Generally speaking my relationship with a cookbook falls into one of two categories: there are the ones that I want to take to bed, and the ones that belong in the kitchen.

One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones falls into that magical middle of this Venn diagram: this book is both.

My husband will attest to the fact that, before we had a child, many Saturday nights he would come home to find me asleep on top of our king size bed, surrounded by cooking tomes. While he prefers to go out and be social at night, I love curling up beside my fattest cookbooks and whiling away the evening getting lost in their pages. One is the perfect book for this. Unlike other, er, things you might take to bed, you would never regret waking up beside One. It will imbue your dreams with colour and flavour, visions of lush green veg and hearty chickpea stews. Its dappled sunlit pages are a delight to pore over, but more than that—more than the recipes—this is a book to nourish the mind and soul. It’s the kind of book that I could (and will) flip through every month or so and find something new to read that will teach me about the world, cooking, eating, or myself.

However, over the past week since I purchased the book I have carried it to my bedside each night, but then shuffled it back into the kitchen each morning. My cookbooks that stay in the kitchen are the ones that I need to hand frequently. I don’t read them reverently, I flip hastily from contents to index to recipe, leaving sticky fingerprints and flecks of stove splatter on their pages.

One is both of these things. I want to sit in the early autumn sun and devour it slowly, and yet also immediately cook everything in it. This book has an astounding Shahedah’s Cookability Factor of 63.5%—my second highest to date (TL;DR: anything over 60% is rare). Every single recipe is so practical. And yet it’s not dull or pedestrian in the slightest. The recipes are inspired and inspiring, drawing on influences and flavours from across the world in a way that is inventive yet straightforward.

The recipes that caught my eye upon first inspection include those like Halloumi, lemon & caramelised onion pie (hello haloumi); Green pepper & pistachio risotto; Creamy parsnip, leek & white bean crumble; One-pot orzo with beetroot, thyme & orange; Chocolate, olive oil & rosemary cake; and Green olive & herb welsh cakes.

But once I sat down to take a proper look I was drawn in by some of the more complex sounding flavour combinations. I could almost see the recipes transforming before my eyes into other applications. I could see ideas for traybakes from soups, sandwich fillings from stews, and curries from salads. Carrot soup with tahini & rosemary. Aubergine & peanut stew with pink onions. Cauliflower & ginger soup with maple spiced cashews. Lemon, chickpea & green herb stew. They’re recipes I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of—whether following to the letter or ad libbing my own version.

I will point out that while the recipes are broken down into chapters that append the title ‘One’—Pot, Pan, Tray, Veg (and an anomalous ‘Quick’ chapter)—the recipes aren’t strictly one dish recipes. Most of them seem to fall generally from 1 to 3 on the Dish Rating scale. You only need one pot to cook a risotto, sure, but you need a separate saucepan to simmer your stock and a food processor to blitz some of the corn. You can roast your carrots in one tray but will need a food processor to whiz up the salsa topping. The orzo and grated beetroot can be whacked in one pot to cook, but to get the beetroot to the grated stage you’ll be pulling out, once again, the food processor and grating disc. It’s a good thing I love my food processor. (No really. I love it. So much so that I bought a second one. And a special box to house all the discs and blades.)

But none of the recipes are exceedingly complex. There’s nothing that takes half a day of simmering or begins with ‘The day before you want to serve…’. Jones has also worked pretty much every single recipe with alternatives and substitutions, shortcuts and tips for personalisation. The aforementioned beetroot orzo that catches your eye with its striking purple hue has a note for seasonal variations that would render it an entirely different dish, yet no less scrumptious or simple to make. Jones is a woman after my own heart—cooking with a passion for food and fresh produce but a lack of time.

One of the most delightfully surprising chapters, a well-kept secret buried amongst the gorgeous photos of rainbow carrot tops, peas strewn over rumpled linen, and sunlight streaming through autumn leaves, is the One Veg chapter. While Jones advocates for varying your diet, she acknowledges that there are some staple vegetables that we are all drawn to—the ones you buy every week or two, but don’t end up using and so they sit sadly in the crisper becoming infinitely less crisp. Things like potato, carrots, broccoli, and all sorts of greens. For these 10 commonplace veg Jones has included a further ten recipes each. An astounding 100 recipes squeezed into 20 pages. The skimping on real estate doesn’t equate with skimping on flavour or creativity either. Packed into this section are gems like Pea & coconut soup; Cheats squash katsu curry; Broccoli, peanut & lime sauté; Cauliflower, herb & sunflower seed salad; and Broad bean & pistachio pesto.

But where the book really takes off and moves from one side of the Venn diagram (the kitchen) and closer to the other (the bedroom), is in the content between the more traditional recipes. I would have thought the world didn’t need yet another book telling us how to waste less or live a more sustainable lifestyle. I was wrong.

As you can guess from the title, One: Pot, Pan, Planet has a strong focus on sustainability. The ‘Planet’ chapters cover some impressive ground in a highly consumable format. Jones goes through ways to eat and cook more sustainably for your health and the environment; supporting biodiversity and shopping seasonally; things to consider like plastic, food miles, and protein consumption; and how to waste less (food, energy, time, money). The advice is succinct and well-ordered, however it’s not just contained to the Planet chapters. The recipes themselves provide advice directly for vegan or seasonal substitutions to ensure the book provides value even in your specific corner of the world at any given time of year. The final chapter, ‘Waste Less’, gives recipes and tips for saving all sorts of ingredients. My favourite pages in this chapter are the Choose Your Own Adventure sections for frittatas, soups, herb pestos/sauces, and vegetable dressings. It never occurred to me to turn a fresh vegetable (let alone a sad, wilting one) itself into a dressing, so consider my mind officially blown on this point alone. Meal prepping a giant frittata is also one of my go-tos for weekday lunches, so I love the simplicity of pulling out One to help concoct a seasonal flavour combo when I’m feeling uninspired (or am just plain tired. Our 1.5-year-old does still wake frequently through the night after all).

The environmental focus and Jones’ own eating preferences means the recipes are all vegetarian, with vegan options for almost all. So technically this is not a book for the meat eaters. I say ‘technically’ because I think this could easily be a book to convert the meat eaters. The first recipe I cooked from One was the corn risotto. Risotto is one of my all time favourite dishes to both cook and eat, but I still wasn’t entirely sure how it would go down making a risotto with a strong focus on just one vegetable. But once the onion and celery were cooked down to a soft sweetness, and the risotto was finished with butter, salty pecorino cheese, and the hit of finely chopped green chilli… well. Well.

The unexpected multifaceted complexity of flavour made it incredibly impressive—especially considering the relatively short cooking time. It was sweet and fruity, sharp and zesty, rich and bright. It was light and summery yet somehow also cosy and comforting at the same time. I was blown away.

But more to the point, so was my highly carnivorous husband. We have a running dinnertime joke between us that whenever I cook a vegetarian meal (which is often), his feedback starts positive and he follows on with ‘You know what would make this even better?’ and names an animal protein. Usually chicken, but sometimes he picks lamb or fish. When he tasted the corn risotto, his eyebrows lifted. “That is good.” He said. “But you know what would make it even better?” I rolled my eyes and waited. “Some crusty bread! To really get stuck into this sauciness and the flavour.”

Yes, readers, the risotto was that good.

The whole book is that good. 10 out of 10 would recommend.