By popular demand, powerhouse chef, columnist, and vegetable whisperer Yotam Ottolenghi shares recipes that even a simpleton like you could make, probably.
Bread
I want to assure you, dear readers, that I—award-winning, Cordon Bleu-trained chef Yotam Ottolenghi—also consume the humble staff of life almost every day. How hard can it be to make the staple grain of half the world? No, no, it’s not hard at all, that was a rhetorical question.
Ingredients: Flour, water, salt, yeast, sumac, powdered olive jus, rosehip jam, einkorn bran (for dusting).
Method: Combine first seven ingredients in a bowl. Cover with muslin. Sing mixture a lullaby (see appendix for sample arrangements). Let set between twelve and seventy-two hours—I don’t care, however long you want, my recipes are so chill now. Flour a work surface, fold the dough over itself a few times, and let it rest another hour or two.
Now, if you want to—and this is completely optional—you could certainly up the flavor profile of this loaf by dotting it with vacuum-packed capers (Anatolian is great, but store-bought is . . . fine, too), or by swirling it with homemade tahini caramel (see appendix p. 423), or by spritzing the air around it with orange-blossom essence. Or you could skip those flavor-compounding steps the way you cut corners with all my recipes and just stick it in the oven, like a troglodyte.
Falafel
So, full disclosure: it’s actually beetroot falafel. Oh, no, stay with me, your eyes are glazing over—keep reading, please! For this beetroot falafel, we’re just swapping out one key ingredient for visual and nutritive effect, and then adding a few pantry staples to impress your guests. (My new Ultra-Basic Non-Negotiable Staples™ are detailed in the introduction, pp. ii-xvii.)
Ingredients: Fly to Jerusalem and try to get to Mahane Yehuda market on a weekday morning before 9 A.M. There are great beets there, and when you’re making a simple recipe like this one you really do want the best ingredients. You’ll also need dried chickpeas soaked overnight (if you’re pressed for time, may you use canned? No), purple garlic, chartreuse onion (widely available in specialty shops in major coastal cities or on Amazon through a retailer that definitely doesn’t offer Prime shipping), parsley, coriander, cumin, whole-pod cardamom, alpine salt, pepper (any kind!), warm water, cold-pressed rapeseed oil.
Method: Blitz all the ingredients in a food processor. Shape mixture into balls and deep fry. I can’t contractually (per the book proposal I sold) tell you exactly how to serve them, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pair these with charcoal-lime pita (p. 47), black garlic “white” sauce (p. 743), and barrel-aged watermelon radish kimchi (p. 322). Or buy some of those ShopRite-brand pita pockets to gnaw on when you have a meltdown trying to set up the deep fryer and give up on the rest of the meal.
Simple Salad
This has “simple” in its name, so at least read it to the end? Or are you really too cowardly to make any of my recipes except for that one broiled eggplant you love to Instagram? And guess what—I know you leave out half the ingredients in that, too!
Ingredients: Butter lettuce, za’atar, endive, radicchio, kohlrabi, edible flowers of your choosing. For dressing: balsamic vinegar of Modena (aged at least sixteen years, preferably longer), first-press olive oil, red miso, pink miso, chopped ramps and/or garlic scapes (you can only make this recipe in April), fair-trade honey, human tears.
Method: In a large copper bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients. Tear up leaves and swoosh them around the bowl so they are evenly coated. Mandoline other raw vegetables and arrange on top in a pleasing manner, leaving edible flowers for garnish. Oops, we “forgot” to utilize the za’atar—or did we?! I just wanted to check that you were paying attention 😉
Roast Chicken
It’s not rocket science, it’s chicken. (When making this for a dinner party of my own, I would, of course, use guinea fowl, but I sense you sweating just reading those words, so chicken it is.) We’re going to baste this chicken in a very simple sauce, make it hot with fire, and serve it with a vegetable on the side. I believe in you—you can do this!
Ingredients: One chicken, salted butter, Sicilian blood orange, fennel bulb, rosemary sprig, Grana Padano diced into cubic centimetres.
Method: Preheat the oven to four hundred degrees. Then do whatever feels good to you. Stick the butter into the chicken? Sure! Skin on or off? Yes! Fennel, raw or caramelized? Whatever you feel like—I’m flexible. I’m not here to tell you how to make roast chicken. Recipes are just . . . recipes are just suggestions, is what I’ve been instructed to say. So, roast your flexibly prepared chicken for forty-five to sixty minutes, until the skin is crackling or your partner threatens to leave you over an ongoing argument about how much money is too much money to devote to the pursuit of Balinese lemongrass.
Chocolate Cake
I give up. You people don’t want recipes, you want permission to be your microwave-happy selves. I’m throwing in the proverbial Turkish hand-loomed cotton towel. If you want true baking innovation, you can visit one of my groundbreaking London establishments. Or don’t!
Ingredients: Duncan Hines devil’s-food cake mix, canned chocolate frosting, rainbow sprinkles.
Method: Follow the instructions on the box and then dump the can of frosting on the end product. If it were me, at this point, I might decorate the cake with some candied rose petals that I prepared as a relaxing Sunday-morning project last weekend, but I highly doubt that you philistines have even a single edible flower in your pantry. Bon appétit, assholes.
