spreads, salads and the like – could be taken to work for midday lunches as well.

For those who do not go out to work but lunch at home, the weekend lunch recipes could be used. A healthy alternative is simply a daily mixed salad, with differing ingredients and accompaniments for variety. There are also many more packet soups and convenience foods like tofu burgers which are vegan these days.

There are some people who prefer to eat a large midday meal and only a light supper in the evening; the daily recipes could of course be used for a midday meal and the above suggestions be utilized for the evening meal.

The most useful kitchen implement for a single person is a dieter’s scale: using one of those you can weigh as little as ¼ oz (5g), which is invaluable for small quantities.

Many cookery books insist that imperial and metric measurements should not be mixed. As far as I am concerned, anyone using this book should feel free to mix imperial, metric and even American measurements to their heart’s content. The recipes are intended to be robust enough not to require precision, which is why, in the newer recipes particularly, I have often suggested a range of quantities of a particular ingredient, to give maximum flexibility.