Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

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Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

RRP: £26.00
Price: £13
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This is a very informative cookbook that in many ways resembles a textbook in that there is so much text. Recipes are well done and distinct and there is a photo for each. While the recipes may be described as "low effort," this does not mean fast. In fact, only five of the recipes can be made in under thirty minutes or in one pan. Most take more than an hour and involve multiple steps and pans. You have to really want to make these dishes. Many recipes focus on less common vegetables such as rutabagas and celery root. Recipes all seem highly unique and creative but tend to run on the exotic side. Fans of Ottolenghi will love this book. The experts at America's Test Kitchen and National Geographic bring Italy's magnificent cuisine, culture, and landscapes—and 100 authentic regional recipes—right to your kitchen. Less regionally focused and tradition-based than Jerusalem, but almost as good. Delicately aromatic, satisfying, beautiful food. Good and good for you. If, in some sense, Jerusalem was hindered by its focus (it most assuredly wasn't, by the way), this book would be the best kind of response. The first thing I want to say about it is that it is the most interesting cookbook I’ve ever read. The recipes are very different than what I’m used to making, and they all sound easy enough to prepare. The photos were amazing, and the stories shared about his family made me feel as if I knew them. They were very close and I liked that.

I was able to get makrut lime leaves and curry leaves fresh from Etsy for a very reasonable price--and I would recommend buying them as they appear in the most recipes. Rose harissa is great, but I find that I prefer more spice and less perfume, so I have been fine with the brand I use. Sumac and other spices he relies on are readily at Wegmans. So this is classic "I need a lot of things" but less frustrating than in some of his other recipe collections. So: the philosophy is basically fresh food, not overly cooked but usually dressed with some combination of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley and/or cilantro, mostly served at room temperature. The authors are originally from Israel and Palestine, now in London, and it's basically a Mediterranean diet with a Middle Eastern fondness for spices. What this means for me is: tasty summer food that you can prepare in the morning while the kitchen is bearable and you can leave it to serve for dinner later. What this means for you: invite me to your BBQ, pool or Cape house. Sami moved to London in 1997 and worked at Baker and Spice as head chef, where he set up a traiteur section with a rich Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean spread. In 2002 he partnered with Noam Bar and Yotam Ottolenghi to set up Ottolenghi in Notting Hill. The company now has four stores and two restaurants, NOPI and ROVI, all in central London.

Apart the recipes, between the various chapters lots of information regarding cooking styles and techniques and components. Produce shows the way to bring out the best in your vegetables, by adding the umami of mushrooms, the magic of onions and garlic, the texture of nuts and seeds, and the sugar in fruit and alcohol. The Spicy Mushroom Lasagne, Dirty Rice, Radish and Cucumber Salad with Chipotle Peanuts, or Tangerine and Ancho Chile Flan can demonstrate this with ease. Inspired by their childhoods in West and East Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi’s and Sami Tamimi’s original cookbook Ottolenghi: The Cookbook showcases fresh, honest, bold cooking and has become a culinary classic.

I have been searching for great ways to eat garlic that don't involve cream and cheddar cheese--healthy ways to eat this vegetable that is widely available year round. I have had a very good summer of eating what is available in the Farmer's Market, keeping to a more vegetarian, sometimes even vegan meal plan, and the key to long term success, for me, is to have a lot of choices about how to cook the raw ingredients, especially once winter comes and the options do not include flavorful tomatoes and corn on the cob any more. The book has straightforward recipes that seem complex but are actually very doable even for a novice cook, if the recipe is followed correctly. Some ingredients may be a little difficult to find but can generally be substituted. I haven't had the need to tweak any recipes...well, except the spice levels, as I'm not a big spicy person. These are the sources of our impulse. It is this profusion of overwhelming sensations that inspires our desire to stun with our food, to make you say “wow!” even if you’re not the expressive type. The colors, the textures, and finally the flavors that are unapologetically striking.

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Although this is the first of Ottolenghi's cookbooks, I have come to it just now, after knowing and using his others, especially Jerusalem: A Cookbook, Plenty and Plenty More: Vibrant Vegetable Cooking from London's Ottolenghi. Perhaps if I'd discovered it first I would give it five stars, but I think there are more interesting recipes in the later books, as he experimented and explored more in using vegetables creatively. From J.K. Rowling, a classic Hogwarts Library book, and the perfect addition to the bookshelf of every Harry Potter fan. In Flavor, Ottolenghi, along with his test kitchen chefs Ixta Belfrage and Tara Wigley, focus on 3 Ps: process, pairing, and produce. Add in his homemade condiments (aka his secret weapons: flavor bombs), and you can find vegetable recipes for main dishes, sides, and even desserts for the most vegetable-averse out there. Roasted sweet potato with pecan and maple - I used this as one of our Thanksgiving sides and thought it was lovely. A wonderful dish for autumn.

Most of the recipes are ideal as delicious vegetarian meals. In truth, I wasn't blown away by anything in the meat section. However, what makes lemon and garlic such a great metaphor for our cooking is the boldness, the zest, the strong, sometimes controversial flavors of our childhood. The flavors and colors that shout at you, that grip you, that make everything else taste bland, pale, ordinary, and insipid. Cakes drenched with rose-water-scented sugar syrup; piles of raw green almonds on ice in the market; punchy tea in a small glass with handfuls of mint and sugar; the intense smell of charred mutton cooked on an open fire; a little shop selling twenty types of crumbly sheep and goat’s milk cheeses, kept fresh in water; apricot season, when there is enough of the fruit lying around each tree to gorge yourself, the jam pot, and the neighborhood birds.

A] book that has barely left my kitchen…the fact that Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi have been generous to put their recipes in a book is something I had long dreamed of’ Nigel Slater, The Observer Magazine I have no hope of being unbiased when it comes to Ottolenghi’s food—it’s in many ways what drew me into the food industry in the first place. I ate it frequently from deli containers, and watched my stepmother cook through each book. I can’t wrestle Ottolenghi dishes away from the memories I have of feeling bleary-eyed and stuffed full, wedged around a crowded London dining table long past my bedtime, still vying for the last bit of Taleggio-crusted mushroom. America’s favorite home cook presents delicious, crowd-pleasing, go-to recipes that you’ll want to make over and over again!

Well, put a cape on Yotam Ottolenghi, because he is a superhero for vegetarian and vegan cooks. He is doing everything he can think of to add interest and flavor to vegetables. His cookbooks are a love letter to the taste and texture of vegetables, and his latest, Flavor, is his strongest missive to date. This isn't a cookbook for the beginning chef. Many of the recipes are advanced, most of them require extra preparation time, and a great deal of them use ingredients that aren't easily accessible. Recipes we love: Figs with Young Pecorino and Honey, Marinated Aubergine with Tahini and Oregano, Tamara's Stuffed Vine Leaves, Orangic Salmon and Asparagus Bruchetta, Lamb Cutlets with Walnut, Fig and Goat's Cheese Salad. Grouping together multiple recipes steps in one bullet point is a real bugbear of mine - I don't like one step in a recipe to be a dozen lines long with a dozen substeps and taking several hours to complete. Feels like a case of trying to hide the complexity when the recipe could also afford to be a little simpler. I had never heard of Ottolenghi before and when I saw this cookbook, the title was the first thing that grabbed my attention, and then the blurb sealed the deal.

From the book: Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

Nearly 1/2 of the book is devoted to breads and pastries and other carb-heavy items. This is the problem of writing a cookbook based on a restaurant--restaurants sell all sorts of foods that shouldn't be eaten on a regular basis. Not much healthful here. I will probably make 3 recipes from this book on a regular basis. Also, I tried his "guaranteed best method" for roasting eggplant--not so fast with the superlatives, Chef! I love Ottolenghi’s previous cookbooks, but I thought he had more or less exhausted what he could do. As he says, “how many ways can there be to roast an eggplant?” But this cookbook is an evolution from his previous work. Where most of his previous recipes have been focused in Middle Eastern cuisine, this cookbooks is… not “fusion,” which to me implies a mixing of different cuisines, but rather post-national cuisine. With the help of Ixta Belfrage, Ottolenghi is now into using ingredients with big, bold flavors. Sometimes this is in context of the cuisine they come from, other times, like with the cascabel chile oil with butter beans, it’s just because that’s the big flavor they want to play with for the dish. My favorite recipes were the salads. I love a good salad and there was such a variety. Some of them had ingredients that I would have never thought to put together. Even days after finishing the book I catch myself thinking “oh, I could make a salad with …



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