‘Modern Way to Eat,’ or what to do with all those veggies

“A Modern Way to Eat: 200+ satisfying vegetarian recipes (that will make you feel amazing)”

Anna Jones, Ten Speed Press, $35 (purchase on Amazon)

When I was going through a particularly sticky patch with my health issues, my mother signed our family up for a Klesick Family Farms produce box delivery. Not only was this helpful for all the practical reasons — I didn’t have to leave my home to get good food or plan a grocery list — it also made sure our little family was eating a fresh variety of fruits and veggies.

The only downside I can see to a produce box delivery, unless you have the time or foresight to plan your meals in advance and order a box accordingly, is that you’re often found wondering just what to do with an odd combination of produce. Up to my eyeballs in beets, garlic scapes and cauliflower, what is one to cook?

This veggie conundrum is one easily tackled by Anna Jones and her modern way of eating. Her cookbook is vegetarian, so it’s quite versed in making great use of the odd veggie (she even has a section on “What to do with the weird stuff”).

Even if you’re not vegetarian, don’t be dissuaded by this fact. I find vegetarian cookbooks the most versatile of cookbooks; one can always add meat to a dish, but it’s never quite as simple to remove it. Her intro encourages that not only will this way of eating make one feel better, it will work with our pocket books, the reality of the day’s schedule, and with the foods we have available — like what’s in that produce box.

One of Jones’s most helpful elements is spread throughout the book: the diagram. In her “How to Make a Great Salad” diagram, each column adds an item: leaves, texture, freshness, dressing. To test this, I literally closed my eyes and dropped my finger in each column of listed additions.

Ok, that could work … but that’s not what I have on hand. So I went the other way round, what do I have on hand, and where could it fit? For this, I tested her “One Soup: One Thousand Variations” diagram, ending up with celery, (my many) garlic scapes, mustard seeds, broccoli, spinach, cooked amaranth and finished with roasted seeds and drizzle of olive oil. Yes, it worked. Moreover, it was both delicious and empowering.

As an example of just how realistic and useful her help is, she acknowledges that a large soup made at the beginning of the week can lose its luster by mid-week. The solution? Blend it up and add a couple of new toppings. Voilà! Reinvented with little effort or cost, and so pretty with those little additions sprinkled on top.

It would be good to note here that visual eating is also important to Jones. She encourages that a little goes a long way to making a dish look like you went to much greater effort — that drizzle of olive oil, dollop of yogurt, sprinkle of toasted nuts — plus, these add nutrition. She’s right, I hand a plain bowl of soup to the family and it’s “thanks, mom,” I add a little of their favorites on top, and it’s “oh, wow!”

So, what about the recipes? Frankly, they’re amazing. She has this “no recipe is an island” approach, where bits of one can be added to leftovers from another, with listed examples of versatility. I don’t think it would be overstating my enjoyment of this book to say that I’d gladly cook straight through the thing, à la “Julie &Julia.”

Unlike the often daunting recipes of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” Jones’s “A Modern Way to Eat” is a challenge only in retrospect, as her book effortlessly transforms our way of eating, not recipe by recipe, but by alternating instruction with encouragement. Jones is impossibly likable and her methods are friendly and challenging in just the right dosage.

Equipped with her confidence and those random veggies, next you know, you’re cooking like un chef moderne.

Who should buy this: Anyone looking to change their way of eating to be healthier without the adherence to a specific diet or preachy food ethos. Also for those of us needing to reinvent our “Meatless Mondays.”

Erin Pride is a home cook who loves cookbooks and writes about them on her blog, Edible Shelf. For more on the specific recipes Erin tested, visit her website, edibleshelf.com. Follow Erin on Twitter and Instagram @edibleshelf.

Pistachio and elderflower cordial cake

Cake

9 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

½ cup Greek yogurt

1¼ cup unrefined light brown sugar or coconut sugar (see page 275)

2 cups pistachio nuts

1¼ cup polenta

1 teaspoon baking powder grated zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lemon

3 organic or free-range eggs

2/3 cup elderflower cordial

Icing

4 ounces thick Greek yogurt or cream cheese

4 tablespoons unrefined confectioners’ sugar or creamed honey

1 tablespoon elderflower cordial a handful of pistachio nuts, crushed

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Grease and line the bottom of an 8-inch springform cake tin.

Put the butter, yogurt, and sugar into a bowl and cream together until light and fluffy.

Now grind the pistachios to dust in a food processor — don’t grind them too much, though, or they will turn to butter. Add the ground pistachios, polenta, baking powder, and lemon zest and juice to the butter mixture and mix well. Then crack in the eggs and mix in, one by one.

Pour into the cake pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan. Make a few holes in the warm cake with a skewer, then gently pour the elderflower cordial slowly over the cake, allowing it time to seep in. Leave the cake in the pan until cool enough to transfer to a cooling rack.

For the icing, mix the yogurt, sugar or honey, and elderflower cordial until

smooth. Spread over the cooled cake and sprinkle with the pistachios.

Makes 1 deep, 8-inch cake

Speedy sweet potato quesadillas

Olive oil

1 sweet potato, peeled and grated

1 tablespoon maple syrup

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon chipotle paste

1 red chile, seeded and finely chopped

1 15-ounce can navy beans, rinsed and drained

1 avocado ½ a lime a few sprigs of fresh mint or cilantro,

Leaves picked and chopped

4 corn tortillas

Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan, add the sweet potato and the maple syrup, and season with salt and pepper. Add the chipotle paste and the chopped chile and cook for a few minutes until the potato has softened and lost its rawness.

Transfer to a bowl and add the beans, then use a potato masher to mash everything a little—you will still have some flecks of unmashed sweet potato. Season if needed.

Mash the avocado with a little lime juice and stir in the herbs. I use the potato masher again here.

Now heat a frying pan big enough for your tortillas. Lay a tortilla flat in the pan, spoon a quarter of the mixture onto one half of it, then fold over the other half. Dry fry on one side until it’s blistered and golden brown, then flip over and do the same on the other side. Keep the quesadilla warm in a low oven while you do this with the rest of the tortillas.

Serve straight from the pan with the mashed avocado.

Serves 2 as a dinner, 4 as a snack.

Sweet red onion and hazelnut pizzette

Dough

3½ cups light spelt flour (regular bread flour would work too)

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon dry yeast or a ½-ounce package

Handful of toasted and crushed hazelnuts

1 cup and 1 tablespoon warm water

Scant ¼ cup rapeseed or olive oil, plus more as needed

Topping

3 red onions, peeled and sliced olive oil

14 ounces spinach

Good grating of nutmeg

1 clove garlic, peeled a bunch of fresh marjoram or oregano, leaves picked

6 tablespoons rapeseed or olive oil 8 ounces soft goat cheese or ricotta cheese

Good pinch of salt

Weigh all the dry dough ingredients into a mixing bowl. Add the warm water bit by bit, mixing as you go. Then add the oil in the same way. Mix until everything comes together into a dough. This can be done in a stand mixer (like a KitchenAid — using the dough hook) or a food processor.

Knead the dough until it’s elastic and superstretchy. This will take 15 minutes by hand or 10 minutes if done in a mixer. Don’t skip the kneading, as this is what will make a great dough.

Once it is a smooth, even, springy ball, put the dough back into the mixing bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place to rise for 1 hour or so — it should double in size.

Once it has risen, turn out the dough on to a clean work surface and divide it into 8 equal pieces. Shape each piece of dough into a tight round roll.

Slosh a good glug of rapeseed oil into a big roasting pan and roll the dough balls around, coating each one with oil. This’ll stop them from sticking to each other and give the pizza base a lush crust. Leave the pan of pizza bases covered in a warm place to rise for another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven as hot as it’ll go — anything above 475 degrees is good. Place a pizza stone or a heavy baking sheet in the middle of the oven to heat up.

Now on to the toppings: fry the onions slow and low for about 15 minutes ina little olive oil until soft and sweet — then add the spinach and nutmeg. Set aside. Chop the garlic with the marjoram until fine and mix with the oil.

Once the dough balls have had their final 30 minutes’ rise, carefully roll each one into a rough circle, patching up little holes that the crushed hazelnuts might make. Top with the marjoram oil, spoon on the spinach mixture, and dot with the goat cheese or ricotta. Bake on a pizza stone or baking sheet in the super-hot oven for 8 to 10 minutes. Eat the pizzettes as soon as they are cool enough.

Reprinted with permission from “A Modern Way to Eat: 200+ Satisfying Vegetarian Recipes” by Anna Jones.