Takeover: Chef Alexina Anatole
On small wins
Hi and welcome to my newsletter, a celebration of cooking, vegetables and life. It’s great to have you here. If you have found yourself here but are not yet subscribed then you can sort that out below….
My cookbooks (there are five) are available here. The latest is Easy Wins - a Sunday Times bestseller. There are hundreds of free recipes on my website which you can find here.
From Anna:
This week I'm putting the newsletter into the hands of Alexina Anatole. I am so happy to have Alexina here. I first came across her on Masterchef (before it was tainted) and I loved Alexina's food and vibe. I've met her a few times since and in person she's even better.
I was so interested to read that Alexina came to cooking after another very different career, as I did, and her first bit of cooking was in front of TV cameras on Masterchef in a similar way to the first cooking I did being under the watch of a camera on Jamie's Kitchen. While we come from very different family backgrounds and circumstances, it’s an interesting route into cooking and something I know we will have to chat about more one day.
Now Alexina is the author of two books and a newsletter which I love to read. Her books Bitter and Sweet dive deep into two of the five tastes. Sour, Salty and Umami are to come. I talk in my books a lot about how understanding these tastes and being able to balance them is what makes a good cook, so I'm really excited to get into them and I love how Alexina aims to decode flavour.
I'll hand over now for her recommends (which I loved, bookmarked and nodded at) from lilac chopping boards and fridge carousels, to ratatouille.
Thanks to Alexina for being here,
Anna
From Alexina
Hello!
I’m Alexina, a MasterChef finalist and author of Small Wins (a newsletter here on Substack) as well as two cookbooks: Bitter and Sweet (which is out next Thursday.)
It’s apt next week happens to be Valentine’s Day because perhaps the most enduring love affair of my life so far has been with food.
There are many reasons for this: I’m in love with the sensory experience of cooking and eating, I’m in love with how food brings people together, and I’m in love with the way that it opens up different cultures to us. I’m also in love with what food can do to nourish and support our amazing bodies. But I have a confession to make.
I’m not a naturally gifted cook.
I’ve been cooking for a long time now, whilst my younger brother, Matthew, rarely turns on the stove — but when he does come out of cooking hibernation, he knocks it out of the park every single time. Naturally, I’m not thrilled about this (healthy sibling rivalry, you know how it is) but the reality is that it’s simply taken me time to build up the skills that my brother seems to possess innately.
What is clear, however, is that my greed must run deeper than my ego (evidence of said greed below) because I’ve never stopped cooking, and I’ve never stopped learning about food.
This combination of a deep love affair with food and an eagerness to learn has led me to try and unlock the secrets of good cooking for all of us — to decode those techniques and elements that my brother seems to inherently grasp. I have spent a great deal of time paying attention to, and subsequently honing and cultivating, the best tricks and tips of the kitchen.
I like sharing a great recipe, of course, but what I like even better is sharing a principle or a technique that has the power to improve your cooking across the board. That’s what my Substack newsletter, Small Wins, is all about: decoding cooking, one small win at a time. And in my cookbooks (Bitter, Sweet) I decode flavour.
Creating delicious food and sitting down to eat it with friends, family or even solo, is one of life’s greatest joys — and it’s a joy that I hope I can help everyone to access.
Things to read
Anya von Bemzen’s What is a National Dish? was my favourite read of last year. As the title suggests, it tackles the thorny issue of the national dish and asks whether nationhood can be found on a plate. I am endlessly fascinated by how flavours and tastes appear across cultures, and Anya explores the concept of authenticity in food with spectacular insight and charm.
For anyone interested in restaurants and hospitality, Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table is a gem. He talks about how he built his restaurant empire (which has survived through 9/11, the financial downturn of 2008 and the Covid pandemic) based on ‘enlightened hospitality’. There is a lot of nuanced wisdom in these pages and one of my favourite quotes is “Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. Service is a monologue… Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue.”
Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself by Dr Lissa Rankin is an inspiring and fascinating exploration of the ways that the mind can, at times, triumph over modern medicine in the healing of the body. And before you roll your eyes, believing this to be some woo-woo nonsense, you should know that Dr Rankin practised traditional medicine for many years, and her research is scientific and thorough. This book is a lesson in listening — truly listening — to our bodies and our inner selves.
Things to buy
I’ve been trying to detoxify my home as much as possible this last year, and one of the best things I did was switch my classic Brita water filter for these charcoal sticks from Black + Blum. You simply add them to a carafe of water, and the charcoal naturally filters it, removing chlorine whilst adding minerals. Each stick lasts 6 months.
My fridge was utterly transformed by this one item from IKEA.
Chopping boards are so often a dull part of our kitchen armoury — but one day I realised that it didn’t have to be that way. My chopping boards are lilac and sunny yellow and mint green and a bright orange-red — and I can’t tell you how much joy they bring me every single time I use them (there’s such power in finding joy in the small, day-to-day things). Hay do a lovely collection of coloured chopping boards, but you can also head to a catering supply shop such as Nisbets and pick up various shades there.
Things to watch, listen to etc.
I’m a sucker for a good romance and Nobody Wants This (Netflix) was one that recently had me hooked. Witty, poignant and perfectly capturing the absurdities of modern love, who knew that Adam Brody’s ‘hot rabbi’ character was the dream man of our modern age?
I will always love Chef’s Table, and the episodes on Asma Khan, Nancy Silverton and Mashama Bailey each transformed my relationship to food and cooking.
Finally, Disney’s Ratatouille — still the best film about food to ever grace our screens.
Love Alexina’s Small Wins Substack. Always great recipes and fab tips related to food prep, cooking and eating. That IKEA fridge turntable looks very useful - I’m tempted!