The Pleasures Of Cooking For One Cookbook Plus Judith Jones Plus Steamed Egg Recipe

It's fun to cook for a crowd. But when Americans eat at home alone, many of us–the folks at Tasting Table included–tend to fall into the same bowl of cereal trap.

Judith Jones wants to free us from that trap. The esteemed author and editor of Julia Child, James Beard, Jacques Pépin (and many other culinary legends) says our cup-o-ramen is keeping us from a liberating chance to follow our whims and experiment without worrying about the results.

In The Pleasures of Cooking for One, Jones's new cookbook, she shares solo cooking advice alongside elegant recipes tweaked to serve one.

Some of the recipes school cooks on how to extend one dish into a "second round": Leftovers from Moroccan-style lamb shanks are reincarnated in couscous with lamb, onions and raisins.

Others, like her "Steamed Eggs Nestled in a Bed of Greens," are so brilliantly simple–stir-fried greens become an edible cooking vessel for the tender eggs–that we can't wait for our next dinner for one (click here to download the recipe).