By Christine Salins.
Single-serve cooking is one of the biggest challenges if you are trying to stick to a particular eating plan.
It’s hard enough at the best of times trying to work out how a recipe designed to serve four to six people should be adapted if you only want to serve one or two people. Not all ingredients divide neatly into quarters! And how do you adjust the cooking times, if at all?
Often you end up making a bigger quantity anyway, which means you end up eating the same thing for the next few days (or putting the leftovers in the freezer if you’re really clever).
If you’re trying to stick to a keto way of eating (and we’ll come to more of that in a minute), there’s an additional challenge of balancing all the nutrients – a few too many carbs or not enough fat and your recipe is no longer a keto recipe.
In The Keto For One Cookbook (Murdoch Books, $29.99), Dana Carpender starts off by explaining what a keto diet is, and then presents 100 simple and quick recipes that make it easy to follow a keto diet even when you’re catering just for one or two.
As a pioneer of the low-carb movement, Carpender has a big following in the United States and already has 14 best-selling cookbooks to her credit.
She says there are a lot of misconceptions about what constitutes a ketogenic diet. Basically, she says, it’s any diet low enough in carbohydrates that your body is forced to shift over to burning fat as its main source of fuel.
She then goes into a little more detail about the percentage of calories that should be coming from protein, carbs and fatty foods. There’s an American flavour to the book, including main dishes referred to as entrées and some ingredients you might not be able to get here.
However, it’s the easy, familiar dishes that make this book really attractive to anyone who’s a bit baffled by what a keto diet is. The recipes are for burgers and smoothies, stir-fries and omelettes, soups and salads, and some dishes that are a little more ‘gourmet’, such as these Scallops with Browned Butter. “Tell me you wouldn’t order this at a restaurant for vastly more money,” says Carpender.
Scallops with Browned Butter, Bacon, and Asparagus
1 tablespoon bacon bits
6 sea scallops
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter
4 asparagus spears
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons chicken broth or seafood stock
- Give your skillet a squirt of cooking spray and put it over medium heat. While it’s heating, spread your bacon bits on a small plate and microwave them for 20 to 30 seconds to refresh.
- Pat the scallops dry with paper towels and sprinkle them lightly on both sides with salt and pepper.
- Melt the butter in the skillet over medium heat and lay the scallops in it. Cook them for 4 to 5 minutes per side, until lightly seared on the surface and white clear through.
- Snap the ends off the asparagus where they want to break naturally. Put the spears on a plate, add just ½ teaspoon of water, cover with plastic wrap or another plate, inverted, and microwave on High for 2 minutes.
- As soon as your asparagus is done, uncover it. When your scallops are browned on both sides, arrange them artfully on the asparagus spears.
- The butter in the skillet should have browned while your scallops were cooking. Add the lemon juice and broth to the skillet and stir it around, dissolving all the yummy browned stuff. Cook for just a minute, then pour over the scallops and asparagus. Sprinkle the bacon on top, pour yourself a glass of dry white wine, and sigh happily.
Images and text from The Keto for One Cookbook by Dana Carpender. Fair Winds Press RRP $29.99.
