“Dinner in One” by Melissa Clark

I've cooked my way through another Melissa Clark cookbook! But not Dinner in French (yet--I took the easy way out and put that one on the back burner). Instead I went with Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One Pan Meals. In some ways this was like a step backwards, after having cooked all the recipes in Dinner. Generally, the DiO recipes are slightly less complicated, slightly less time-consuming, with a slightly shorter list of ingredients (and either a greater percentage of the ingredients are easy to find, or I've grown accustomed to tracking down unusual food items). In short, I would characterize the DiO recipes as generally simpler and easier. But a step towards comfort is totally acceptable when the results are still amazing. AND if you're not ready to take a flying leap into fancy French feasts. 

The first recipe I cooked from Dinner in One (Crispy Lemon Chicken with Potatoes, Oregano and Capers) also happens to be the first recipe in the book. I cooked it on Saturday, March 9, 2024. My notes (in part) say, "For such a simple-seeming recipe, I feel like I screwed it up in a surprising number of ways! But it all turned out OK in the end, & tasted good."

The second recipe I cooked from DiO was not the second recipe in the book. I did not stick with cookbook order. The book is divided by cooking method (sheet pans, skillets, dutch ovens, etc) followed by a small selection of cakes and another small section of basic sides. I didn't want to focus on my favorite chapter (sheet pans!) and then get stuck slogging through my least favorite (instant pots & multicookers . . . though I must admit this was really only my least favorite because I don't own an instant pot or multicooker, and I don't want to buy one, so I had to adapt all the recipes to a dutch oven). So I skipped around. The varying number of recipes in each section don't allow you to do the entire book by cooking one recipe from each section and then continually cycling through again (for example, there are 18 sheet pan recipes and only 8 instant pot recipes), but I bounced around in a way that would ensure I did not get bored and neither did our palates.

Ninety-nine recipes later, I finished up on Saturday, December 27, 2025 (the last Saturday of the year) by cooking Cauliflower-Carrot Soup with Smoky Paprika Shrimp ("Nice soup!") but I'm still not planning to dive into Dinner in French yet (though I do get brave and try something out of it occasionally). The main reason I'm continuing to put it off is because Sam gave me a copy of Melissa Clark's Kitchen for my birthday, so I have my work cut out for me for another year or so!