opscode/chef — pull request #1037 by jkeiser (2013-10-10 00:02:41+00:00)
Title: Support --local-mode chef-client parameter

This parameter makes it possible to run chef-client against current dir without config as current user

chef-client --local-mode -o myrecipe::default
chef-client -. -o myrecipe::default

Will both work fine if you have a cookbooks/myrecipe/recipes/default.rb and nothing else.