A Modern way to Cook by Anna Jones

Always last to jump on a bandwagon (or anything for that matter - I didn't realise I had to do anything with my eyebrows until I was well into my 20s, and dealing with bushy eyebrows is no bandwagon issue), I have only recently come across Anna Jones. Friend and erstwhile employee of Jamie Oliver; Slender of leg, blonde of hair, vegetarian wholefood enthusiast...

You might have thought I'd be more than a little dismissive. I am, after all the person who sent Deliciously Ella back whence it came (my mum) a few short months ago for reasons too numerous to mention (oh, OK then - I found it irritatingly smug, couldn't connect to the writing style or the writer, there was, frankly, far too much quinoa in the first few pages for her to be credible, and what I really wanted was Diana Henry's 'A Bird in the Hand' but obviously I hadn't been hinting hard enough.)

But we're not talking about Deliciously Ella or A Bird in the Hand (although I will return to Diana Henry in a later blog). We're talking about Anna Jones and A Modern Way to Cook and, swoon, my latest food crush.

I'm never going to be a vegetarian but I flirt with reducing the amount of meat in our diet for numerous reasons. I am conscious that there are calories and there are calories and I need to make them count. A Modern Way to Cook seems to tick both boxes. There are many vegetarian cookery books that I've tried and enjoyed but are very cream and cheese laden, thus defeating the object of my latest quest to make my calories count in the right way. Anna Jones' approach to food seems to be easy and straightforward. Ditch the refined sugar, choose alternatives to dairy, cut out the meat. Yes, my cupboards now groan with a wider selection of pulses and unrefined sugar options (Agave syrup, anyone) but get your head around that and you're laughing. And feeling lighter and generally more energetic. Really. Couple this shift in culinary preferences with a surprisingly successful Dry January and I'm feeling perkier than I can ever remember for this time of year which usually drags me right down. To top it all - and probably crucial to this feeling of well being - is that I don't feel like I've been hard done by in the food department. AND I'm half a stone lighter than I was at the end of December.

So what have I cooked? Admittedly, I've majored on the baking section in A Modern Way to Eat - I am after all trying to lose a bit of weight, but I love a treat, so if I can make the contents of my cake tins healthier, that's got to be a good thing. There's a totally divine 'Ultimate Pecan Banana Bread' combining bananas, oats, pecans, maple syrup - as a connoisseur of banana loaf this comes in very close to the top of my list of banana loaves to bake; 

A Carrot Cake Flapjack which somehow combines the best of both carrot cake and flapjack without eggs, flour or refined sugar; 

Dark Chocolate Goodness Cookies - who would have believed you could use cannellini beans to such amazing effect?! If you've read any of my blog before, you'll know how much of a cake fan I am. Of course, these don't taste the same as my usual bakes, but different is good, and I am converted.

I served up celeriac, bay and mushroom ragu the other evening - it disappeared. And if comfort food is what you need, rhubarb apple and maple pan crumble is a revelation - scrummy crumble topping with none of the heaviness to leave you groaning afterwards for hours...

Honeyed rye bread was delicious (despite a slightly over-enthusiastic crust - it's a few months since I've baked bread and I need to get my mojo back) especially topped with avocado and roasted tomatoes with a cheeky fried egg on the side.

And if this is all seeming like it's too good to be true, well, I have had one disaster. I made some lush kale pesto (inspired by lunch in a local cafe, of which more another time) and decided to 'knock up' some chick pea pasta - from A Modern Way to Cook - to serve it with. The very idea of 'knocking up' fresh pasta, chickpea or otherwise, on a week night when I was tried from work and had hungry mouths to feed, shows just how much confidence Ms Jones had instilled in me. Of course I ended up with a sticky unworkable disaster that I had to chuck away before reaching for the dried pasta. But I feel this was probably more down to user error than anything else. My chickpea flour was somewhat old, and I didn't have ground flax seed as required, so tried to whizz up ordinary flax seed in a food processor to use instead. Disaster, disaster, but I will try it again another day.

There are still plenty of the recipes in A Modern Way to Cook that feel a little too worthy for me, a step too far down the road to kale oblivion, but I'm getting over that. Anna Jones puts together really delicious flavour combinations, and her useful charts suggesting combinations for salads and the like are worth digesting (pun intended). My meal plan for this week includes lentils with roast tomatoes and horseradish, and I can't wait to try frying pan Turkish flatbreads with spoon salad. Some of the ingredients are something of a challenge to locate here in very rural West Wales, but there are ways around that. In the same way that Nigella seems to instil the confidence to experiment, so I feel I can enter our local health food shop, Go Mango in Cardigan, with my head held high and ask if they might possibly stock freekeh...


So, in conclusion, A Modern Way to Eat - definitely worth a read. Certainly worth an experiment. A worthy addition to any shelf of cookery books. But you probably already knew that, didn't you...

Flapjack - a serious Health & Safety issue

The world is a crazy place, my friends.

A couple of days ago, a child fell off his friend's bike on the way to school in the village where we live. He didn't borrow the friend''s helmet, only the bike, and came a cropper, riding up a particularly enticing verge that borders the pavement just before school. It was fairly harrowing, but a quick trip to A&E and the child was thankfully fine. What was NOT fine, in my book was the rumour was that school was going to ban bikes. Excuse me? What about all the other children who cycle sensibly, wear their helmets, and do not muck about? And these are year 6s we're talking about. School has already decreed that children cannot bring their bikes to school unaccompanied unless they have been on the cycle proficiency course run by school. Which happens after half term in the summer for the year 6s. Even if they do muck about, well, can't the children take some responsibility for their own actions? If we don't let children have some freedom, or put them in situations where they can get into trouble at a very low level, how will they cope with more freedom and far trickier or more dangerous situations if they haven't learned how to take decisions and be responsible for them as they grow up? It won't work, it really won't. We are just storing a whole heap of trouble up for ourselves if we carry on like this.

I know that it's all part of this appalling litigation culture that we live in, but please don't get me started on that, or we'll be here all night. And it all boils down to the same thing - that whole heap of trouble that's on its way (as if things weren't bad enough already).

At present, the rumour seems to have died down, but it really wouldn't surprise me. Scooters are already banned. It has been known for school to close in snowy conditions on the basis that the pavements on the hill up to school were too slippy. Er, surely I, as an adult, and the walker of said pavements, can make that decision (and believe me, they are unlikely to be too slippy for me to get my kids to school....

It's the same with things like conkers, Bulldog and all the other things that have apparently been banned from the playground in the glorious name of 'health & safety'.  Our school is not alone.

Do you want another crazy example?

Google flapjack. Go on.

Scroll down and the 4th item is not a recipe but a news story. "School bans dangerous triangular flapjack". Seriously.

Apparently in March this year, a school decreed that triangular flapjack could no longer be served after an incident in which a pupil threw a piece which hit another pupil. Perhaps they were playing flapjack frisbee? Conducting a groundbreaking experiment into projectiles? I have no idea. I particular like the quote from the Guardian's report of the story:

"A spokesman for Castle View school said: "I can confirm that the texture and shape of the flapjacks were reviewed following an isolated accident last week."

An isolated incident of flapjack aggression. Good grief. Apparently, flapjack at the school is now only to be square or rectangular. Can someone enlighten me as to why this is less dangerous than a triangular flapjack? Perhaps triangular flapjack can reach a higher velocity than a square or rectangular piece. 

I have given up trying to understand these things. Perhaps I am out of touch with reality?

On the subject of flapjack though, I have been carrying out my own review, although this is not an isolated incident, and no one has been throwing anything in my kitchen. Well may be the odd plate, but that's another story.

 That recipe that I blogged a few weeks' ago, the one I thought didn't need any improving? 

I lied.

Use 300g of oats and add in 50g dessicated coconut.

And the chocolate drizzle? After extensive testing, I'd say it was pretty compulsory.

Fajitas and Flapjack

Compared to last week which was a veritable feast of vegetables, this week’s menu has so far been far more functional. Last week, I managed Veg nearly every day. On Wednesday, working his way rather laboriously through Hugh’s stir fried sesame cauliflower (served with noodles as a main course rather than a side dish) Blue asked, rather accusingly, if I was trying to turn us all into vegetarians. Poor Blue. He’s not a fan of cauliflower, and we did have rather a lot of it last week. Fortunately I was able to tell him that the next day it was going to be African Chicken (out of ‘Kitchen’ by Nigella –  one of my recipes at the moment). “Yyeessss!” he said, but quietly. He knows when he’s treading on dangerous ground!

African chicken aside, we ate mainly out of Veg Everyday, and the Husband and I certainly enjoyed it. The kids were less convinced, but they enjoyed the twice baked potatoes, and Pink loved  all the cauliflower. My favourite so far was the leek and chestnut risotto that we had on Friday evening. Very delicious. So pleased I over ordered on the chestnuts at Christmas!

This week, however, has been a bit more hectic and so far, less veggie. The kids were out for tea on Monday and the Husband wasn’t due back till late – and after a 4 hour drive back from Wales, during which pies were likely to have been consumed, I really couldn’t be bothered. I spent most of the day eating toasted sourdough bread and nutella (it’s cold, OK – I need the extra plumage), and then decided that as I had all the ingredients, I would make some soup. I went back and redid Hugh’s Fennel and Celeriac delight – this time with the orange zest that I didn’t have when I made it the first time. It does make a difference. We had chilli on Tuesday and fajitas this evening. It did cross my mind to make the tortillas myself, using the recipe out of the River Cottage Bread Handbook, but I managed to retain a grip on reality (and my sanity). I noted the mention in the recipe of sticky dough. The alarm bells rang and I heeded them. Trying to knead sticky dough with the kids milling around as well as trying to put away the Sainsburys delivery, and also, cook the rest of the tea, could well have resulted in serious injury to someone – possibly the Sainsburys delivery man on this occasion – and reason prevailed. It’s not often this happens.

I’d obviously decided that life was too easy though, because, seeing how the oven was on anyway to warm up the (recently delivered) tortillas, how about I just make some biscuits? Fortunately, Short & Sweet just seemed to fall open at the Marmalade Flapjack page. Now, I’m a sucker for a good flapjack and am always up for a new recipe. So far my favourite one is in the Camper Van Cookbook. Somehow, all others that I’ve tried either crumble up (which is lovely on breakfast but not so good when you want something with your cuppa) or so completely rock solid that not so much as a jackhammer would break it up – although I have had some limited success with Nigella’s ‘Soot’s Flapjacks’ out of Domestic Goddess. Anyway, back to Dan. It’s a quick melt, stir, bake recipe, and apart from soaking the raisins in boiling water for 10 mins, needs no prep. It uses treacle instead of syrup, and dark soft brown sugar, and I did wonder if it would be a bit ‘dark’ generally, given that

Recipe Junkie’s 2011 vintage marmalade is also on the dark side. But I needn’t have worried. Very delicious flapjacks indeed. A little on the crumbly side, but Dan does flag it as a possibility, so I was watching, and definitely edible. They may be a little on the dark side for Pink, but Blue, who likes nothing more than a piece of good dark gingerbread or fruitcake, is going to love it!