Anna Jones and her plant-based recipes that don’t require ‘cheffy’ ingredients.
Anna Jones interweaves recipes and strategies for more sustainable cooking
Anna Jones has been “quite gentle” in her approach to plant-centric cooking. When the London-based cook set out to write her first book in 2014, she didn’t see the kind of food she wanted to eat — the sort she was making in her kitchen — reflected in cookbooks or restaurants.
“Luckily, that landscape has shifted,” says Jones. Luring people in with her knockout recipes, she initially hoped to dispel preconceptions about vegetarian cooking. Her intention with A Modern Way to Eat was for readers to get halfway through before they realized that meat and seafood were entirely absent from its pages.
As she followed up her debut with A Modern Way to Cook (2015) and the award-winning The Modern Cook’s Year (2017, all by 4th Estate), giving plants primacy of place became less and less of a stretch. Now, “in a moment of crisis and great opportunity,” she saw fit to be more explicit.
“Most people are trying to incorporate more plants into how they eat, and celebrate that. And that’s a brilliant thing,” says Jones. “But we’re in a different place than we were close to 10 years ago when I started writing. And I think there is an urgency now for us all to really step up and take responsibility, and make change on a personal level in our lives.”
Her new book, One: Pot, Pan, Planet (4th Estate, 2021), dovetails food choices and environmental impact; principles and practical steps. By interweaving recipes and strategies for how to curb food waste (and ideas for using up the most wasted items), live with less plastic, support biodiversity and soil health, save energy (and money), Jones’ scope extends far beyond the kitchen.
Meat-heavy Western diets have been identified as contributing to global warming. In a 2019 report prepared for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 107 scientists called for people to eat less meat and address food waste to sustain a healthier planet.
Food wasted or lost along the supply chain is responsible for as much as 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the panel estimated. If food waste were a nation, according to Our World in Data, it would be one of the top three largest emitters (following China and the U.S.).
Statistics like these can be overwhelming for individuals trying to figure out what they can do about the climate crisis. Systematic change is necessary, Jones says, but small, everyday choices matter — and she believes that becoming a more flexible and adaptable cook is key.
“I really think there is an enormous amount of good intention out there, and people want to use their diet choices for positive change. And my hope is that when that information is placed between the recipes in a recipe book, it feels more approachable.”
Jones’ aim with all of her books is that they provide a jumping-off point. Once people cook her recipes in their homes, they then become theirs. Twisted and changed, she hopes they become fuel for creative cooking.
Fans of Jones’ previous books will recognize her use of flavour maps to illustrate the myriad “choose-yourown-adventure” possibilities hidden within any given recipe. In One, she breaks down vegetable dressings, soups, herb pestos, sauces and smashes, and frittatas, “the best way to use up leftovers.”
She extends this education to her “One Veg” chapter. By including 10 relaxed recipes for top-selling supermarket vegetables, Jones aims to help cooks become as comfortable throwing together a meal using the ingredients they have on hand as they are following a strict ingredient list and set of instructions. Likewise, in a section on the most wasted foods, she offers a multitude of ideas for using up bread, potatoes, milk, bagged salad and fresh vegetables.
“I feel like the conversation around food waste, in the U.K. at least, has very much been around making a carrot top pesto, or using up these sorts of premium and definitely quite cheffy things,” says Jones. “(It’s) really those basics like bread, like milk, like bagged salad that everyone buys. And if we can come up with ideas for that and change our thinking around those very basic things that get thrown away, then that’s probably going to be much more impactful than cooking with beetroot tops.”
Jones organizes the more than 150 recipes in One by cooking vessel — pot, pan, tray — and includes a chapter devoted to especially quick meals. The structure reflects her life right now, she says. The mother of a “very energetic” five-year-old boy, her cooking time in the evenings “has definitely been squeezed.” If she’s making a meal for their family dinner, she wants it to be quick, easy, light on items to wash up and “super tasty.”
The book’s emphasis on one-pot, one-pan, one-tray cooking suits all of the above criteria, and it also meets an often overlooked aspect of greener cooking: energy efficiency. Minimizing the electricity or gas we use when cooking is part of the equation.
With One, she meets cooks where they’re at, whether that be coming up with ideas for a plant-based meal a day or fresh ideas for long-time vegetarians. Recognizing that for the past year, many people relied on online deliveries from supermarkets — rather than direct relationships with farmers and other producers — it was important to her that these changes feel achievable.
“As a working mom, I want my food to be done quickly. I don’t always have fancy ingredients. So I think all of my books, and especially this book, have been trying to line up that chef instinct to create something new and interesting and wild, and that very mundane but practical desire for simple, quick cooking with easy ingredients.”
Recipes and images excerpted from the book One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones. Copyright © 2021 by Anna Jones. Published by 4th Estate, an imprint of Harpercollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.