One great cookbook: Anita Lo's 'Solo'
Because cooking for yourself is the best kind of largess


When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.
Endless cookbooks feature only recipes that serve four people. It is a strange immutability of the cookbook industry that no author, nor editor, nor publisher questions. Smack in the middle of the 20th century having a recipe serve mom, dad, Jenny and Johnny made good nuclear-family sense. There are no longer definitively that many mouths to feed in a household. Sometimes you throw a party and need to feed a precise bazillion guests; sometimes you have a lone diner — you — eager to feast on a smart, simple meal.
Anita Lo's book of meals for one person, "Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One," is the wondrous, utilitarian text for those aspirations of delicious self-sufficiency.
Armed for ongoing cooking success
Lo, the chef-owner of the beloved and now-shuttered Manhattan restaurant Annisa, might not seem an ideal guide to the world of solo cooking. Chefs, you imagine, cannot cook for anything less than a full dining room. Lo counters that argument in the first sentence of the book. "I put the 'lo' in 'solo.' The A Lo in 'alone.' I've been dumped almost as many times as I've been in relationships," said Lo. She knows from feeding herself. Being a chef, she will always do with so aplomb. She cannot help her chef-self.
To assist non-professionals in doing the same, Lo built "Solo" with a nearly 20-page appendix. It is a roadmap to assembling a pantry: what goes where in the fridge, the right equipment for the smallest kitchens and how to employ your freezer like a virtuoso.
Lo is a global-minded chef, so her recommended pantry swerves from bonito flakes to harissa to masa harina. Yet, she notes, these are tiered-up options. Before she dives into those, she provides a graph of the truest pantry essentials, like onions, tomatoes and sesame oil. Start small; grow into wide.
The equipment section is an individual-minded eye-opener. She notes the economical firepower of a vacuum sealer, identifying its ability to extend the life of frozen items and even chips. She says, "it's great for brown sugar, so you don't get that unusable-brown-brick effect." Lo trumpets Lilliputian equipment: 1-quart pots; an immersion blender in place of a behemoth; a toaster oven in lieu of a conventional one.
The freezer plan is an exercise in cunning strategy. She teaches you to FIFO, in which the first items in the freezer are the first items out. Like ingredients are stored with like ingredients in the various parts of the freezer. Items are frozen in manageable portions. Her chef mind also shares a trick for working your way decisively through everything in the freezer: Create a chart that tracks the item, add the date it was put in the freezer, and then, as you cook the portions of said item over time, you note the decreasing number of portions available. Chef obsessiveness put to intelligent home-cook use.
A recipe for every lone craving
Sound advice on how to prepare for cooking is handy; it is the quality of the recipes that matter when you are bent on fending for and feeding yourself. Across the seven chapters of "Solo," Lo grabs you by the hand and yanks you across the globe.
As an adept chef should, Lo highlights the possibilities of vegetables, exploiting them in main course iterations. Smoky eggplant and scallions are loaded into a frittata. Broccoli rabe is whirred into a pesto then lobbed on toast with segments of charred clementines. Twice-cooked sweet potatoes are topped with kale, mushrooms and parmesan. This is vegetable cooking that inspires as it satiates.
Her way with starches dip from gnocchi with mortadella and peas to glass noodles with squid and pork. Meat dishes, like a pan-roasted chicken breast with caramelized onions and bacon to Korean-style pork spareribs, likewise veer from Europe to Asia.
Fear not: desserts are welcomed, encouraged and glorified. Lo's versatile crumble topping appears in varied guises: a salted butterscotch pie, a Meyer lemon pie, a fruit crumble. Because cooking for one is no drudgery. It deserves to be a sweet celebration of self-reliant abundance.
Scott Hocker is an award-winning freelance writer and editor at The Week Digital. He has written food, travel, culture and lifestyle stories for local, national and international publications for more than 20 years. Scott also has more than 15 years of experience creating, implementing and managing content initiatives while working across departments to grow companies. His most recent editorial post was as editor-in-chief of Liquor.com. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of Tasting Table and a senior editor at San Francisco magazine.
-
From Da Vinci to a golden toilet: a history of museum heists
In the Spotlight Following the ‘spectacular’ events at the Louvre, museums are ‘increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs’
-
Can Gen Z uprisings succeed where other protest movements failed?
Today's Big Question Apolitical and leaderless, youth-led protests have real power but are vulnerable to the strongman opportunist
-
The allegations of Christian genocide in Nigeria
The Explainer West African nation has denied claims from US senator and broadcaster
-
Critics’ choice: Seafood in the spotlight
Feature An experimental chef, a newspaper-worthy newcomer, and a dining titan’s fresh spin-off
-
9 inviting bookstores ready for you to attack their shelves
The Week Recommends Your new favorite book awaits
-
Nathan Harris’ 6 favorite books that turn adventures into revelations
Feature The author recommends works by Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McGuire, and more
-
Book reviews: ‘Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What We Can Do About It’ and ‘It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin’
Feature How big tech is betraying its users and how Jane Birkin’s allure led her to struggle with her own self-worth
-
Tim Robinson falls out of a chair, chefs compete for Michelin stars and Martin Scorsese gets the documentary treatment in October TV
the week recommends This month's new television releases include ‘The Chair Company,’ ‘Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars’ and ‘Mr. Scorsese’
-
Frankenstein comes to life, the Alabama prison system is exposed and Rose Byrne goes full Crazy Mom in October movies
the week recommends This month’s new releases include ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘The Alabama Solution’ and ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’
-
Choose your own wellness adventure in Greater Palm Springs
The Week Recommends Hit the spa, try a sound bath or take a hike
-
A Taylor Swift analysis, the digital-addiction solution plus what it means to be a gay Black artist — all in October books
The Week Recommends This month's new releases include ‘Taylor’s Version’ by Stephanie Burt, ‘Enshittification’ by Cory Doctorow and ‘Minor Black Figures’ by Brandon Taylor