French Cooking for One

'An enduring delight for readers and cooks alike.' -- Selected by Nigella Lawson, 'Stocking Fillers 2024'


Listed in the Constance Craigh Smith's 'Best cookery books to give this year', Daily Mail, Dec. 2024


'Michèle Roberts’ enchanting new book proves la cuisine française can be enjoyed alone, when there is nothing to interrupt the joy of preparing good ingredients and turning them into enticing dishes. Her anecdotes and notes of wisdom that accompany the recipes make her the perfect companion in the kitchen.' -- Carolyn Boyd, author of Amuse Bouche


A unique work of literary and culinary joie de vivre, part food memoir, part recipe book, French Cooking for One is a personal and quirky take on Édouard de Pomiane's classic. With over 160 recipes, including a majority of vegetarian ones, with piquant storytelling and feminist wit, this is a working cook's book with French flair, bursting with life.


French cuisine, classic though it is, still holds delicious surprises worth exploring. Whether cooking for one on a daily or an occasional basis, cooking well for yourself means cherishing yourself and your appetites, joyously giving yourself pleasure, opening yourself to new experiences. This book will encourage you to do all that.


From quick bites for busy days to sumptuous main courses for those who enjoy spending more time in the kitchen, the focus throughout is on dishes that are simple and fun to prepare, and results that are mouthwatering to contemplate and, of course, to eat.

Mixed in with the recipes are stories and vignettes of Michèle Roberts’ childhood in Normandy and her life in Mayenne, Pays de la Loire, plus original ink drawings full of charm and humour.


'To make a proper supper for yourself is, after all, a kind and tender thing to do if you’re under pressure – and [Roberts’] book contains only recipes for one person. For the absence of doubt, however, I must stress it isn’t the kind of manual that has you making lasagne, to be frozen in individual portions. The dishes included are at once more simple and more luxurious than that. Mussel salad with ravigote sauce. Rabbit with mustard. Steak with bordelaise sauce. So many micro feasts, and every one of them nourishment for body and soul. (…) [Roberts’ book is] edged like an old tablecloth with the spirit of her maternal grandparents’ kitchen as well as her own domestic expertise. Most of the recipes, short and uncomplicated, aim to deliver the perfect effort-to-taste ratio; if she has an Elizabeth David-like briskness on the page, she’s also a sensualist, a part-time sybarite. But even if you’re not in the mood for cooking, simply to read them is to encourage rumination. She is such a noticing writer, and in her hands you find yourself doing the same, a dowdy cauliflower suddenly beautiful, a slab of marbled meat a world unto itself.' —Rachel Cooke, Observer