The Joys, Recipes and Terrifying Secrets Of Single Person Cookery.

 When one is single sometimes the endless parade of meals eaten straight from semi-molten plastic tubs can get a tad disheartening. There is something slightly forlorn about pulling bits of plastic film from your carbonised lasagne. There is something far more forlorn about just giving up and eating the film as well. Sadly most microwaveable meal manufacturers have yet to include a loaded shotgun and so, if we must soldier on, occasionally the angry single must attempt to consume something vaguely resembling nutrition. It is perfectly acceptable to resent this need and yet organs tend to stop working if nothing is consumed except 99p meals prepared in an Indonesian sweatshop by child slaves. Also, as I can safely assume food hygiene would not be a pressing concern for me if I was making curries for pennies a day, it’s nice to take a break from risking shitting yourself hollow through e-coli.

 The following recipes can be produced with minimal interest or effort while still being just novel enough to make you feel slightly less like driving the fork through your skull and deep into your frontal lobe. If you want to make the evening extra special I would suggest pretending the meal was made for you by someone who cares about you… perhaps also making it more convincing by putting the food on a plate or in a bowl. While it is obviously impossible to have a romantic conversation with your pretend special person… it is just about possible to pretend that you’re having a romantic angry silence with them. This will accurately simulate the likely circumstances if there was a real person in the room. If you’re really going to put the effort in you can play the “what did I say wrong?” game just as well without a real person.

 NOTE: Because I want to avoid any liability all recipes will be meat-free. Throw away anything in your fridge that resembles meat. Don’t do this for moral reasons, do this because it’s probably been there so long it’s become sentient again.

Appetisers.

Roasted red pepper, red onion and tomato soup.

Chop 4 red onions, 3 red peppers and 6 cherry tomatoes.

Wash blood from vegetables and bandage finger while wondering if it'll ever grow back properly

Place in pan and coat with oil and basil.

Cook at gas mark 6 for 30-35 minutes, turning occasionally.

Remove battery from smoke alarm.

Place vegetables in blender, mangle heartily while slowly adding oil from pan and just enough water so that the world's cheapest blender deigns to have an effect.

Season with salt, pepper and paprika.

Spill half on floor trying to get the kitchen door open while holding hot bowl and cup of coffee.

Asparagus soup.

Absentmindedly and irritably boil the asparagus you forgot you bought until it no longer resembles a bundle of twigs.

Remove asparagus from pan and transfer to blender.

Swear loudly as you realise 9.99 was probably not enough to pay for a blender.

Once blender starts working slowly add the water the asparagus was cooked in until desired consistency is achieved.

Angrily throw what you hope are a few almonds on top.

Burn finger.

Swear again.

Mushrooms on toast.

Go to a slightly classier supermarket than usual.

Be absolutely horrified by the price of a small box of randomly shaped mushrooms that don’t look entirely safe.

Two days later discover they’ve started going off already.

Trim green fur from stems.

Melt a lump of butter in a frying pan.

Panic as the butter starts to burn.

Throw in mushrooms.

Feel the panic grow as everything begins sizzling violently and the smoke alarm goes off despite you having earlier taken the battery out.

Flick the pan as you’ve seen them do on cooking shows.

Burn your hand trying to retrieve spilt mushrooms from around hob.

When the novelty wears off the mushrooms are done.

Dump mushrooms on some toast and throw the pan away because you’ve probably destroyed it or at the very least will never clean it.

Entrees.

All the crap you have left in your fridge stir-fry.

Realise you’re already very tired after making the appetiser.

Stare at the fridge.

Pull open salad drawer and try to direct any vomit away from anything that is meant to be green.

Submerge hand and seek any solids.

Place all collected solids on your disgusting chopping board.

Pretend you know how to do all the fancy chopping you’ve seen on TV.

Realise that if you’d just cut the stuff normally you’d already be done.

Throw everything into frying pan full of oil, not caring that it takes different amounts of time to cook different ingredients.

Repeat your mistake with the flipping.

When things start looking burnt feel free to add the expired packet of noodles you found under the sink.

Take one packet/lump/tin/scraping of coconut milk and add along with a dollop of the peanut butter you’d been using to bait the mousetraps.

Warily stir it, so little remaining in the pan after the last bout of flipping that you should just admit you’re not actually good at it.

When you just don’t care anymore… place on plate.

Eat with chopsticks just to make life harder for yourself/you don’t have any clean cutlery after the appetiser.

Vaguely saggy aloo.

Brace yourself and light a cigarette.

Debate whether you can be bothered to even attempt to do it properly.

Figure you’ll just wing it.

Resentfully parboil some potatoes. This is the same as cooking them usually but this time you don’t actually have to be embarrassed they’re undercooked.

Heat some oil in a frying pan.

Add cumin, ginger, turmeric… and… well, let’s face it, you probably only have salt, pepper, and half a mislabelled jar of brown at best. In case of miracles, add some coriander. Don’t worry too much about quantities at this point, play it safe as you’ll be desperately trying to unfuck things throughout this recipe.

Add a chopped onion and cook it until almost burnt.

Add the potatoes, try to limit the amount of water slopped into the pan as it has a slight tendency to burn all the skin off your hands upon meeting the oil.

Have another cigarette while stirring occasionally.

Add coconut milk in some form.

Taste and then try and work out exactly which spice you’ve not added enough of or just randomly throw anything to hand in until it’s just about palatable. Cumin is your friend to a certain extent, turmeric slightly less, paprika is handy and anything short of piss will probably be salvageable if it goes wrong.

Slowly add a bag of spinach and stir it in until it looks like a vat of rotting seaweed.

Cover and simmer for a while… about twenty minutes… it won’t help much… but it gives you time to smoke another couple of cigarettes.

Shepherd’s pie.

Buy Quorn mince. It’s disgusting but… really… do you want to contemplate what goes into the mince you can actually afford? Also… if you have any real mince… it’s almost certainly greyer than the queen’s pubic mound by now.

Do the parboiling thing with any potatoes that aren’t growing too badly.

Heat oil in frying pan and brown the living buggery out of an onion and chopped carrots. If you’re not sure what “brown” means it’s basically just cooking the thing… All the fancy terms basically just mean “don’t burn”. You’ll burn it anyway so don’t panic.

Debate the merits of a stock cube you don’t have. As you don’t have a stock cube you can recreate the effect by just adding a lot of salt. If you do have a stock cube feel free to crumble the bastard over the onion and carrots.

Add the non-lethal mince/vegetables you wish to use instead and stir distractedly.

About one cigarette later it’ll probably be cooked. Doesn’t really matter does it?

Make a cup of thick gravy with the granulated crap or ponce about with the liquid stuff in the packet if you’re living the high-life. Slop it over the mince/vegetables and stir.

Add one very large squirt of brown sauce.

Add half a tin of tinned tomatoes and leave the other half in your fridge to grow fur. You will never, ever use it.

Stir and leave to simmer on a low heat for one to two cigarettes.

Take the baking dish you’ve been using as an ashtray since a relative palmed it off on you rather than throwing it out. You may want to wash it… but that urge passes when you realise that stuff is stuck pretty good. Dump contents of frying pan into dish.

Mash potatoes with cream (let’s face it, all you’re likely to have is expired milk), butter, a spoonful of mustard and a lot of anger. Pretend it’s an ex-lover or, if applicable, the celebrity you are stalking.

Dump potatoes on top of goo in dish.

Top with the least offensive bits of cheese.

Shove into an oven at gas mark… let’s say 5… for about… let’s guess at… twenty five minutes? Or until the goo explodes past the potato and sticks to the oven.

Serve.

Realise how much fucking washing up you’ve got to do.

Sandwich.

Place filling between bread.

Desserts.

Lazy bastard cheesecake-esque thingy.

By this point you’re probably full, you’re probably very tired and almost certainly you’re spitefully drunk.

Stagger to the kitchen for the final time and try not to look at the pile of washing up in the bowl.

Mutter your hate at a woman who has wronged you. If you haven’t been wronged, try to guess the name of the woman who will wrong you in the future.

Pick up a knife.

Wonder why you picked up a knife… but doesn’t it feel good in your hand? Doesn’t it make you want to plunge it into something?

That something is a punnet of strawberries… isn’t it? Well, at the very least it’ll do for now.

Haphazardly hack up the strawberries.

Take one digestive biscuit and one metal biscuit cutter.

Shove biscuit into cutter and shrug.

Take one tub of mascarpone cheese and spoon it into the cutter until it’s two-thirds full.

Top up the final third with whipped cream and the mangled remains of the strawberries.

Place in fridge for about five minutes.

Remove from fridge and apply a lighter or, if you’re feeling reckless, a blow-torch to the outside of the metal biscuit cutter until it lifts up and leaves the contents behind.
Stick back in fridge.

Remember the times when you used to laugh… remember the times when you used to dance… remember the times when you washed… remember the times when you didn’t cry yourself to sleep on a bed made from a pile of festering laundry.

Go back to fridge and look at dessert.

Decide if you’re actually going to eat it or not.

If you do, pour cream over the top and eat with a cheese knife, biro, potato peeler or whatever’s left in the drawer.

Anger Pie.

Fill a shop-bought pie-crust with old pictures and love letters.

Eat while laughing and crying and with your left eye twitching uncontrollably.

Tear sorbet.

Over the course of many months freeze every individual tear of loneliness in tiny, custom-built ice cube trays.

Empty tear-cubes into blender.

Blend every moment of woe into a mush of misery.

Add some lime juice because you probably want to avoid getting scurvy.

Reach into blender, not even checking to see whether it’s stopped spinning.

Spoon salty-fistfuls into your mouth.

Suddenly realise what you’re doing.

Decide to make a new start.

Look out of window, the first woman that walks past shall be your new love.

Wait by the window every moment of every day in the hope she will walk past again.

If she does walk past the window again by all means doff an imaginary hat.

Once a year pour sand on the floor around the window and add some red food colouring to your scotch/vodka/gin. Add a cocktail umbrella. When your new love walks past the window pretend you’re on holiday together.

See her walking past with a man one day.

Shout “you whore”.

Answer the door to the police in your underwear.

Enjoy your new prescription.

Await The Rapture.