Ottolenghi Recipe Book - what's the big deal?

[TangBloodyFastic]

Posting for traffic

I'll start by saying I am no chef!!!

I am competent in the kitchen, I enjoy cooking for me and my family and will always make something from scratch if we have visitors coming. I am probably middle of the road with regards to being adventurous with the recipes I use. I don't attempt much far east (Japanese/Thai/Chinese) cuisine but will have a good go at an Indian curry.

So, to get to the point, I have just signed up to the eat your books website, which is great, and was browsing other recipe books and came across some books by Yotam Ottolenghi - which is the 3 most popular books owned by other members of the website

I'm intrigued but I also don't like wasting money. There's clearly a reason why they are so popular????

Can anyone who has any of these books, Plenty, Jerusalem and Simple, tell me why I should buy one of these books? What's so brilliant about them? Are the recipes "wow" or are they just easy? Are people buying them because others have?

I'm not a vegetarian and tend to always have meat with a meal but am not opposed to any meal if it's really good - meat or not!

I have two under two so I don't want 5000 Ingredients for a mediocre meal but put in the effort for a recipe which is really good!!

Sorry, rather long winded

Ainsley Friends and Family is a bit like this! I use loads of the recipes as staples now. Highly recommended.

I save my money and just go to the branch of Ottolenghi in Spitalfields when I’m near. And they do catering for occasions. I can’t be doing with sourcing organic Palestinian za’atar and muhammara etc, and then vanishing into the kitchen for an hour to cook it.

@RampantIvy it is. It’s really excellent. I did wonder if I could cook the lentil coconut curry bit in the slow cooker during day, so only do the aubergine bit and assemble/oven in the evening.

I love them. I don’t find them particularly difficult to make, it’s more about the pairing of flavours or some interesting way with sauces, and people always think you’re a super star chef when you serve them. Win!

I like cooking his recipes, and have been to his restaurants in London too which are lovely. Have to say I haven't done either since having DC, though. My eldest is 3.

I'm a total cookbook obsessive, I own hundreds of the things.

Ottolenghi is great, but not what you're looking for right now.

For quick family dinner ideas, I highly recommend this

www.amazon.co.uk/Donals-Meals-Minutes-suppers-scratch/dp/1473674263

Why do you say that? Are they very time consuming? Not child friendly?

Tbh at age 2 my oldest DD would have eaten some ottolenghi recipes (and probably did). At age 7? No chance!

Awaiting the inevitable comments, "oh but mine love za'atar and sumac!" But no, unless you want to spend a lot of time preparing dinner and cook a separate children's meal, Ottolenghi is not for you at this stage of life.

I said this to a friend last week!
It should be called 'Not Quite So Mindbending'.

And I love cooking.

If you want good food, @TangBloodyFastic I am rarely disappointed by Diana Henry.

The trick to getting your kids to eat Ottolenghi at 7 is to serve it to them at 2 when they are more accepting of new tastes and textures, and then just keep serving it regularly, as part of the normal meal pattern, without comment or ceremony. Kids in the Middle East eat this kind of food all the time. All of the chicken recipes in Jerusalem are amazing weekend meals.

His dishes are very tasty, but don’t rely on lots of fat and salt

great flavours, just proper nice fresh flavouts

but wayyyyy too many (obscure) ingredients

too much work

but love it if someone cooks me anything Ottolenghi 😄

I love Ottolenghi and have all the books. My kids very happily eat it all too. The ingredients lists can be quite long but the same ingredients crop up in lots of recipes so once you have them you can make a lot.

Would recommend trying the recipes online before you commit.

Are the ingredients really that obscure? They might be things you don't have in right now, but once you've got them, then they're there for future use. They all come from Tesco, so not hard to get. Off the top of my head, I'd say sumac anyd harissa are the 2 main things that might not be on most spice racks, but most other stuff is mainstream (cumin, coriander etc). And you don't have to put every ingredient in every time. I've never used a preserved lemon, for example!

The thing I like about his books is the different flavours and the fact a lot are fairly healthy, a focus on veg/grains, and quite a few are 'one pot' style. But like anything new, the style may take some getting used to, so not necessarily a quick fix solution.

I have the books but haven't cooked one single recipe from there!
I find them complex and time consuming and The requirement for 109 obscure ingredients puts me off.
I do like his food and went to the restaurant which was really really nice.
I am a reasonably good cook but simply don't have the patience for these recipes and I'd rather eat the restaurant offerings for guaranteed taste and appearance.
The books themselves are truly beautiful and immersive and I like owning them. Expensive for cookery books I'm unlikely to ever use for that purpose, but good personal investment because I simply like the style.

This made me laugh!!

I would recommend 'Simple'. The recipes are pretty simple but still very tasty and "interesting", and don't call for the bazillion ingredients and steps of cooking that the other books do. My 3-year old LOVES the chicken Marbella, and we are also fans of the pea fritters and various other recipes in there. I often also find with Ottolenghi recipes that you can miss out one of the spices/herbs or one of the more fussy steps in the cooking and it still has great flavour.

I use Jerusalem a lot also, but often simplify. I am not such a fan of his vegetarian books as they are more side dishes than balanced vegetarian meals.

What are all these 'obscure' ingredients though? I get that they might not be in people's spice cupboards, but they're all at Tesco (less so Aldi/Lidl) and you only have to buy once.
And as has been pointed out, if you leave out 1 or 2, the world won't end and you'll (probably) still have a nice tasting meal.

I have 4 or 5 of his books, and they are wonderful. But they are quite involved, use some fairly unusual ingredients that you wouldn't get down your local Coop (if only mine stocked pomegranate molasses, dried rose petals and preserved lemons) and are probably more suited to friends coming round to dinner than everyday cooking. They're also lovely books to browse through (Jerusalem, in particular) and I love that he almost always has a chapter devoted to aubergines.
He writes a great cookbook, but I'm not sure it's what you're looking for (I recommend HFW's Veg Everyday for some easier recipes).

I have all of his books (I think). I cook from all of them, including Nopi which can be challenging, but it's worth it.

I cant replicate the food in his restaurants, but I keep trying.

His black pepper tofu is divine… you can make it with meat if you don't like tofu. (However I normally hate tofu and I love it!). And the winter couscous is lushness itself. The only complaint I have is that his recipes always seem to require one pinch of about 10 obscure ingredients that can only be bought in large quantities (and will never be used for any other purpose). Still, it's worth it.

I used to love it pre children. I had Plenty and cooked from it a lot. Then the children came. They don't like the food at all.

Another casualty with the children is Anna Jones. I think it's something to do with too much vegetables.

Thank you so much for all the replies!
I think they are definitely books I would use but, like many have said, I'd use them more for a dinner party or special occasion rather than everyday
I'll keep an eye out for some 2nd hand versions on eBay for future use

So I guess I should start a new post and it should be titled, what new recipe book do I need???

I think his success is because his recipes look beautiful and appeal to people who have 'aspirational' interests. They're cooking as a weekend lifestyle hobby, rather than getting some scran down the kids on a Thursday evening - and that includes the cachet of something that isn't Italian/Indian/Tex-Mex/standard plastic trays of stuff in the supermarket.

I'm not criticising them or him at all in that, it's just not quite what I think would work for many people.

I'm not convinced by the need for recipe books to cook anything, though. You probably have a fairly good idea of what flavours or ingredients you like and can expand from there; for example, if chicken is popular, you can look to different flavourings in sauces or spices/coatings and then possibly try similar with different meats, looking to common accompaniments or condiments to hint at what you need to make different (eg, chicken curry is the plain version, lamb comes with redcurrant and/or mint sauce, so something fruity and tangy added to it works, like tamarind/more lemon/and so on).

I like his food a lot. The recipes are dead easy, in terms of their cooking-skill complexity, but do usually have more ingredients than the average. As a poster already mentioned though, they can all be found at a decent supermarket these days.

I'm a mad-keen cook though, and my kids are good at eating most things, so it works for us.

LOVE him!

I totally agree, I don't need a book, but I love a good recipe book!
I often look through my recipe books like they're s a magazine! I don't know why, I just enjoy reading them 😂🤓