Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

Product Information

Once the broccoli is dry, toss with 3 Tbsp of the olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper. Place a griddle pan on high heat and leave for 4 to 5 minutes until smoking hot. Grill the broccoli in batches on the hot pan, turning to get grill marks on all sides. When ready, transfer into a bowl.

Turkey and corn meatballs with roasted pepper sauce - I thought this was adequate, but (surprisingly) my kids loved it. The roasted pepper sauce was the star... and would probably work well for other dishes... or possibly on its own as a soup. Most of the recipes are ideal as delicious vegetarian meals. In truth, I wasn't blown away by anything in the meat section. Pre-review: It just arrived and I've already tagged three dozen things I want to make immediately (I tried to limit myself in the dessert section as EVERYTHING looks amazing). 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Separate the broccoli into florets and blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes and not longer! Immediately refresh under cold running water to stop further cooking, then drain and leave to dry completely. Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing - This wasn't well received the night I made it (I wasn't overly excited about it either). The next day, after school, I encouraged my kids just to have another slice. My daughter happily ate it. When I tossed the rest that evening, she was furious. "I LOVED that cake!" Huh.That said (and probably because of some of those reasons), I really enjoyed working my way through Ottolenghi. 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.) 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 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. Who's the author? Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, thebrains and stomachs behindOttolenghi, one of the most iconic and dynamic restaurants in the country.

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. Roasted butternut squash with burnt eggplant and pomegranate molasses - I adored the squash (especially with all the toasted seeds and nuts), but the eggplant spread was not to my (or anyone else's) liking.Summarises all the cool sauces, marinades and dressings that can be made in batches and stored for later use to spice up other meals. 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. 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.

Pairings of ingredients can also add depth of taste, from adding sweetness to the Butternut, Orange and Sage Galette to adding acidity to Rainbow Chard with Tomatoes and Green Olives. Adding fat can add flavor to Kimchi and Gruyere Rice Patties, and chili heat can add pungency to the Spicy Berbere Ratatouille with Coconut Sauce. 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. 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. Ruth's mayonnaise - Wonderful! I love unique aiolis and this was so easy, I think I may never buy store mayo again. This one has quite a lot of garlic, and we left out the cilantro for our purposes. It makes a lot... It might be worth sharing with a neighbor, even though it lasts for two weeks in the fridge.Roast potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes with lemon and sage - missing the artichokes, so otherwise a standard potato dish. 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. Yotam Ottolenghi arrived in the UK from his native Israel in 1997 and set out on a new career in food, after having completed an MA in Comparative Literature whilst working as a journalist in Tel Aviv. In London he attended The Cordon Bleu after which he worked as a pastry chef in various establishments. In 2002, Yotam and his partners set up Ottolenghi, a unique food shop offering a wide range of freshly made savory dishes, baked products and patisserie items. There are now four Ottolenghi's, as well as NOPI, a brasserie style restaurant in Soho, London. I want to cook almost everything in this book - it's rare for me to want to make such a high proportion of the dishes. 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.