Mumbai food: What do you prepare when you have only yourself to feed?

Chicken jasmine rice with bokchoy at BKCs Hemant Oberoi restaurant

Model Erika Packard usually finds herself rustling up a meal under the watchful and judgemental gaze of her dark grey tabby cat, Ellie. As a solo eater and cook, Packard has only herself to impress. And that takes pressure off the activity. "Honestly, I used to be a terrible cook," she admits. "I would habitually order-in, but over the last two months, I have been forced to find my feet in the kitchen." The experience, although not a cinch, has been unexpectedly rewarding. She has learnt a gamut of tasty, approachable dishes by devouring YouTube tutorials, and is proud of the shortcuts she has devised while prepping meals. "I-m not too hard on myself. While there are days when I make elaborate meals, with dal, two sabjis, roti and salad, there are also moments when I-m content chowing down a cheese sandwich for lunch."

Swheta Mutreja Aggarwal, home baker

In 2018, Anita Lo, a Michelin-starred chef and Iron Chef America and Top Chef Masters contestant, "put the Lo in alone" when she released Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One. "I-ve been dumped almost as many times as I-ve been in relationships - and I can count those on less than two hands. Spread over my 50-year life, that-s a lot of solo meals. So if you consider that - coupled with my many years working as a professional chef - it seems that I-m particularly well suited to write this book," she thinks. Behind the self-deprecating humour, is a celebration of single-serving recipes that she believes require as much care and complexity as larger portions. "I think cooking for one is a lot tougher," observes Packard. "Scaling down requires practice and fine-tuning. I often end up making more than I can swallow, literally." That has made her smarter about leftovers. Rice or bread from the previous night is recycled into cutlets with trimmings of veggies.

Hemant Oberoi

Solo meals, as liberating or cumbersome, as they might be, often get ignored in the rush of cookbooks that target meals for two or more. The trick, then, is to go by approximation or andaaz. It-s something chef Juliano Rodrigues from Bandra-s Out Of The Blue and Deli By The Blue, has relied on while cooking for himself. "Solo cooking is a lot about harnessing your instincts," says Rodrigues. Having lived alone for five years while working as a chef in Nashik, he believes prepping for one is essentially a rite of passage to becoming a better cook. "I need to be satisfied and confident about preparations before I can feed others," he says. The dishes that he concocts at the restaurant are first prepared at his home kitchen. It-s his culinary lab. To minimise waste, Rodrigues estimates portions. While everyone-s hands vary in size, your hand size is relative to your body size, and can be a handy personalised food measurement tool. Like Packard, Rodrigues admits to having concocted whacky dishes when nobody-s watching, including biryani poha using leftover mutton gravy and flattened rice. "Poha is a diet-friendly ingredient that mimics the texture of rice. The thick variety takes longer to absorb water and doesn-t get mushy unless soaked for long, and hence is perfect for biryani." Recently, he also prepared Thai curry using gavar beans in the absence of corn and mushrooms.

Erika Packard

Anand Prahlad is a graphic designer, who runs Magic Marinade, a vibrant food blog. He started documenting his solo culinary experiments on Facebook in 2010. Over the course of three years, the album grew into a set of over 100 photographs and recipes, some of which are his own. For Prahlad, who lives alone at his Mulund apartment and is admittedly an introvert, the kitchen has never been an alien space. He started baking with his mother when he was five. "To be honest, the tendency to slip into monotony and boredom while cooking for one is high, but the joy is in experimenting. You-re free to break rules," he says. Fortunately, there have been more hits than misses for the 39-year-old. The Persian plum curry that he made a few years ago did not turn out "authentic", but wasn-t disappointing either. "The plums provide tartness in the way balsamic vinegar and tomatoes do. It really isn-t that unusual to use fruit in curries. A lot of south Indian recipes use mangoes and other fruits in large diced chunks, adding bursts of muted sweetness to the spice of curries," he writes on his blog. While curries are easier to scale down, the same can-t be said about bakes. The cakes and bread that he whips up are almost always distributed among friends and neighbours. To avoid wastage in the time of social distancing, he is devising new ways to bake. His upcoming videos are about chocolate hazelnut biscotti and mango marmalade jam.

Chef Juliano Rodrigues

Swheta Mutreja Aggarwal, a Nepean Sea Road-based home baker who runs the Instagram account @Kookiecakecrumble, is also experimenting with smaller portions. "Initially, I felt it was impractical to bake for one, but as requests started pouring in, I decided to give it a go." Although she lives with her husband and children, Aggarwal preps her own meals given that family members have different tastes and dietary requirements. "Solo cooking is also about judicious planning and organising your ingredients to their full potential. You have to keep staples and base curries handy for quick meals, so you don-t go out and buy new ingredients every day."

Thai curry with gavar

Chef and restaurateur Hemant Oberoi says single-serving recipes have become a huge trend. At his eponymous BKC restaurant, he launched the concept of Black Bowl Dining, which is tailored to the solo diner. "People are always on the go and sometimes, they walk in alone to dine. I admit that a few ingredients are difficult to measure for a single portion. For instance, ravioli or a dessert like muffin doesn-t lend itself to it, which is where the idea of sharing plates comes from." Packard says the joy of sharing meals can-t be replaced because the taste, smell and texture of food can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back memories not just of eating but also of people and setting. "I miss dining with my family back in London. That said, solitary cooking can make you self-sufficient. Let-s just say I-m getting used to that feeling."

Anand Prahlad, who runs the food blog Magic Marinade, says the trick to make solo cooking fun is to keep experimenting

The galaxy cake that Prahlad baked using raspberries, chocolate and rum

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