This pantry staple you usually throw out will make simple midweek spuds special

Award-winning vegetarian cookbook author Anna Jones heroes 12 pantry ingredients in her new cookbook, Easy Wins. This is her fifth cookbook, and we love the sound of chapters on lemons, olive oil, onions, peanut butter, mustard, tahini and more. The book boasts that these are recipes you will want to cook on repeat, and based on our extensive experience of recipes she has previously published, we are confident this claim will be true. Here are three to try.

Cheese and pickle roast potatoes with chilli-dressed leaves

A tray of these for dinner is just about the best thing I can think of to eat. Squashed crisp-edged potatoes, tossed and baked in pickle brine to give them a subtle but important chip-shop-vinegar feeling. Once hot and crisped, the potatoes are topped with cornichons and cheese and finished with a chilli and bitter lettuce salad, though the potatoes are also good just on their own.

Pickle brine is often thrown away but it is highly seasoned gold. It is acidic, a little salty and usually a little sweet, so it instantly adds depth like a splash of vinegar would but in a more mellow way.

INGREDIENTS

• 1kg new potatoes, scrubbed clean
• 10 cornichons (35g), roughly chopped, plus 100ml of brine from the jar
• 100ml extra virgin olive oil
• 3 fresh red chillies
• juice of 1 unwaxed lemon
• 100g comte cheese or vegan mature cheddar-style cheese
• 1 head of radicchio or other bitter lettuce

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180C fan-forced (200C conventional). Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil, add the potatoes and cook for 10-20 minutes, depending on their size, until they are just cooked. Drain and leave the potatoes to steam dry in a colander.
2. Tip the potatoes into a roasting dish, toss them with 50ml pickle brine, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper, then roast for 15 minutes.
3. Remove the dish from the oven and, using a potato masher, squish the potatoes until they crack and expose some of the soft, fluffy insides. Pour over another 2 tablespoons of olive oil and return to the oven for another 30-40 minutes, turning the potatoes halfway, until golden and crisp.
4. Prick the chillies with the tip of a sharp knife – this stops them exploding when they are cooked. Using a pair of metal tongs, hold the chillies one at a time over a gas flame until they’re blackened and blistered all over. If you don’t have a gas stove, you can do this in a dry frying pan. Once blistered, put the chillies in a small bowl, cover and leave for 15 minutes. This way they will steam in their own heat and the skins will peel off easily. Once cool enough to handle, peel the chillies, open them up, and scrape out and discard the seeds. Finely chop the flesh and put in a mixing bowl with the remaining olive oil (70ml) and the lemon juice and mix well. Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper.
5. Once the potatoes are golden and crisp, add the remaining pickle brine (50ml) while the potatoes are still hot, then toss with 10 roughly chopped cornichons and a generous grating of comte or vegan cheddar. Tear 1 head of radicchio into bite-sized pieces, season with salt and toss in the chilli dressing.

Serves 4

Sesame and chilli oil noodles

Lucky and Joy is a Chinese-influenced restaurant local to me with brightly painted walls and food that slaps you in the face with flavour. For the past year or so I’ve been eating their sesame noodles most weeks. This is a quick version of cold sesame noodles I made when I was craving them but the restaurant was shut for a holiday. It uses tahini as opposed to Chinese sesame, which is not traditional in any way, but it is what I always have at home so …

INGREDIENTS

• 150g dried medium egg noodles
• 1 tbsp peanut butter
• 2 tbsp tahini
• 1 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 2-3 tbsp chilli oil or chilli crisp
• 1 bunch of spring onions (about 6), trimmed and finely sliced
• 4 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (white, black or both)

METHOD

1. Cook the noodles in boiling salted water for a minute less than the packet instructions, until al dente. Drain and rinse under cold water.
2. Whisk together the peanut butter, tahini, soy sauce or tamari, and the garlic. Add the sesame oil and between 75ml and 125ml of room-temperature water (depending on the thickness of the tahini) and whisk until you have a smooth, pourable sauce about the thickness of double cream.
3. Toss the cold noodles in the tahini sauce and scoop into bowls, then top each with 1-2 tablespoons of chilli crisp, adding a little at a time until it’s the right kind of heat for you (you can always serve extra at the table). Scatter over the sliced spring onions and finish each bowl with a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds.

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side

Crispy garlic egg-fried rice

Egg-fried rice is made about once every two weeks here. It’s what I crave when I’m not feeling like thinking about food, which is surprisingly often. Here, some crispy garlic adds texture and sweet toasty flavour to the rice. Garlic crisped in oil like this will improve just about any meal, so once you have mastered it you can top all your meals with it (and trust me, you just might). The rice comes with an easy little smacked cucumber and radish salad, which lifts and adds crunch. I’ve kept the rice simple, but if you wanted to you could add some shredded greens or blanched frozen peas as well. If you are vegan, you could add some crumbled soft tofu instead of the eggs.

INGREDIENTS

• 500g cooked jasmine or basmati rice
• 1 cucumber
• 150g radishes, leaves trimmed
• 1 tbsp crispy chilli oil or chilli crisp
• 3 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
• 1 tsp maple syrup
• zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lime
• 3 tbsp neutral oil (such as groundnut)
• 8 garlic cloves, peeled and very thinly sliced (use a mandoline if you have one)
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds
• 4 free-range eggs
• 1 bunch of spring onions, very finely sliced

METHOD

1. Cook the rice if needed. If you don’t have leftover rice, cook about 170g rice now to give 500g cooked rice.
2. To make the cucumber and radish salad, gently smack the cucumber and radishes with a rolling pin so they split but don’t break up completely. Chop the cucumber into 2cm pieces and put them into a serving bowl with the radishes. Add the crispy chilli oil, 2 table­spoons of the soy sauce, maple syrup and the lime zest and juice and mix until every­thing is coated in the dressing.
3. To make the crispy garlic, heat the oil in a small frying pan or saucepan and add the garlic and sesame seeds. Put the pan over medium-low heat and allow everything to cook slowly for 3-5 minutes until the garlic is very lightly golden and crisp. Be careful here to cook until just golden. Taking the garlic too far or too brown will make it bitter, so don’t be tempted to cook it on high heat. Drain the garlic and seeds with a sieve (keeping the oil), then leave them to cool on some kitchen paper.
4. Beat the eggs well with the remaining soy sauce in a medium bowl. Put the reserved oil in a large wok or frying pan over high heat, then, once hot, add the rice and spread it out in an even layer to heat through for a minute. Now stir until all the rice is coated in a little oil.
5. Push most of the rice to one side of the pan. Add the beaten egg to the empty side, stir the egg quickly to fry and partly cook it, then stir it into the rice and cook for another minute or two. Take off the heat.
6. Mix a quarter of the crispy garlic and sesame seeds into the cucumber and radish salad. Divide the rice between four bowls and put some of the salad on the side of each. Finish the rice with the remaining crispy garlic and sesame, and top with sliced spring onions.