Mr Ottolenghi has three cookbooks in the top 20 on amazon - no mean feat!! Why is he so popular? Can one person be a zeitgeist in their own right? If they can, then he is... The recipes are clean, full of flavour, use a variety of ingredients, and more importantly for me at the moment, don't rely on mountains of meat... If we're going to encourage people to eat a broader variety of food, we have to make it flipping delicious!
The book is broken down into:
- Tossed (tomato and pomegranate salad; raw beetroot and herb salad; crunchy root vegetables...)
- Steamed (miso vegetables and rice, with black sesame dressing; lemon and curry leaf rice ...)
- Blanched (seaweed, ginger and carrot salad; soba noodles with quick-pickled mushrooms...)
- Simmered (tagliatelle with walnuts and lemon; fregola and artichoke pilaff...)
- Braised (fennel with capers and olives; mushrooms, garlic and shallots with lemon ricotta...)
- Grilled (butternut tataki and udon noodle salad; courgette baba ganoush, marrow with tomato and feta...)
- Roasted (squash with cardamon and nigella seeds; honey roasted carrots with tahini yoghurt...)
- Fried (polenta crisps with avocado and yoghurt; seared girlies with black glutinous rice...)
- Mashed (crushed puy lentils with tahini and cumin; cannelloni bean puree with pickled mushrooms and pita croutons...)
- Cracked (membrillo and stilton quiche; corn and spring onion pancakes; spicy scrambled eggs...)
- Baked (stuffed peppers with fondant swede and goat's cheese; winter saffron gratin; baked artichoke and pearled spelt salad...)
- Sweetened (baked rhubarb with sweet labneh; quince poached in pomegranate juice; fig and goat's cheese tart...)
A great book, one which is staying in my kitchen, and not being shelved in the library - I can think of no nicer way to eat my 5-a-day...
You can buy it here:
