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'Raw and deeply moving.
A truly honest celebration of life's two great passions: food and love.'
REVIEWS
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REVIEWS ♡
Jane Harper
Bestselling author of Exiles and The Dry
Cookbook author Charlotte Ree ended her marriage at the start of the pandemic. Since then, she has been slowly emerging into her new beginning courtesy of a recipe for happiness that involves cooking for one.
CHARLOTTE REE
ON THE TRANSFORMATIONAL POWER OF FOOD
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I grew up in the country and my earliest memory is making jam drops with my grandmother. It was my job to do the thumbprints and then to scoop out the jam. Nanny likes to say I put more batter in my mouth than I did the cookies.
Growing up, food wasn’t anything to me but a means to survive. My mum was the breadwinner in our family and my stepdad was a stay-at-home mum for us. It’s horrific to remember now, but when we came home he would ask us what we’d want to eat: I’d say pesto pasta, Mum would say meat and three veg and my brother would say tacos. And he would make us three different meals! He wasn’t a demonstrative person whereas we very much were. I now realise that cooking was his way of showing love.
I moved to Sydney when I was 17, and two years later I met Diego, the man who would eventually become my husband.
My best friend, who I’ve known since I was 16, grew up with him and I had heard a lot of stories about him from her. So when I saw him one night out at a pub in Newtown, I shouted: “Oi, Diego!” He had no idea who I was. But we got together then and stayed together for 10 years. I was 19 when we met, 29 when our marriage ended.
Before I met Diego, cooking wasn’t a priority for me. I knew how to make pasta sauce from a jar, tacos from a packet, and anything with three veg on the side. That was it. But Diego came from a family of restauranteurs and he taught me how to cook. He showed me how to make bolognese, how to make lasagne, how to sous-vide meat, how to make fresh pasta. We fell into the same routine that I had as a child; I worked so much at my job—as a publicist at one of the country’s biggest publishing houses—that he became the cook. One thing I did do, though, was bake. I began baking because I was incredibly stressed at work. I was doing it for me, at three or four in the morning, to help me switch everything off and focus on just one thing. One thing that also produced an instant result: you could put a few ingredients in a bowl and have a whole cake within an hour. It was both anxiety management and therapy for me.
You’re a very different person at 19 to the person you are at 29. I didn’t leave Diego because I didn’t love him, I left because I needed more for myself. I could see myself staying in a relationship that wasn’t fulfilling for a variety of reasons. That was just comfortable. I think our goals weren’t aligned anymore. There was still so much love there and so much respect there and so much understanding, but we just couldn’t give each other what we wanted. We had already been in couple’s therapy for about a year when I made the decision to end it. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but usually with a big life decision I am quite indecisive. The person I sought advice from was my best friend. I begged her to tell me what to do—and she told me that I already knew. I did know, and so I left.
I moved out in the middle of March 2020 and then lockdown happened. It was a strange period adjusting to living on my own for the first time in my life, while grieving the end of my marriage and also thinking about the future. I knew that the only way for me to pull myself out of all that was to cook. I knocked on my new neighbours’ doors and introduced myself as someone who loves to cook, who lives alone, and who was going to be cooking a lot. “I’m not going to poison you,” I told them. “Please let me cook for you.” One of my neighbours was a single mum who had lost her job during Covid and we were both really struggling. I would cook dinner for myself and take the leftovers to her most nights. And eventually, when things started opening up again in Sydney, I also began cooking on dates. Really cooking.
On one of my first dates I made lasagne. From scratch. My date was a gorgeous cinematographer. We met on Bumble. (Eventually, he made it clear that for him, dating apps were about meeting friends and not meeting people to be in a relationship with. This was completely foreign behaviour to me.) We rolled out the pasta dough together and layered it with a slow-cooked 24-hour ragu. I don’t know if I count this man as a relationship, given that nothing ever really happened between us, but while we were quasi seeing each other, we also made ricotta gnocchi, curry pastes, baked barramundi and a perfect chiffon cake. Later, I met a rower—also on Bumble—who had a lot of dietary restrictions. I spent the four months that we dated barbecuing a lot of meat. He ghosted me after a weekend away in Orange. Then came a doctor, with whom I dove headfirst into a relationship that, to me, felt very serious. I made him sashimi platters, handmade ravioli stuffed with homemade pesto and asparagus risotto. Two months after we started seeing each other he broke up with me on the phone after I told him that my grandmother had died. I was so shocked that I didn’t know how to respond, and we didn’t speak after that.
Why did I do this? Why did I spend most of my first year out of the longest relationship of my life, cooking for other people? I’m still trying to figure that out. Part of me believes it has something to do with the fact I was on my own after such a long time and needing people to like me. Actually, it was more than that—needing people to need me. My friends will vouch for that. I am sure that at different points they have all felt deeply uncomfortable with the amount I have given them. In 2020, when restrictions eased, I hosted someone’s wedding. I catered four separate 30th birthday parties. I cooked countless four-course dinner parties. And when I say that my friends are uncomfortable it’s because they see me better than I see myself. Not, oh my god, she’s throwing all of this at us. But oh my god—I can see what doing all of this is doing to her. But I can also see how much she wants to do it for me.
It took breaking up with the doctor for me to realise that something had to shift. It’s taken me a lot of work with my sensational therapist to realise that when I cook for people, I’m also giving away a part of myself. Food is a love language for me and I use it to show people that I care. But I need to work on loving myself and showing myself the same care that I show others. And since food is such a love language for me, I needed to learn how to cook for myself. To really love myself.
I used to think cooking for one person was completely unexciting, but now I know that there is beauty in the simplicity. A piece of Sonoma sourdough with beautiful ham, tomato and cheese, put under the grill. Oats in the morning. Big vats of homemade pesto. Lots of pasta—I’m a carb-loader. I’m still making 24-hour ragus that I’ll turn into lasagne and freeze in individual portions. This kind of cooking is me finally understanding that I can give myself exactly what I want. That I am enough to fulfil all of my own needs.
It’s all a work in progress. I spent a third of my life in a relationship that I’m not in anymore. But I think my philosophy on life in general shifted over the past year of cooking, and eating, and living for just me. I didn’t think I would be single when I was 30, but I’m really grateful for what I’ve gone through this past year, because I’ve learnt more about myself than I could have possibly imagined. Some days, I feel like I’ve hit my sweet spot. Others I think I have so far to go. Life has its ebbs and flows but I’m so thankful to be in the position I am in. I couldn’t recognise myself last year when I left my relationship. I can now. And instead of planning ahead, right now, I’m just trying to be.
