Anna Jones is a cook, food writer and stylist. She worked for many years as part of Jamie Oliver’s food team – styling, writing and working behind the scenes on books, TV shows and food campaigns – and went on to work with some of the UK’s biggest food brands and best-known chefs. She is the author of A Modern Way to Eat, widely acclaimed as a book of the year. A Modern Way to Cook is her second book. She lives, writes and cooks in Hackney, east London.
Fourth Estate
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015
Text copyright © Anna Jones 2015
Photographs by Matt Russell
Anna Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780008124496
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008124519
Version: 2017-02-09
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For Laura.
How lucky I am to have been put here with you as my sister.
Contents
Copyright
A modern way to cook
In the time it takes to set the table
Ready in twenty
On the table in half an hour
Forty-minute feasts
Investment cooking
Super-fast breakfasts
Quick puddings and Sweet treats
List of Recipes
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
I’ll make you some promises about the food in this book:
It’s delicious, everyday food that will always be ready in a life-friendly time.
All the recipes are packed with tricks to help you be smarter in the kitchen.
The recipes are full of fantastic ingredients that will leave you feeling great.
You will make amazing vegetables the focus of your meals as you eat through the seasons.
And my hope is that, over time, these recipes will make you more aware of what you put into your body in the same way they have for me.
Food for me is a celebration: three opportunities a day to sit, share and revel in nourishing myself and others with amazing ingredients. Being in my kitchen allows me to connect with far-flung locations I have travelled; it firmly roots me in the time, place and season when I see the blood oranges arrive just after Christmas or the wild garlic herald the first days of spring. It’s these things that inform my cooking, day in, day out.
But I’m just the same as the next person. For all of us, our lives are busier than they have ever been. We have access to so much, and the world is at our fingertips like never before. While this is brilliant in many ways, it also comes with the temptation to try and fit even more into already jam-packed lives.
I have been overwhelmed by the positive response to my first book, A Modern Way to Eat. The world of social media has allowed me to be directly in contact with the wonderful people who have been cooking from it, and I’ve noticed that the stuff they’ve been getting excited about hasn’t been the fancy cakes or showy dinners but the easy weeknight recipes, which have been cooked again and again.
From what I have seen, there is a sense that people are more energised about cooking – we are reaping the benefits of home-cooked, vegetable-focused food. We have more connection to what we are eating, and our relationship to what we eat seems to be becoming more balanced. Also we feel genuinely happy and excited about the food we are putting on our tables. It’s proof to me that food is a powerful force for change and that what we eat can completely transform our outlook on life. The emails I receive on a weekly basis are evidence that there is a huge wave of change happening, which is an incredible thing.
From my experience working in homes, schools and kitchens, with kids, adults, parents and dinner ladies, I know for a fact that sitting down to a nourishing home-cooked meal every day can have a massive impact on our minds, bodies and overall happiness. It shouldn’t just be something we do on a Sunday lunchtime or once in a blue moon. Cooking a home-made meal is the single most important thing we can do for our well-being, because then we know exactly what is going into our bodies. It allows us to honour the people we are cooking it for and it means that we also get a chance to sit round a table, eat, drink and really spend time with one another.
The more I cook simply – easy pastas, quick hearty salads and all-in-one gratins – the more I realise that food doesn’t need to be posh, complicated or made from far-flung ingredients to do us good. It’s the quick-to-make, everyday and weeknight meals that we eat on, say, Tuesdays and Wednesdays that make a real difference in our lives. These meals are the ‘bread and butter’ of our eating week and the most important ones to focus on.
At the same time that we are being busier than ever, there is also a movement towards balancing things out. There’s a desire to treat our bodies well and to look after ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. And an awful lot of this centres around the food we eat.
There