A Modern Way to Eat. Anna Jones

in this book I have tried to bring together a type of food where clean and healthy meets delicious, where sustainable meets affordable, where quick and easy meets hearty. These recipes will make you and the planet healthier; they will make you richer and won’t mean you need to spend hours in the kitchen. This is a new way of eating, the way I eat, the way my friends want to eat and, I believe, how we will all move towards eating in the future.

      A change in how I cook

      My cooking changed when I became vegetarian – all of a sudden I had to look at cooking in a completely different way. The building blocks that I had grown up with and the rules I had learnt as a chef didn’t quite fit any more. So the challenge to find new ways to add texture, interest and flavour to my food have meant using a new palate of ingredients and some new techniques in the kitchen.

      I am led by the things that got me so excited about cooking in the first place. The haze of citrus oils spritzing off the skin of a freshly zested orange. The deep purple brilliance when you slice into an earthy beetroot. The warming scent of ginger and brown sugar baking into a crumble, the Willy Wonka magic of melting chocolate over a bain-marie, and so many more moments when my taste buds start dancing and my heart beats a little faster.

      When I write a recipe or cobble something together for dinner I always have three things in the back of my mind that shape my cooking: how will this taste? How can I make it most interesting to eat by layering up the textures? And how can I make it look the most beautiful on the plate?

      Taste for me is about making the most of the ingredient I am cooking. Sometimes that means a little scatter of Anglesey sea salt and nothing else. Other times it means balancing herbs, spices, sweet and sour, backing up the natural character of a deep dense caramelly piece of roasted squash with warming spices or spiking a tomato sauce with a hit of vinegar.

      Textures are often forgotten in cooking but to me they are just as key to a good plate of food as flavour, particularly in vegetarian food. I think about how children respond to food – we are tuned into texture just as much as flavour. Toasted seeds tossed into a salad, charred, oil-drizzled bread next to a bowl of soup, the crunch of some peppery radishes inside a soft taco. It’s texture, just as much as flavour, that hits the taste buds and tells your brain that this is delicious and helps you to feel satisfied.

      The beauty bit comes from my day job as a food stylist. For the last ten years I have been making food jump off the plate and getting you to want to eat what is on the page at that exact moment: the slick of chocolate drooling out of a chocolate fondant, the drops of water on a freshly washed leaf of the freshest, crispest salad, the melting cheese and crumble of perfect flaky pastry around the edge of a tart. I know that when I cook for friends the simplest salad put on a plate with a bit of thought, or an easy bowl of pasta topped with some bright herbs and a flash of red chilli, means we start eating before we’ve even got a fork in our hands. But even when I’m just making a quick breakfast or hurried lunch, I take a few extra seconds to make the food I have cooked the very best it can be.

      My final consideration is a top note, a finishing touch. I almost always finish a plate with a final spoonful of something. A slick of yoghurt to top a chilli spiked dahl, a drizzle of quick herb oil on a bowl of chilli, some toasted hazelnuts strewn on a bowl of soup. To me, it’s these final considerations that set a good meal apart from a great plate of food. Usually the quickest thing to do, these finishing touches layer flavour, add colour and create a contrast of hot and cold. These top notes make food look more thought out, they give a final boost of taste and they make you look like a bloody good cook without really having done anything at all.

      A new set of ingredients

      As I started cooking in this lighter and healthier way I started to understand more and more the importance of variety. Using toasted nut butters in place of butter in cookies, coconut oil for buttering toast, and quinoa or millet in my morning porridge. Using an ingredient where it fits and tastes amazing, not solely for its nutrients, makes me push myself to step outside the reliable old recipes.

      In my kitchen I look to more unusual, exciting and flavoursome ingredients to add depth and interest to my cooking. The spelt flour in my ginger and molasses cake adds structure and a deep toasted malty flavour and is naturally easier for us to digest. The almond milk in my morning coffee, which tastes incredible, boosts my protein intake for the day and provides the healthy fats my body needs. Or the coconut butter which I use to temper spices for curries, which can be taken to a higher heat than olive oil, making it perfect for releasing the flavour of the spices, with the added bonus of the subtle coconut flavour working beautifully in a south Indian dhal or a dosa potato cake.

      That said, flavour, above anything else, informs my cooking, so if I think butter will do a better job I say so; if a cake needs a little sugar, I go for it. But on the whole I keep my recipes whole food focused.

      I have, as much as possible, used different and interesting grains, as I believe that all these grains deserve a place in our diets and are often easier on our bodies. Just like fruit and veg, it’s important to vary the grains you eat too. Each grain has a different flavour and texture and provides your body with different sorts of vitamins and nutrients. Along with the rainbow of fresh produce in my fridge and fruit bowl, the bottom shelf in my kitchen, below the plates and platters, is a colourful spectrum of jars containing red quinoa, black rice, yellow millet, golden amaranth and dusky pearl barley. Alongside them are jars of good pasta and spelt bread flour too, but for those trying to eat less gluten, my recipes have suggestions and ideas for delicious ways to sidestep them, and the gluten they contain, if you prefer.

      A couple of extra things

      Though I cook for a living, I am also pretty impatient and want my dinner on the table in less than half an hour most nights. Especially after having spent a day behind the stove already. So I cook under the same constraints as most people I know. I want not too much bother or washing up at the end, a skill which harks back to my training with Jamie Oliver. So be assured, with only a couple of special exceptions in this book, my recipes are quick and won’t use every pan in the cupboard.

      Another amazing kickback of these recipes is that they are easy on the pocket. Vegetables are affordable so I make sure that I buy the best stuff I can afford and buy local and organic produce where I can. I buy heritage carrots when they are in season as I love their russets, yellows and deep purples and with their rainbow of colours comes a spectrum of nutrients. I buy purple kale or cavolo nero when it’s around and use it where I might use a more run-of-the-mill spinach or cabbage. I also love to use the underdog vegetables that rarely get a starring role: a violet-crowned swede makes a mighty chip; a bag of frozen peas boiled and mashed with some mint is great to stir into pasta or pile on hot toast.

      When I think about how to sum up how I look at food I am always drawn back to Michael Pollan’s super-simplified equation ‘eat food, not too much, mostly plants’. This is my notebook of a discovery of a new and modern way to eat and cook, one that considers our bodies and tastebuds alike. Insanely delicious, joyful food, new possibilities and flavours that make me excited to cook and eat it for all the right reasons.

Gluten free and vegan

      Gluten-free diets have become increasingly popular as a way to overall wellness. Many of the recipes in this book are naturally gluten free, or can easily be adapted to make them so. While I personally eat bread and pasta from time to time, I too like eating this way as it leaves me feeling lighter and happier. I like to use gluten-free pastas, such as brown rice and quinoa pasta. I also have friends who are coeliac, for whom eating gluten is much more than a dietary choice.

      I should point out that you don’t get exactly the same results by substituting a gluten-free flour for a wheat one. Using gluten-free flours in baking recipes does sometimes give a slightly crumblier texture but will have a deeper flavour than if you used regular flour. When I’m baking