I found this to be a very pleasing and accessible cookbook – and I fear cookbooks, so that’s saying something. Witty and engaging, with recipes that are easy to follow – more than anything else I really appreciate the thought that goes into how to plan for your leftovers to become something completely different. ( )

I enjoy cooking for myself -- previous roommates have stared in astonishment as I cook a single person's Cantonese dinner most nights -- but there's no way I would attempt the recipes in this book on a weeknight after work. ( )

I tried 2 recipes, Corn Risotto with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Tuna Salad.

The risotto took over an hour to make, and was way too rich to be a stand alone dinner. I ate most of the leftovers as a side dish, but I couldn't get through enough of it to call it dinner.

The tuna salad (minus the olives) was great - I really love the notion of cooking the potatoes with the eggs. I doubled it because I was only able to find one can of tuna in olive oil, and it was twice the size he suggested. It was not from Italy or Spain, so he would have found it unacceptable. Also, because then I got to have leftovers and not have to cook the next night!

Many, many of the recipes didn't even make it to my to-try list because either the ingredients were too weird and precious or the level of work involved was ridiculous for the amount of results you got.

I did also copy the recipe for the faux-chicken-fried steak. I'll try the steak part, but the potatoes he suggests go with it add a huge amount of time to the cooking of dinner.

It had some interesting ideas, but it didn't really seem like a practical cookbook for someone aiming to spend less than an hour per meal. It's ok to have leftovers if you're going to spend that long cooking! ( )

Although there are some recipes that sound good, most are fairly complicated with long lists of ingredients. I can’t see someone living alone going to this much trouble - especially as the title prescribes "nightly". There are very few vegetarian options. ( )

Most of the recipes are more time-intensive (well or maybe more accurate would be that they cause more mess) than I'd normally go to for a meal for one, but there are some very nice recipes in here and a lot of good inspiration for cooking for one (I'm rather picky about certain things - I do not eat fruit with meat for example, and some other things that I just don't think go together - fine by themselves, but not together, and this - like most "fancy" cookbooks has a bit too much of that - but it doesn't mean it can't provide inspiration for one's own cooking none the less) ( )