‘Easy Wins’ by Anna Jones

12 flavour hits, 125 delicious recipes and 365 days of good eating.

When I heard that Anna Jones (A Modern Way to Eat, A Modern Way to Cook, The Modern Cook's Year and One: Pot, Pan, Planet) had a new cookbook coming out - I knew I had to get my hands on a copy (thank you for the advance copy Harper Collins NZ)!

Anna Jones has a way with vegetarian food unlike any other chef I have come across in fifteen years of plant based eating. Anna knows how to bring something fresh and modern and entirely new to me every time a new cookbook is released.

Not an easy thing to do these days!

Easy Wins is centred around twelve hero ingredients that just so happen to tick a lot of boxes on the taste/flavour scale - sweet, salty, sour, umami, bitter, hot, verdant and creamy. These are ingredients that you can find in your local supermarket and probably have sitting in your cupboard. Ingredients that are often overlooked as everyday accompaniments, in Easy Wins you will be looking at these ingredients in a new light. This book is all about flavour, and how to use it.

So what are the hero ingredients?

🧅 Onion, Mustard, 🥜 Peanuts, Capers, 🧄 Garlic, Oil, 🍅 Tomatoes, Miso, 🍋 Lemons, Tahini, 🌶️ Chilli and Vinegar.

It sounds delicious just typing it out!

Before each chapter begins Anna dives into the culinary arts and breaks down each ingredient; what it pairs well with, her favourite uses, how to store it and the different types of ways that ingredient is found.

Along with those there are sections throughout the book that break down flavours; one section helps combat flavours you find in common meat based recipes and how to get those flavours into your plant based recipes e.g. a swap for chorizo is paprika or crispy capers instead of lardons. Another on how to layer different flavours and textures - things that I often overlooked when cooking and have a new appreciation for. 

This is a cookbook for everyone - vegetarian or not, this will have you looking at everyday ingredients in an entirely new light and bring zest back into your cooking. I highly recommend.

Notable recipes: EVERY recipe in this book!

Buy in store or online.
Easy Wins by Anna Jones, ISBN 9780008526658