A Modern Way to Cook: 150+ Vegetarian Recipes for Quick, Flavor-Packed Meals [A Cookbook]

by Anna Jones

Overview

From the author of the brilliant A Modern Way to Eat, who was dubbed "the new Nigella Lawson" by The Times, comes this beautiful collection of 150+ delicious and inspiring weeknight vegetarian recipes.

Eating healthy isn't always easy when you’re coming home late at night and tired. In this genius new collection of vegetarian recipes, author Anna Jones tackles this common problem, making nourishing vegetable-centered food realistic on any day of the week.

The chapters are broken down by time, with recipes that can be prepared in under 15, 20, 30, and 40 minutes, so no matter how busy you are, you can get dinner on the table, whether it be smoky pepper and white bean quesadilla, butternut squash and sweet leek hash, or chickpea pasta with simple tomato sauce. With evocative and encouraging writing, A Modern Way to Cook is a truly practical and inspiring recipe collection for anyone wanting to make meals with tons of flavor and little fuss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399578434
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	08/30/2016
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	918,098
File size:	151 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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.

Read an Excerpt

From my experience working in homes, schools, and kitchens, with kids, adults, parents, and lunch 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 for a Sunday lunch or once in a blue moon. Cooking a homemade 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 honor 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 realize that food doesn’t need to be posh, complicated, or made from exotic 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 busier than ever, there is also a movement toward 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 centers around the food we eat. 

There has been a real shift in the way we look at food. More people are conscious of what they’re putting into their shopping baskets, more people are buying seasonally, and more people are cooking at home. For the first time in two generations, home cooking is firmly back in fashion, and an ever-increasing number of people are actively choosing to eat a diet centered around vegetables on at least a few days of the week. 

Making vegetables the focus of our diet is widely considered to be the single most important thing we can do for our own health and for the health of the planet. Over the last couple of years, eating a plant-based diet has moved from the domain of brightly painted vegetarian cafés to proud center stage. 

I hope this book will show you how to do this in your home without too much fuss. It’s packed full of the food I like to eat and the food I like to cook. To my mind, it’s this straight-up everyday food that is so important for us to get right and get enthused about. And it’s the recipes in this book that I hope will help you cook amazing, achievable meals every night of the week. 


PARSNIP AND POTATO PANCAKE 
SERVES 4 TO 6

There is something clean and Alpine about a rösti (potato pancake), while at the same time it is super-satisfying. Using parsnips in a rösti adds a sweetness and savoriness that a potato rösti doesn’t have. Here the rösti is served with grilled leeks and lemony greens, with the option to add a little ricotta.

FOR THE RÖSTI
2 free-range or organic eggs
1⅓ pounds/600 g parsnips (4 to 6)
2 large potatoes
leaves from a small bunch of thyme
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
olive oil

FOR THE TOPPING
5 ounces/150 g baby leeks
7 ounces/200 g spinach
olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 unwaxed lemon

TO SERVE (OPTIONAL)
6 free-range or organic eggs
ghee
3½ ounces/100 g ricotta cheese

Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C (convection 400°F/200°C) and get all your ingredients together. Heat a grill pan over high heat.

Beat two eggs together. Peel the parsnips and potatoes and coarsely grate them into a mixing bowl.
Squeeze the grated vegetables in your hands or in a clean kitchen towel to get rid of most of the moisture, then put back into the bowl and add the beaten eggs and the thyme leaves. Season with salt and pepper and mix well.

Heat an ovenproof shallow casserole or frying pan, then add a good drizzle of oil and the parsnip mixture. Pat out to form a thick rösti and cook over high heat for a couple of minutes, then put into the oven and roast for 20 minutes.

Grill the leeks until charred on all sides, and then put into the oven to keep warm with the rösti. Wilt the spinach in a frying pan with a little olive oil, then take off the heat, season well with sea salt and pepper, and grate over the zest of the lemon.

A couple of minutes before your rösti is ready, fry the eggs in a little ghee. Once the rösti has had its time, take out the leeks and mix them with the spinach. Pile this and the ricotta, if using, on top of the rösti.

Table of Contents

a modern way to cook  8

in the time it takes to set the table  22

ready in twenty  54

on the table in half an hour  102

forty-minute feasts  148

investment cooking  224

super-fast breakfasts  278

quick desserts and sweet treats  304

Editorial Reviews

06/20/2016
In this follow-up to A Modern Way to Eat, London-based food writer and stylist Jones shows today’s cooks how to “be smarter in the kitchen” by making vegetables the focus of each meal. Espousing a belief in the transformative power of food, Jones offers an uncomplicated “realistic plan for eating long-term” based on readily available natural ingredients—“straight up everyday food.” Recipes are organized by the time required for preparation, from 10- or 15-minute dishes ready in the time it takes to set the table to 20-, 30-, and 40-minute feasts. Recipes for freezer-friendly batch or “investment cooking,” speedy breakfasts, and quick desserts and sweet treats help home cooks make the most of their time preparing well-balanced, fuss-free meals. A quick one-pot, lemony spaghetti dish includes kale and tomato; zucchini noodles are dressed with pistachio, herbs, honey, and ricotta; a smoky spiced corn chowder is topped with maple-toasted coconut. A dozen useful charts show how to build varieties of omelets, grain-based bowls, stir-fries, baked potatoes, salads, dressings, burritos, and more. Colorful photos display rustic, unadorned dishes. Cooking directions are friendly, though wordy, and Jones cheers cooks on to practice the art of “quick, calm cooking” that balances “wellness and deliciousness” on every plate. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Well, she’s done it again. Intelligent, well thought-out recipes that are beautifully written and put together. For all you dudes trying to get more of the green stuff in your life, this is the one.”
—Jamie Oliver, author of Everyday Superfood and Jamie’s Food Revolution

“A Modern Way to Cook is so full of fresh ideas that I stopped turning down the corners of the recipes I wanted to make when I realized it was pretty much the whole book. From the simple to the more complex recipes, this is a good book for all days of the week.”
—Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy and The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

“A Modern Way to Cook cements Anna’s status as one of the most important cookbook authors focusing on vegetable-centered food. These recipes are bright, bold, and bursting with flavor, and they will surely move vegetarian cookery further from the margins and closer to the center of our culinary consciousness.”
—Bryant Terry, James Beard Foundation Leadership Award recipient and author of Afro-Vegan 

"A group of fashionable young women in Britain are making a career of promoting healthy eating, including Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley, Amelia Freer, Anna Jones and Natasha Corrett. The Guardian has called them 'the queens of greens'; The Telegraph named them 'the superfoodies.' One could also think of them as the Daughters of Nigella, the logical successors to Nigella Lawson."
—The New York Times

“Jones cheers cooks on to practice the art of 'quick, calm cooking' that balances 'wellness and deliciousness' on every plate.” 
—Publishers Weekly

"Anna Jones taps the sweet spot between healthfulness and downright decadence with inventive vegetarian dishes such as beet-and-radicchio gratin. Her fuss-free style helps busy cooks get dinner on the table in as little as 10 minutes, 40 max."
—Modern Farmer

"Rather than separate recipes by course, Jones breaks the chapters into prep time. That way, you know right where to go for need-dinner-now crispy cauliflower rice and where to flip for a more leisurely project like butternut-cannellini gratin. While the dishes are all vegetarian, it’s comforting to know that “modern” cooking can still include desserts like cookie dough bars and panna cotta."
—Tasting Table
 
"Whether you’ve been vegetarian for years or are new to the lifestyle, this stylish cookbook is the perfect modern guide to meat-free dining. With a sumptuous collection of over 150 recipes, you’ll be cooking veggie-packed meals on weeknights in no time. Author Anna Jones was one of the originals in Jamie Oliver’s apprentice kitchen, Fifteen (also dubbed the new Nigella Lawson by The Sunday Times), and eventually became his food stylist. Since going vegetarian at 25, she’s developed a tasty repertoire and, thankfully, compiled them all in this handy cookbook. Jones makes eating healthy easy."
—MyDomaine.com

“Anna Jones’ previous cookbook, A Modern Way to Eat, is hands-down one of the biggest favorites of Powell’s buying team.  We’ve been waiting with bated breath to dig in to cooking from her new book. I made the vegan and gluten free Pistachio and Raspberry Brownies. So ridiculously good I had to make a second batch a few days later…. Bottom Line: In like fashion to her first book (A Modern Way to Eat), Jones displays a masterful touch in blending flavors in her vegetarian recipes.”
—Tracey Trudeau, Powell's Books

From the Publisher