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Recipe ideas for one

Live alone? Partner out? Kids asleep? It’s just you for dinner tonight. No hungry mouths to feed, no one requesting a dish you don’t fancy. But it can be hard to find recipe ideas for one person. Recipes are usually made for two, four, six or eight people but that doesn’t mean you have to subsist on beans on toast.

Here are some quick, easy and delicious recipe ideas for one:

1. An omelette, but not just a plain omelette: add chorizo and herbs, or tomato and and chilli, and serve with crusty bread.
2. A jacket potato with all manner of fillings that don’t include cheese or beans: fry some mince and onions, and then scoop out the potato, mash it up, put the mince in the jacket and top with the mash.
3. Pot noodle, but not the preservative-laden packaged type. A homemade pot noodle consists of straight-to-wok noodles, which you cook and mix with green vegetables, fried bacon, soy sauce, and stock.
4. Risotto is an ideal recipe idea for one because you can make as much or as little of it as you like.
5. Eggs Benedict: a muffin, topped with slices of ham and a poached egg, and dripping in creamy hollandaise sauce isn’t just for breakfast.
6. Quesadilla: so versatile, so quick, so scrumptious. Buy a pack of tortillas (freeze the rest); sprinkle cheese, meat, chillies and veg on one than cover with the other and dry fry.
7. Rarebit: all you need is bread and cheese and any other topping that tempts, such as a sprinkling of spring onions, or some salmon flakes.
8. Spaghetti: it’s a lone diner’s best friend. A simple tomato and basil sauce will do; just be sure to make the sauce fresh and use shavings of top quality Parmesan for a beautifully simple dish.
9. Chicken: slice one fillet into strips. Beat one egg. Mix some Parmesan and breadcrumbs together. Dust the chicken strips in flour. Dip in the egg. Dip in the breadcrumb mix. Fry. Serve with a salad.
10.  For pud, always keep ice cream and frozen fruit in the freezer and some cookies in the biscuit jar, so you can rustle up an ice cream sundae for dessert.