Which is your favourite/go-to Ottolenghi cookbook

[MsFogi]

I am going to treat myself to an Ottolenghi cookbook because everytime I eat one of his recipes when friends make them they are fabulous. So if you have a few - which is your favourite?

I borrow books from the library, or read them in bookshops before deciding whether to buy them.
I've only bought "Simple" ! I've made quite a few recipes from it, all have been good.

I like Simple. I suspect I’d like the others more if I didn’t have two young kids.

The only one I have is Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love. It's a fabulous book with brilliant recipes, but much better suited to weekends and entertaining as the dishes suit mezze style of eating. It's just not a style that works for me on a week day so I haven't gotten as much use out of it as I hoped. He has a new book out this summer, I think called Comfort (?) based around comfort food, which I think might suit my weekday style more.

I have quite a few but have realised that I use recipes of his website and from the guardian more than any of his books.

the OTK YouTube channel is another great free resource too

Simple - also loads of recipes on the guardian on line.

Simple is the most accessible and the one that introduced me to his recipes. I now have all of his books but Simple remains my favourite.

If you like Yotam's stuff, it's also worth checking out Falastin. It's my very favourite cookbook ever and goes beautifully with Simple for recipe combinations and flavours

He has lots of good recipes online- I'm making one as we speak. A caution, though. You have to like cooking- a lot of his recipes are fiddly and have a lot of ingredients.

I really like the recipes on the Guardian website and often make them. But when I got a book (Plenty) I never used it and eventually charity shopped it.

I have other Middle Eastern cookbooks I use all the time.

I'm not really a cookbook kind of cook, I tend to prefer to make up my own dishes, but I have 'Simple' and like it. It's probably the only cookbook I've bought in the past 20 years!

I have both Plenty and Plenty more, but that’s because they’re vegetarian. I do adapt some of his meat recipes I see in the Guardian sometimes. My friend has Jerusalem and swears by it.

The recipes seem fiddly and with lots of ingredients but it’s worth the effort as the flavour profiles are amazing. Once you start cooking his recipes you do build up a store cupboard of spices/weird ingredients so his recipes become easier.

I don't generally find the recipes fiddly.

There are a lot of ingredients but once you have made say 4 recipes, you probably own all of them as the same ingredients come up time and time again.

Or you can just swap/leave stuff out - in my kitchen 'urfa chilli pepper' = any chilli pepper I happen to have lying around

Jerusalem is a beautiful book and probably my favourite. It’s a book to read as well as to cook from, but the recipes aren’t necessarily the type you associate with Ottolenghi.

I use Simple the most, I think.

I have Flavour as well, and there are some good recipes in it but overall a much higher level of faffafge involved.

One minor point - I use his recipes much less than I used to because of cost. He is very heavy handed with olive oil (now around £12 a litre at least for the ones we use) and he has the oven on a lot, which is very expensive to run with fuel prices being what they are.

If your local library has any, I'd recommend borrowing a few of his and browsing for a bit before deciding - each has strengths. Jerusalem is a lovely book and Plenty has some great recipes too.

I love Shelf Love and Extra Good Things at the moment. Both filled with recipes that are exciting and perfect for entertaining/weekend cooking.

He has a lot of recipes available for free as well. There's the YouTube channel a pp mentioned, many on his website, and there are many available on the Guardian website too.