This Cookbook Is the Best Excuse to Break Up with Your Significant O
On a windy day in October I met Anita Lo for pizza. She was wearing all black, with black cargo pants; I was wearing a red runny nose and a doofy grin. I was so excited to meet the chef who, to me, has always flown too far under the radar, a low-key legend. When her restaurant Annisa closed last year due to the hellscape of New York City real estate, the Anita Lo restaurant era seemed to end. But with the publication of her new cookbook Solo, a new era—a more personal era—began.
It’s a very good cookbook. Many of the cooking-for-one books out there are serviceable, approachable, but also a little preachy. Don’t pander to me about how empowering it is to be alone—I know how happy I can be when I’m alone, and how lonely I can feel surrounded by people. My heart holds grief like an industrial sponge. I think Lo’s does too, but we like to keep it hidden under a shield of humor. Her writing in Solo is funny, honest, and self-deprecating.
“It kind of feels like you just said, ‘fuck it’ and wrote what you wanted,” I say.
“Exactly,” Lo replies.
Solo is about cooking for one, but it’s not about being single—Lo is in a relationship, and regardless of relationship status, people are alone sometimes. The book is instead about choosing to get something more out of your cooking life, something that you’re willing to go after: recipes that might take time, a handful of ingredients, and effort (but honestly not that much), and that go against the economical instinct for frozen Annie’s mac and cheese.
The recipes are complex, personal, comforting, and at times, truly cheffy. And yet after I finished reading Solo, I wanted to make them all. I wanted the Chou au Lardons, a tangle of cabbage, bacon, and onions finished with red wine vinegar and topped with an egg. And I wanted the Steamed Sea Bass with Shiitake, which Lo notes is an adaption of one of her mother’s dishes. “Okay! I miss my mommy when I’m alone,” she writes. You steam the fish topped with mushrooms, scallion, ginger, and soy sauce “to fill the void.”
The word “jilted” comes up more often in Solo than in any other cookbook I’ve ever read. One breakup story in particular stayed with me—about a dead body floating down the Hudson river.
It appears in the headnote for Roasted Arctic Char with Lentils, Hot Dates, and a Cold Shower of Skyr, a story about an Icelandic sculptor Lo went on a few dates with. I ask her to repeat the story in person, because I need to hear it directly from her.
“It’s a 100 percent true story,” she begins. “I had been single for a while and it’s just, I don’t know. Lesbians mate for life. They’re like swans. So it’s really hard to find people that are like your age and, you know, I don’t know. Anyway.”
They meet at an event. Lo visits the sculptor’s studio, and falls head over heels in love (with the art and its creator, as it were). The sculptor lives near Riverside Park, and one night they take a stroll by the waterfront. The sculptor notices something in the water.
“Is that what I think it is?” she says.
It's a head floating in the water. They call 911, but the dispatcher makes them stay on the line to identify the location, so the next thing they know, they’re chasing this body down the river.
Later that night, the sculptor ends things.
Serve the char with A Single Broken Egg on a Bed of Torn, Wilted, Bitter Greens, Lo suggests.
It seems antithetical at first that there is a Stocks chapter in Solo. But when you cook for one, you end up with a lot of stray scallions and such, so the freezer, and Future Stock, are your friends. (Speaking of friends, this is also the cat chapter—each recipe has a kitty appearance. For Dashi, Lo notes “Bonito flakes also make great cat treats.” Lobster: “Your cat will love the aroma as it cooks.” Chicken: “You can feed the boiled gizzards and heart to your cat.”)
The soups and stocks in Solo are the most brazen yeah-I-make-this-for-one-what-about-it. But I think it’s clear: these are the nourishers, the recipes you might cook solo but are meant for sharing. Lo loves to fish out in Long Island, where her neighbor Jerry keeps a boat for her. She tells me about her community there, neighbors who support and look after each other. Sometimes she’d come home on a Saturday night and find that Jerry had left a quart of soup in her fridge. After Jerry’s wife died, Lo was the one dropping off soup.
It’s the end of our conversation. Lukewarm pizza sits between us. I tell Lo that I’ll take the leftover slices to my ravenous coworkers, but instead I walked a few blocks east, where my great aunt lives. A swan whose mate died earlier this summer. Inside her apartment there's nobody home; MSNBC is blasting. I set the pizza box on her kitchen counter, hoping the pepperoni will say it for me: you’re not alone, you’re not alone, you’re not alone.
