Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love

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Yotam Ottolenghi is the restaurateur and chef-patron of the four London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. His cookbooks have sold over seven million copies worldwide. Amongst several prizes, Ottolenghi Simple won the National Book Award and was selected as a best book of the year by the New York Times. Yotam is a weekly columnist for the Saturday Guardian and a regular contributor to the New York Times. His championing of vegetables, as well as ingredients once seen as "exotic," has led to what some call "the Ottolenghi effect": meals full of color, flavor, bounty, and sunshine. Yotam lives in London with his family. Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Toss the pitta with the za’atar, two tablespoons of oil, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, and spread out on a medium baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for 12 minutes, tossing halfway, or until golden and crisp. Set aside to cool.

You can also watch Yotam and Chaya make this dish on the OTK Youtube channel, which is what inspired me to make it in the first place. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment in place, and mix on medium speed to combine. Add the softened butter, eggs, egg yolk, vanilla seeds, brown sugar, milk and the remaining three tablespoons of maple syrup, and mix on medium speed for two minutes until combined. It will look as if it’s split a little, with some smaller cubes of butter, but that’s OK. Make the garnish by putting the butter into a small frying pan on a medium-high heat. Add the almonds and cook for three minutes, stirring, until lightly coloured. Add the pine nuts and cook for another two minutes, until golden. Remove from the heat and add the chilli. In truth, the OTK is no new endeavour, it all began about ten years ago, founded by Yotam. Over the years it gradually expanded, as more people joined the forces to make up a group of creatives. This coming and going of voices and personalities has created a space you walk into and know, ‘This place is greater than the sum of its parts’.

Ottolenghify

In a small bowl, combine the remaining chopped spring onions with the extra basil leaves and the last tablespoon of oil. Sprinkle the cake with the extra pecorino and top with the spring onion mixture. Serve the pepper sauce in a bowl alongside. This warming spiced rice is a definite show-stopper, the kind of meal you would make for a special occasion. We toyed over including this recipe in the book, laborious as it is, but rice deserves to be prized and treasured – taking centre stage at many a family table – so make this one as a weekend project, a feast of feasts, a real cause for celebration. Yes, it takes time, but it is oh so worth it.

The focus of the book is cooking with what you have around, similar to Donna Hay's Off The Shelf: Cooking From the Pantry. In contrast to Donna Hay, who rarely exceeds five to seven ingredients in a recipe, the Ottolenghi team indulges in fairly long lists of ingredients. Fortunately, the cooking techniques are straightforward. For the two recipes I tried out, the steps were not challenging, based mostly on timing. I chose to saute the onion and garlic for one dish rather than adding them raw, and skipped the instruction to puree them. The techniques were mainly how fine to chop, what to mix together, and when to add ingredients to the roasting pan. the book is a small, flexibound format
2. don’t worry, there is still at least one (but usually several) photo of every recipe
3. the book will not fit in with your other Ottolenghi books
4. because it’s not meant to.ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Epicurious, Serious Eats This recipe is a Middle Eastern take on a mac’n’cheese, thanks to the addition of cumin, a herbaceous za’atar pesto and crispy fried onions. Cooking the macaroni in the milk, as we do here, bypasses the need to make a bechamel. The starches are released into the soon-to-be-cheesy sauce, making it velvety and rich without the need for the more traditional flour-butter roux. What I thought: I was having some friends round for dinner, and had planned – in conjunction with my housemates! – to cook just one or two recipes from the book. As the process unfurled, however, we added more and more dishes into the mix, unable to resist the enduring temptation of an Ottolenghi veggie feast.

Yotam Ottolenghi is the restaurateur and chef-patron of the four London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. He is the author of eight bestselling and multi-award-winning cookery books. Yotam has been a weekly columnist for the Saturday Guardian for over thirteen years and is a regular contributor to the New York Times. His championing of vegetables, as well as ingredients once seen as 'exotic', has led to what some call 'The Ottolenghi effect'. This is shorthand for the creation of a meal which is full of colour, flavour, bounty and sunshine. Yotam lives in London with his family. www.ottolenghi.co.uk @Ottolenghi I have mixed feeling about this cookbook and have not cooked anything out of it, so I'm perhaps not the best reviewer. Make the chilli oil by putting the oil and chilli flakes into a small frying pan and placing it on a medium heat. Cook for four minutes, then add the paprika and remove from the heat. Set aside. This dish was born out of some leftover tomato pasta sauce, as well as a few aubergines that really needed using up. Scoop this up with warm pitta and eat it alongside other meze, or with soft-boiled eggs for a hearty breakfast. Transfer the mac’n’cheese to a large platter with a lip or a shallow bowl, dot all over with the pesto, and top with the crispy onions.

M.E. Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Za’atar Pesto

What’s it about? OTK: Shelf Love is a recipe book that will teach you to fall in love with cooking intuitively from your cupboards and pantry, fridge and freezer. By cleverly using your kitchen finds, you’ll put a flavoursome, Ottolenghi-level dinner on the table any day of the week. I tried again with Simple. It seemed to be so much more in line with my way of cooking, but with the trademark Ottolenghi flavour profiles. And yet… In a small bowl, whisk the tahini with two and a half tablespoons of water and a pinch of salt until smooth.