Recipes (and question) : Quick 1-person meals

[cimorene]

Because Wax does shift work, I often have to eat dinner by myself. I don't like doing a big Preparing a Meal for one person, so I tend to eat leftovers, sandwiches and similar things, or cook small, quick, 1-person things. Occasionally these are frozen, from mixes, etc, but I don't like to rely overmuch on that type of food as it's typically overly expensive, bad for the environment, and less tasty. So most of the time I go to (in order of frequency over the last few years)

• Quick pasta with pesto: ready-made pesto paste, lemon juice and olive oil over pasta with minced tomato (I find that I can't eat it without the tomato). There's a non-quick version too that involves other vegetables. I use about 2 tablespoons pesto paste, perhaps a tablespoon each of lemon and olive oil, but that is to taste of course, and mix it briskly in the bottom of the pasta bowl with a fork before pouring the pasta over and mixing it in.



• Potato and egg: 1-2 potatoes & a soft-boiled egg mashed together with a few tablespoons butter, salt, & a dash of dill. Can be topped with shredded cheese or slices of cheese, then microwaved ~30 seconds.



• Ramen noodles with a pinch of garlic and chili powder and a dash of lemon juice and soy sauce.



• Rice or rice cooked with a cube of bouillon with soy sauce.

What do the rest of you do for quick 1-person meals? I'm casting about for new ideas, here, because I want to cut back the amount of the pesto dish I eat (it has recently struck me that it consists mostly of starch in the form of white flour, and a single tomato and a lot of oil doesn't do a lot to make it more nutritious, even if it is sometimes very delicious). (I'm well aware that rice and ramen noodles are just as starchy. I do like starch, and live mostly on it; I'm just looking for ways to incorporate at least a LITTLE other nutrients into my diet).

Comments

[likethemodel]

I cook for myself a lot (mainly because my family doesn't share my tastes) and when I'm tired I'll just make a large salad with some protein. It sounds monotonous, but I always try to mix up the vegetables, the dressing, and the protein. Lately it's been chicken, but beans are delicious, too. Sometimes I throw-in a little pasta to give it more substance. I think I'm making a carrot, avocado, ginger salad tonight with chicken in balsamic vinegar tonight.

[delfinnium]

(hi, popping in from Bossymarmalade's rlist.)

One-person meals actually involve me doing a very quick stir-fry of veggies (like sliced carrots and/or bok choi or just something green that fries well with onions and garlic) Sometimes I fry marinated meat or filletted fish with them and top it off with soy sauce and rice.

Another way is you add frozen spinach to your boiling water, when it boils add your ramen noodles and packet of flavouring. When the noodles are done, crack an egg in, and you've got protien, veggies, and carbs. :D You could also get frozen gyoza or dumplings and put them in your bowl, and when your ramen is done pour it over your gyoza - so the frozen dumplings thaw/heat, and the soup cools down to drink.

Another quick easy way is to get miso paste, like about a generous table spoon of it, put it into about a bowl's worth of water, add a fillet of fish (tilapia's good), and boil it. When the miso has dissovled, the fish would be cooked, so you just mash it up with a fork, pour it over noodles or rice. Add a dash of soy sauce for taste and green onions for flavour (and vitamins! cause they're green!)

[cimorene]

That sounds delicious! The sources of protein would have to vary a bit in Finland because tropical produce (like avocados) which are very unnative don't ripen properly. They're edible when used as one ingredient as a dish (though they'll ruin guacamole), but they're expensive, and of disappointing quality, and come with a big carbon footprint, so I don't buy them. Beans and chicken, though, could work.

[cimorene]

Ohhh, how I love frozen gyoza. When I lived in the US, I ate many many meals consisting of nothing but them, but sadly, I cannot get them where I live now. Still, your other ideas are very useful! And I haven't bought miso paste in about a year, so I could definitely start eating that again.

[greenet]

One of my favorites is fresh spinach and aïoli in pita bread, mushrooms or chicken can be added too, if you're not as fond of spinach as I am.

I tend to look at bentos for ideas, because I eat relatively often, but not a lot each time, plus, they're generally fairly easy to make and not time consuming.

Food is good, but spending a lot of time preparing it just for me is boring.

[delfinnium]

ah. hmm. You can substitute gyoza with sausages though! Like frankfurters or some sort of meat that you like.

If you have the time, what you can do is chop up a handful of carrots, maybe some broccoli (some sort of hard veggie), onion, and ham (or chinese sausage, some sort of strong tasting meat), some precooked rice (like leftovers about one helping's worth), add a chicken buillion cube (or some chicken stock or something), add water to cover and boil the hell out of it. It would take about an hour but the rice would be rendered down into nice sort of porridge, with everything all cooked soft, and you can add frozen spinach, or stir in an egg, thicken it with a bit of milk or flour, and you'll have enough for two helpings. Eat with soy sauce, preserved veg/fried onions/preserved duck egg. very warming especially in winter, and you can, if you're not particularly hungry, just add more water to it to dilute the whole thing.

[daegaer]

Do you eat fish? If so, a really nice simple thing is to make a parcel in foil with a salmon fillet, the juice of an orange with a slice or two of orange on top, season with salt and pepper, wrap it up tight stick in the oven on a baking tray at 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6 for about 30 minutes, and serve with the starch of your choice. It's simple, has basically no preparation and is delicious (the orange slices become like big bits of marmalade,eat skin and all).

[emmuzka]

This no-wheat tuna casserole was my fave before stomach surgery: Defrost some frozen broccoli and chopped onion, chop the broccoli to the same size as the onion, throw them to a microwave safe pan, add a can of tuna in oil, add spices like persillade, black pepper etc. mix well, maybe trow some cheese on top and place i micro in full power for 8-10 minutes. (makes two portions if a whole can is used)

One super simple and delicious meal is turkish yoghurt mixed with defrosted chopped spinach, with black pepper and some lemon, with bread.

This quick-and-dirty sushi is great, too: Buy a piece of raw salmon, cut in dice-sized pieces (de-bone if necessary), place the pieces on a plate and pour soy sauce and a half a spoonful of (regular) vinegar on top. Mix, let stand on fridge for five minutes, eat with wasabi.

[northern]

Baked potato (made in the microwave) with butter and/or shredded cheese and/or sourcream. Salt and pepper yes please.

[cimorene]

Oohh, browsing bento sites just makes me so frustrated because I don't keep tons of food around, and don't have the ingredients to try any of them out without shopping first!

I ♥ spinach, but I don't eat it often because it's quite expensive compared to other greens here. (I don't know if it costs more here, or if it's simply that I was so used to not worrying about the cost of food as a child that I never managed to before I moved away from the US.)

[cimorene]

I've never experimented with savory dishes involving yogurt, oddly. My only experience is mediterranean restaurants, but combining it with spinach does sound tasty, a bit like the sauce you get in Greek gyros.

[cimorene]

That does sound tasty!

I do like salmon, but it's so rich that I only occasionally eat it, and then only small portions; I find it nearly overpowering. (I was going to say, how could I possibly eat that much, but then realized you said a fillet, which is an amount of salmon I have never seen since coming to Finland; I've seen Wax's family preparing it, and they always prepared an entire fish at a time, which came in a single piece wrapped in paper, not even decapitated or anything, from the fish seller. But maybe you can buy it already filleted. I mean, probably you can, even though this is Finland. Not everyone can eat a whole fish before it goes bad, right?)

I don't avoid fish ethically, but I don't really cook it because I was so little exposed to it growing up that I only know of a few kinds that I like, and have no experience cooking it, or even experience of seeing other people cook it. I also don't like Fish Smell in general, or Fish Restaurants, only individual fish dishes, which puts me in that fish novice place of not really knowing where to start, and I am not an experienced and confident enough chef to simply start buying things and experimenting on my own.

[cimorene]

Yum! Potatoes bake (and roast) rather quickly inside the oven too, of course, you don't save much time in the microwave. I like them roasted best, but it's so time-consuming to slice them and blot the starch from the slices and then coat them in oil, and otherwise they dry out in the oven and are not nearly as tasty. Actually, I suppose that my boiled potato thing probably is no different, taste-wise, from a baked one. I don't really remember why I started boiling them.

[emmuzka]

Yep, for more Grecian taste, swap the spinach for grated cucumber or zucchni and add garlic. I like spinach more, it's more savory, healthier and its easier to drain the extra liquid off: just squeezing the spinach in your hand will do.

[copracat]

I like steamed vegetables plus sauce where sauce can be cheese sauce, soy sauce plus some sesame oil and sesame seeds, japanese soup sauce plus furikake, anything you like, really.

soup is good food

[devon]

I start with canned soup like corn chowder or vegetable something and add a pile of chopped veggies to it. I add fresh corn to corn chowder, shelled edamame to almost anything, chopped mushrooms to anything. Then when you add your extra garlic, soy, balsamic, curry, or whatever, you have a lovely tasting soup where someone else did most of the work for you. I will add those things to ramen, also.

Re: soup is good food

[cimorene]

Good point! There is a much smaller availability of canned goods in Finland (soup is usually dried powder and I don't like those as much), but I should investigate them more.

[eyebrowofdoom]

Roast a tray or two full of different roasting veggies; eat with instant gravy. Or you can even dress like a salad with balsamic & oil.

Cous cous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cous_cous): to be super quick, make it with a stock cube and frozen peas (the boiling water will melt them) and/or canned sweetcorn. Less quick but still pretty quick: saute bacon or sausage, mushroom and whatever other veg, turn off heat, then put in your cous cous, stock cube and boiling water.

Omelette with canned sweetcorn and chives or other oniony thing. Or whatever you want to put in it: bacon, mushrooms, spinach, tomato etc etc

Minestrone soup: stock cube & water, tomato concentrate, some small pasta, bacon and veg or whatever.

Red lentil soup (these cook < 15min): stock cube & water, canned tomatoes or tomato concentrate, red lentils. Keeping adding water as it cooks until it's about right.

Fast curry dhal: saute onion & curry powder, add canned pre-cooked brown lentils, veg if you want them, maybe a little stock cube and water. Simmer 10-20min or till you're happy.

[kaneko]

Super quick tuna pasta for one: 1 small tin of tuna, 1 clove of garlic crushed and finely chopped, 2 eating spoons of capers, juice from half a lemon (or lime), and sweet chili sauce to taste. Fry the garlic in a little oil in a saucepan. Then put everything else in the saucepan and heat through (2-5 minutes). Put on pasta.

Tofu and broccolini (or broccoli). Cut firm tofu into bite-sized pieces. Cut broccolini into bite-sized pieces. I sometimes cook them separately (frying the tofu in a little oil until it's a little brown on both sides and then taking it out and putting the broccoli in the pan with a little water and covering it until it's cooked). But when I can't be bothered, I just put them both in the pan at the same time. Put it on a plate, drizzle oyster sauce on top. Eat.

This is also really easy and delicious.

[daegaer]

Maybe you could ask the fishmonger to fillet it for you? (You certainly could here, though I don't know if it's common in Finland). Even if you had to cook more than a single fillet in one go, the cooked fish would keep perfectly well to be used the next day - you could flake it into rice, or put it on a thin pizza crust, for example (Aldi's "specially selected" salmon and spinach pizza is exceedingly yummy and not overly fish-tastic, in case you are now recoiling from the screen at the thought of salmon pizza!)

I hear you on the fish smell, ugh. Theoretically, fresh fish shouldn't smell "fishy", but even the fresh-fish smell makes me shiver. Baking fish, though, or doing this thing of wrapping bits up in foil to cook in the oven (so they sort of oven-poach) does seem to minimise the smell and certainly minimises the cleaning-up.

Re: soup is good food

[devon]

Oh, and instant potato flakes can improve the texture of many store-bought soups. I can't make a roux to save my life, but I can thicken stuff with potato. yay!

Re: soup is good food

[cimorene]

Oh, I didn't know that! I have SO much trouble thickening sauces. :< I used to try really hard to make a good white sauce and I don't think I EVER succeeded.

[basingstoke]

I keep frozen stir-fry veg mix on hand all the time and then either make a sauce (homemade peanut sauce, om nom nom) or use a bottled sauce.

You can nuke the veg (five minutes for a bowl works) if you don't want the bother of using a pan. If you want some protein, a hard-boiled egg is lovely.