Cooking Alone

by Kathleen Le Riche

  Cooking Alone

  KATHLEEN LE RICHE

  For those who wish to

  and those who must

  find solace in solitude

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword by Bee Wilson

  I Hunting the Incentive

  II The Old Lady

  III The Bachelor

  IV The Bed-Sitter

  V The Happy Potterer

  VI The Grass Widower

  VII The Career Woman

  VIII The Convalescent

  IX The Schoolboy Moocher and the Student

  X The Lonely Mother

  Index

  About the Authors

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  FOREWORD BY BEE WILSON

  It is easy to underestimate a book like this, which is not only very short but more or less totally forgotten. In all my years of talking about cookbooks, I have never heard anyone describe themselves as a Kathleen Le Riche fan. And yet Cooking Alone, first published in 1954, is something remarkable. Aside from its wit and period charm, this is one of the very few cookbooks to recognise that the most important ingredient in the kitchen is the human being who cooks.

  The minute you start to flick through, you notice that the book’s structure is unique. Instead of dividing up the chapters into types of dishes – starters and main courses or meat, fish and vegetables and so on – Le Riche names her chapters after different types of solitary cooks: an array of human characters. There is The Old Lady who cooks white fish to share with her pets; The Career Woman who feels she deserves a roast chicken now and then; and The Happy Potterer who loves to experiment with unusual flavours such as lamb chop with olives. Each of these characters enables Le Riche to address a different aspect of cooking alone, whether it’s the problem of storing ingredients for one without them going to waste (The Bachelor) or the dilemma of keeping equipment to a minimum while still having what you need to produce a satisfying meal (The Bed-Sitter).

  The mood of the book is old-fashioned and modern at the same time. Many of the dishes described by Le Riche are from a Miss Marple-ish world of British food that has vanished. Other than a surprising recipe for rabbit with aubergine, there is almost no trace of the sunny French and Italian cooking that Elizabeth David had been writing about since the publication of A Book of Mediterranean Food in 1950. Le Riche writes of semolina puddings and liver and bacon, of mutton broth and ways to jazz up a tin of fruit with ‘a little cream and a sweet wafer biscuit’. Most of the characters have no fridge. If they want to buy a block of ice cream, they must wrap it in several layers of newspaper to stop it melting.

  But while Le Riche’s cooking may be old-school, her theme is excitingly current. This is fundamentally a book about self-care. ‘Yes, I take care of myself rather well’, comments one of the characters. Cooking Alone is about ways to be kinder to yourself when you are alone in the kitchen, whatever your reasons for being alone. As Le Riche rightly observes, some choose their solitude as cooks while others have it forced upon them. In either case, the key to enjoying cooking more is to find your own ‘positive incentives’. It’s also about being realistic. ‘Forgive yourself if you have to use margarine instead of butter for frying’, she comments in one recipe for fried chicken with ‘pimiento’, by which she means sweet red pepper.

  Le Riche writes perceptively about what it feels like to pay attention to your own appetites. Each of the characters has their own particular hidden passions. The Bed-Sitter is a young man who ‘began to dream about cookers – tall, short, handsome, squat, Dutch ovens, boiler-grillers’. The Bachelor is obsessed with vegetables, and finds himself hypnotised by their bright colours at the market ‘like a woman at a dress shop window’. The Student makes delicious pikelets for herself on the ring heater in her student digs from a batter that is ‘thick like clotted cream’.

  Le Riche herself is something of a mystery. I could find out almost nothing about her, except that this was her third cookbook, after Cooking from Scratch in 1951 and Cooking for a Party in 1953. By the 1960s she seems to have abandoned food writing and become an amateur Shakespeare scholar. A critic for the Belfast News Letter praised Cooking from Scratch as ‘a clever book, and amusing too’. The premise of the book was that Le Riche had started off hating cooking but now found herself an accomplished cook: ‘from can-opener to Cordon Bleu!’, as the blurb described it.

  Whatever her own life story, there is no doubt that Le Riche displays a rare understanding of the psychological obstacles that a person may need to get over to enjoy solitary cooking. This comes out especially strongly in the moving final chapter, ‘The Lonely Mother’, which is about a woman who spends the day from nine to five alone in her house while her children are at school, yet who often simply doesn’t eat because she is so busy with housework. This mother suddenly imagines how different it would be if she were expecting someone else for lunch or tea and resolves to start cooking for herself as generously as if she were her own guest. Cooking Alone is ultimately a call to cook for yourself as if you matter. It’s sad that, nearly seventy years on, this still feels like a radical message.

  Bee Wilson, 2020

  I

  HUNTING THE INCENTIVE

  Wherever I go, and whenever I discuss cooking with the people I meet, I find a resistance which is almost general among people who are alone. Whether the solitude is more or less permanent, or a temporary ménage, the attitude is, “I can’t be bothered.”

  The result is too often a devitalized condition which, in itself, breeds inertia and therefore more reluctance to be bothered. The Awful End of this anaemic attitude ought to be incentive enough—to avoid. But there are many more positive incentives to induce one to cook, and enjoy what is cooked. It need not be a fulsome, arduous meal of several courses. Nor need it be a filling kind of snack the filler of which is mostly bread.

  From my experience, and that of others who have talked with me, I have found, and here set out, the simple, colourful, nourishing dishes which are adequate, yet easy to prepare.

  The characters present their own incentives and ideas about happy eating, among which may be yours.

  II

  THE OLD LADY

  “People are beginning to notice it—the way I talk to myself,” she said. “I’ll buy myself a canary. Not a cage, though. I’ll have netting across the window, and let him free. And I might have a little cat—though she might harm the bird. But I’ll have a little dog, so that when I’m out, conversing with myself, people will think my remarks are addressed to whatever is at the end of the string.

  “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t talk to myself…. I find my own articulate thoughts so interesting. When anyone visits me and talks … I have noticed myself only waiting for them to pause, so that I may continue my own Argument. A little dog wouldn’t interrupt me. He’d look at me with his big eyes. And I’d smooth his silky head, and hold his paws so that he wouldn’t tear my silken skirt…”

  “But you’d have to feed him!”

  She hadn’t heard the knock on her door; nor had she observed it opening. But there was her neighbour, already informed of her project and her disposition. So they discussed the way the pets should be fed.

  He said, “Feed a dog as you feed yourself.”

  “Do you mean that I should eat horsemeat! Or that I should give him a share of my chicken?”

  “Can’t see you doing that, old lady. No, what I meant was, cook the meat and the fish and the veg., and make it tasty. Some nice gravy, for your dog.”

  “But he should have bones.”

  “Ah, but with plenty on them.”

  “And biscuits!”

  “Hard ones—good for his teet
h, like the bones.”

  “Perhaps I’ll have a pusscat.”

  “Have a peke, and then you’ll have a cat and a dog rolled into one.”

  And so she did. And very soon after that she had a Siamese cat as well, and her conversational powers were well exercised. Indeed it was not the only exercise, because several times a week she was compelled to walk to the butcher, to the fishmonger, to the green as well as the dry grocer. It was a necessity, an objective, an interest and a satisfaction. With the Siamese snugly balanced on her shoulder, keeping her ear warm, and the peke at her heels, or visiting, she felt as important as if she had a family.

  Buying their food, she bought also for herself … rabbits, stewing steak, large white fish (easy to bone), veal bones (one for the dog and the rest for soup) as well as other meat bones which she gave to him, raw. Sometimes she shared her ice-cream with her fastidious Siamese.

  “Having a nice share of the dog’s dinner?” Her neighbour poked his head in one day. She liked him; accepted his interest with his knowing ways and the pert comments which came with him, inevitably.

  This time he had hit on the very thing she had been thinking. “Have I been talking aloud to myself again?”

  “Not this time. But I guessed. It gets like that when you keep pets. You stew the rabbit or the steak, and you keep testing it to see if it’s tender. And if it’s nice enough for them, it’s nice enough for you…. And if you’ve got something you enjoy, you give them a bit, see? Or leave them quite a lot. And watch them eat it!”

  “A LITTLE AND OFTEN”

  Since she had been growing old she had experienced the truth of what she had often heard—that large meals tax the digestion—so she prepared small portions, eating at two-or three-hourly intervals. Instead of the two-or three-course meal, she ate the meat or a savoury at one time, and later on ate the pudding, the sweetmeat, or the fruit.

  She had learned another very important thing about keeping her appetite and her digestion in good working order—she never ate when she was utterly fatigued. She rested in quite a relaxed position for at least fifteen minutes before eating or trying to prepare her meal.

  “When I’ve rested—and shopping always tires me—I take a little reviver while I begin to cook,” she told me when I called on her. And she showed me her little list, becauses she realizes she is also becoming forgetful.

  REVIVERS

  A spoonful of honey, or Blackcurrant purée, Apple jelly or Rosehip syrup.

  A wineglassful of orange squash, undiluted, Grapefruit squash, or Tomato juice with a spot of Worcestershire sauce, all very cold.

  A few nuts, sultanas, or boxed dates.

  Best of all: two lumps of sugar.

  HERBAL TEA is a great reviver—the green leaf maté tea, the dried lime blossoms, camomile daisies or elderflower—a few spoonfuls left to infuse for ten minutes after pouring on boiling water will make several cups. As it retains its flavour and no harm comes to it, it can be kept overnight provided it is strained off the leaves or flowers. It takes only a minute then to re-heat, with or without sugar, but no milk.

  “No wine, my dear!” she says. “Not at my age while I cook. I should simply drop off to sleep. But I like a little tipsy cake.”

  TIPSY CAKE

  “I buy a portion of sponge cake with cream sandwiched in it, and put it on my most beautiful plate. It always gives me pleasure to eat from what remains of my exquisite china. I pour a wineglass of sherry over the cake (or brandy or rum) and cover it with a dish while I’m eating my savoury course, perhaps. By the time I’m ready for my tipsy cake it is well saturated, squashy and luscious.”

  FRESH FRUIT CAKE

  “A fresh fruit cake is another thing I like. I buy a fresh, plain sponge cake and keep it in an airtight tin, taking a slice from it as I need it. This I split through the middle and arrange in it, like a sandwich, sliced peeled pear, peach, apricot, or any of the soft fruits in season, such as raspberries or strawberries. Even tinned fruits will do, of course—the crushed pineapple is very good—and I pour over the cake and the fruit the cream from the top of my milk. Or I might buy a little pot of cream, or yoghourt which needs caster sugar or honey on it to modify the rather tart flavour.”

  SPONGE CAKE

  “Often I prefer to make my own sponge cake, for which I use my cake tin with a tube through the middle, so that there’s never any question about the centre sagging. And I use two eggs to make it light and airy, avoiding the need of much baking powder which I rather dislike.

  “First I drain the whites out of the eggs into a dry basin. I stand another basin containing two ounces of margarine with three ounces of sugar, in a bowl of hot water to melt, and mix the egg yolks into this melted cream until all is smooth. I sift three heaped tablespoonfuls of plain flour with half a teaspoonful of salt, then sift it again into the cream, mixing it by lifting to keep it airy. When I have it I grate into that the zest (rind) of an orange or a lemon, using the juice to mix the dough—just enough to make it soft. When I have no fruit I mix it with a little warm milk or evaporated milk.

  “The egg whites must be whisked up till they resemble firm snow, and spooned into the dough at the very last, just before it is ready to be cooked. This makes a dough almost as softly fluid as a thick batter. So I scoop it into my cake tin which I’ve greased slightly, shaking a little caster sugar over it to create that crystalline look, and let it bake at a moderate heat, about 400° F. or mark 6 if one cooks by gas.

  “It is cooked in about half an hour, when it will be light gold in colour and will be springy when you touch the top. So I take it out and invert it over a wire mesh, and, as it cools, it releases itself from the tin, which I lift off to let the steam free. When it is quite cold and settled I enclose it in my airtight tin, not before.”

  ICING

  “Sometimes I ice my slice. A dessertspoonful of sifted icing sugar is mixed in a cup containing a drop of water or milk, over hot water, until it is fluid—it takes one minute—and it is ready to pour over the cake on the plate.”

  *

  She went on talking of her inventive ideas for quite a time, words and gestures presenting a vivid picture out of the back of her mind. But she had long been unaware of my presence, so I left her, happy, absorbed, eloquent; and I shut the door.

  III

  THE BACHELOR

  When I saw him standing at the greengrocer’s shop, then hovering a few steps farther on at the fishmonger’s, then back again to the piled fruit and vegetables, hypnotized like a woman at a dress shop window, I knew he was an inveterate shopper. As she would be saying to herself, “How ravishing is that amethyst velvet; how well it would light up my raven hair! Or that black figured satin which I could wear with one pearl ornament… just one!” So he, unable to resist that radiant display of bright colours, would remain within the orbit of fresh celery, newly boiled beetroots, grapefruits, crisp apples and clean-washed parsnips until he bought… just one! of each, and a carrier to put them in as well as the fish from next door. So, carrying them away covetously, he would only remember when he was at his own doorstep that his small kitchen was already overflowing with these irresistible things—some beginning to rot.

  So the debate would begin. “Must eat the older ones first…. No, let’s have the fresh ones while they are fresh, NOW”, and the rest would sadden and yawn for their overdue repository—the rubbish bin. It was only after some months of living alone, that he was able to organize his domestic habits so that he lived well, hygienically and without waste.

  STORING

  Storing what he had bought was his main problem, solved in this way:

  BREAD was bought in a waxed paper wrapping, or rolled in a linen cloth so that it could “breathe”.

  GREEN VEGETABLES were washed (the coarse outer leaves discarded) and drained, then piled in a plastic bowl, covered with a damp linen cloth.

  STALKS LIKE CELERY were stood in a jar, half filled with water. In the same way he kept parsley fresh.

>   ROOT VEGETABLES were kept on an airy wire rack. “Keep your powder dry” was his watchword for FLOUR, which keeps best in its cotton bag. The other cereals such as RICE and BARLEY he kept in screw-top glass jars.

  SPICES he kept in jars also, so that the contents were visible.

  BISCUITS were kept crisp, and CAKES were kept moist in separate air-tight tins, as were the different varieties of SUGAR, TEA and COFFEE.

  DRIED FRUITS, because of their acid content, corroded the tins, so they had to be stored in glass jars with waxed paper lids, or covers of imitation porous skin.

  Through such foresight, the mice never bothered him, as they too often do when their journeys are rewarded by finding food uncovered or in paper bags which they nibble through.

  He bought strings of ONIONS from the ingratiating Breton boys, and hooked them up behind his kitchen door with a bag of DRIED HERBS. The mice, so far, had not been attracted by this fare.

  The MILK, CHEESE, MEAT and FISH had to be considered quite seriously, so he decided to invest in a little safe which keeps food stone-cold by simply standing a dish of fresh water inside at the top.

  Until then, he stood the butter and the bottle of milk on separate dishes, put an earthenware cover over each and poured cold water over that morning and night. The water evaporating caused the chilling. During hot weather if the milk had to be kept overnight, he scalded it—brought it up to bubbling point—then poured it into a cold jug, stirred it and covered it with muslin to keep the flies out. In the summer-time he often bought the sterilized milk with the “crown” cap which keeps its fresh flavour for three or four days. It is so good to make milk puddings with, giving them a rich, creamy colour. It is very nice in coffee, too, but is ruinous in tea. And because it won’t clot it is no use trying to make it into a junket, for which fresh milk only may be used.