Eat Like The Jonai - Tammi Jonas

Eat Like the Jonai: Ethical, Ecologically Sound, Socially Just, and Uncommonly Delicious
by Tammi Jonas

Published by Jonai Farms and Meatsmiths - November 2024 - Paperback - 200pp - 21cm x 30cm

Eat Like the Jonai is a celebration of good food and company. It is a guide for eaters as you navigate the complicated world of shopping for ethical and ecologically-sound food - how to know whether that bacon or those eggs are genuinely ‘free range’, unravelling certification schemes, and deciphering labels. It does so while providing the pleasurable side of eating ethically with a cosmopolitan range of recipes that use easy-to-find ethically-produced ingredients. Woven through the recipes are stories of a lifetime of deep engagement with food and its means of production - from family feasts and the culinary inspiration of travel to the importance of trusting your tastebuds and getting creative in the kitchen.

The book provides a balance of recipes - many are vegetable based, and others feature a range of beef, pork and other proteins. There is an extensive breakfast chapter (I reckon I can cook eggs in some 17 different styles from 10 cultures), soups (showcasing the use of the whole animal with bone master stocks), and preserving (everything from cured meats to pickles and my trademark fermented chili & garlic). The dessert chapter brings in the voices and recipes of the rest of the Jonai (Stuart, Oscar, Antigone & Atticus), as they are the sweet tooths of the family. There is a celebration of feasts, including la matanza, the annual killing of the pig, with tips about how to make the task of feeding dozens of friends less daunting & a focus on the joys of a potluck meal.

Eat Like the Jonai will make you feel like you’re joining us at the table for a legendary Jonai lunch, and it will give you the inspiration and knowledge you need to nourish others with soulful, mindful, uncommonly delicious meals.

Tammi Jonas is an agroecologist, farmer and butcher, an agrarian scholar activist with a focus on ethical, ecologically sound, and socially just food systems. She recently completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia on the biodiverse, decolonial and non-capitalist praxes of agroecology-oriented farmers, and the work of collectivising to deal with the problem of the state. Co-editor and co-author of Farming Democracy: Radically transforming the food system from the ground up (2019), she is the president of Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), promoting everyone’s right to access nutritious and culturally-appropriate food grown in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and our right to democratically determine our own food systems.