Marinated Goat Cheese Recipes and Embracing Solo Living

I spent last weekend alone at home, waiting for a food bloggers’ party in the garden the following afternoon. My parents were in Germany visiting Claudia, so I had the whole house to myself — a small rehearsal for the life I expect to lead from November, when I’ll finally take the plunge and move into a tiny house overlooking the valley. As I’ve always said, I’m a country girl through and through.

There are many pleasures to being alone. Of course, sometimes you want company — like the night I cried buckets during a film that wasn’t even that sad — but other moments are quietly perfect. A solo lunch, sitting cross-legged on the sofa after a hectic morning, is priceless. Coming back from a run, kicking off your shoes in the hall and jumping into a shower before stepping outside to rest on the wall with a cup of green tea and watch the fields turn golden: bliss. The weekend was windy, like a scene from Chocolat, and when the air feels electric and messy my ideas get re-oxygenated; I always sense that something new and beautiful might happen.

When I cook for one I try to keep things simple, using a few excellent ingredients and letting them speak for themselves. Oxheart tomatoes, for example — pinkish, sweet and fleshy — need nothing more than a drizzle of apple cider vinegar and a sprinkle of Maldon salt to feel royal. The crunch of those salt flakes is a small but rich pleasure. Yesterday I kept things light before the food bloggers’ gathering and pulled from the fridge a jar of marinated fresh goat cheese I’d made the previous Saturday, while healthy rock music played loudly through the house — another perk of living alone.

Instead of a detailed step-by-step, here’s why I chose these flavors. Reading The Flavour Thesaurus taught me that goat cheese often shares top notes with lamb, so the flavor pairings that suit lamb also work well with goat cheese. That’s why I used herbs and spices typical of a lamb marinade: simple, aromatic and robust.