Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

Product Information

Yotam Ottolenghi’s four eponymous restaurants—each a patisserie, deli, restaurant, and bakery rolled into one—are among London’s most popular culinary destinations. Now available for the first time in an American edition and updated with US measurements throughout, this debut cookbook from the celebrated, bestselling authors of Jerusalem and Plenty features 140 recipes culled from the popular Ottolenghi restaurants and inspired by the diverse culinary traditions of the Mediterranean.

The book begins with a few trademark Ottolenghi vegetable dishes -- unusual but brilliant combinations of flavor and texture -- but there's not many of them here. Many of the recipes call for expensive (in my world) nuts (hazelnuts, macadamias, Brazil nuts) and this book features a love affair with butter that's making me shudder: they actually suggest dressing a beautiful herb salad with warm butter—this dish is recommended as a "light" dish to serve after a heavy meat dish. (Accompanied presumably by a Malbec and a call to your cardiologist.) Ottolenghi is an award-winning chef, being awarded with the James Beard Award 'Cooking from a Professional Point of View' for Nopi in 2016, and 'International Cookbook' for Jerusalem in 2013. In 2013 he also won four other awards for Jerusalem. And that flavor expansion works particularly well here, in the chef’s most technique-focused work yet. Flavor, you see, could just be used as a recipe book—but if you only use it that way, you’ll be missing out. Long chapter introductions teach cooking technique (browning, braising, aging, infusing) and offer advice on pairing flavors, as well as how to coax texture and oomph out of some of the chef’s favorites: mushrooms, nuts and seeds, alliums. Instead of just demonstrating how to properly perform these techniques in the safe confines of beloved recipes, Ottolenghi and Belfrage invite us to own these methods and branch out, delighting us with cross-cultural flavor combinations along the way.

From the book: Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

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. Summarises all the cool sauces, marinades and dressings that can be made in batches and stored for later use to spice up other meals. Yotam Ottolenghi is a seven-time New York Times best-selling cookbook author who contributes to the New York Times Food section and has a weekly column in The Guardian. His Ottolenghi Simple was selected as a best book of the year by NPR and the New York Times; Jerusalem, written with Sami Tamimi, was awarded Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals and named Best International Cookbook by the James Beard Foundation. He lives in London, where he co-owns an eponymous group of restaurants and the fine-dining destinations Nopi and Rovi. That being said, I would not suggest these recipes for beginning cooks. These dishes are elevated and elegant, the equivalent of meals from a four-star restaurant, and the ingredients he uses as his go-tos are hard to find on the shelves of many local American grocery stores. These are intermediate to expert dishes, with the refinements that come from many years of cooking. But there is nothing wrong with getting the cookbook to read and aspire to, trying one of the simpler recipes to add a dramatic flair to a holiday dinner or dinner party, and then working up to the more complicated recipes.

Countdown to Christmas in this gorgeous advent calendar featuring enchanting illustrations inspired by the Harry Potter films. I'm not yet finished with the recipes I initially marked, and there are many more that I intend to add in very soon. There are a few that I've already made twice and will probably become staples.

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We both ate a lot of street food—literally, what the name suggests. Vendors selling their produce on pavements were not restricted to “farmers’ markets.” There was nothing embarrassing or uncouth about eating on the way to somewhere. Sami remembers frequently sitting bored in front of his dinner plate, having downed a few grilled ears of corn and a couple of busbusa (coconut and semolina) cakes bought at street stalls while out with friends. If this all sounds too complex, I assure you no Ottolenghi PhD is required. New readers will be coached and coaxed through each technique, while long-timers will find something new here—even if they own every other book in the chef’s oeuvre. 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. 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. Sami Tamimi was born and raised in Jerusalem and was immersed in food from childhood. He started his career as commis-chef in a Jerusalem hotel and worked his way up, through many restaurants and ethnic traditions, to become head chef of Lilith, one of the top restaurants in Tel Aviv in the 1990’s.

These recipes draw mostly from all over the Mediterranean, with some Asian tossed in (and maybe others too, I think it's mentioned in the intro), and even one or two Mexican-based recipes. One of them was for Quesadillas, and they were absolutely delicious. There are AT LEAST twenty other recipes bookmarked for taste-testing. :-) 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.Available for the first time in an American edition, this debut cookbook, from bestselling authors Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi of Plenty and Jerusalem, features 140 recipes culled from the popular Ottolenghi restaurants and inspired by the diverse culinary traditions of the Mediterranean. This is a hard cookbook to rate with fairness because of the delta between what can be learned as theory and what can be used in practice. Very nicely presented and just the right length of preamble to chapters and recipes to add context but not detract from the main purpose of cooking. 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. Caramel and macadamia cheesecake - This was fantastic. And even better the next day. (I loved that the caramel looked like it was solid and then you cut it... and maybe it's the reaction of body heat or something... but it just melts in your mouth. This, contrasted with the crunchy caramelized macadamia nuts! The base cheesecake itself is an easy recipe and would work well even by itself.