FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Book invites you to do good eating alone

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Goldstein is a name to conjure with in foo-foo foodie circles. She was a chef at Chez Panisse. She also founded the groundbreaking pan-Mediterranean San Francisco restaurant Square One and ran it for a dozen years. She is a teacher and restaurant consultant, and has written numerous books, including several in the Williams Sonoma series, a book about the Jewish cooking of the southern Mediterranean and "The Mediterranean Kitchen," a now-classic recipe collection that I consult often.

Goldstein's book is focused on a particular group: experienced and well-traveled diners who like to cook. She notes, rightly, that most cookbooks for singles are aimed at college kids or young marrieds who barely know their way around a saucepan.

Here, her prototype is herself: a cooking teacher for 35 years, a chef for 16 years, a parent who fed her kids until they were grown, and a single person for the last decade.

"I am spoiled," she writes, frankly admitting that she's a bit of a food snob. "I want to eat as well at home as I did when I had a restaurant and ate in the back kitchen."

When I first glanced through this book, I thought it seemed a bit hoity-toity. Would anyone really make Persian meatball soup or saltimbocca alla Romana just for themselves? (I would, but my friends consider me very strange in this regard.)

This is not a book of fast and easy recipes, again because Goldstein wrote it for people who enjoy cooking as an activity. The end is not the sole goal; the journey is equally important. This is not a book to consult when you're starving. It's one to peruse at leisure, tucking a few Post-It notes between the pages to mark recipes you'd like to try. Then, on an evening when you're not going out with friends, rushing off to a workout session or dying to sit down to "West Wing," you can fill the sunset hours with cooking.

Goldstein notes, too, that solo suppers can be a way to try out recipes you later quadruple for a company meal.

These recipes all are tested to solo proportions and aren't meant to produce leftovers.

In keeping with her background in Mediterranean cooking, most of these dishes come from southern Europe or North Africa, with bright flavors, a focus on grains, beans and pastas, and the use of cheese and seafood more often than meats. Many of the recipes are at least lacto-ovo vegetarian. Few are Asian.

A number are intriguing: a Lebanese salad called fattoush that combines vegetables and hunks of crisped pita bread, which was very popular at Square One restaurant; an Italian cheese pudding called sformato, molded and cooked in a water bath and served with mushroom, vegetable or red pepper sauce; farro — Tuscan pearled wheat berries — with butternut squash and chestnuts.

Goldstein knows for whom she is writing. If you fit the description, you'll very much enjoy this book.