There is a recipe for tomato sauce in Yotam Ottolenghi’s new book, , which is, literally, “a big roasting tray with a whole lot of barely chopped tomatoes, a bunch of thyme, two whole heads of garlic and tonnes of olive oil”, he tells me. Yep, that’s it. You could add some sugar if your tomatoes aren’t quite ripe enough; perhaps, if you have it to hand and can be bothered, a splash of vinegar. “It’s everything that I’ve been taught not to do in cooking school,” he smiles, “[like keeping] all those tomato skins. And it’s so delicious.”
This book, a follow up to 2018’s , is reflective, he says, of how so many of us cook now, post-Covid. During the pandemic, “I just felt like, oh my God, I’m not going to start from scratch every time I go into the kitchen,” he groans. “It’s just too much. I’m not going to soak the beans the night before and chop the onion and ginger and garlic and chilli and all those things.”
Wait, what? He going to ? Are these really words being uttered by Yotam Ottolenghi, he who became a culinary punchline for his epic recipes featuring hard-to-find, near mythical-sounding ingredients? Is… everything ok?
He laughs. “I ask for forgiveness. I know a lot of people had an axe to grind and they did it in public with me many times, saying [my recipes are] ‘just impossible. Why are you making us go through all these loopholes before we even start cooking?’ I heard that and I listened.”
He really has this time. Developed and written with his co-author Verena Lochmuller, these recipes have in mind the home cook who wants to create something in “half an hour with the ingredients that they have”. Take the aforementioned tomato sauce, or a recipe for braised halloumi with tomatoes and beans, or baked garlic rice, or traybake chicken Caesar salad. The list – there are 135 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner – of easy-to-make dishes that call for little more than what’s probably already in your fridge, goes on.
If Ottolenghi’s approach to cooking has changed over the past few years, it’s been made possible by what’s stocked on our shop shelves. These days, the popularity of Ottolenghi’s food means that once specialist ingredients can now easily be found in your local Tesco Metro. But it’s the evolution of jarred foods – who here isn’t a Bold Bean Co convert? – that has changed the landscape further. No longer is it a source of shame for the aspiring foodie to simply unscrew the lid from a jar of, say, chickpeas, and dump them straight into a salad or stew. Even Ottolenghi has entered the game with a range of jarred condiments, spanning jams and dressings to pesto (albeit with added miso).
The latter has replaced the sorry jars of Sacla in my household, in-so-doing turning a sometimes guilty dinner into something that feels at least a little bit nutritious and, dare I say it, classy? Naturally, Ottolenghi might “add some asparagus” to his pesto pasta, but “I’m very happy for people just to throw it in with some pasta and some extra olive oil”, he shrugs. “That’s absolutely perfect.”
What three things should every aspiring cook have in their kitchen?
The first thing that I would say is: you want a really beautiful, nice roasting tray that works really well and you’re happy to bring to the table. It sounds silly, but even just transferring something from a bowl to a tray is a faff and you lose some of the beauty of something that’s literally just come out of the oven.
I don’t have a high-tech kitchen. I have a really good knife – I don’t have a knife fetish, but I have one really good knife that I know really, really well. I know how it operates, and every time I cook, I use it and I’m very happy with that. Oh, you know what? The microplane grater is the one, because I use it for so many things. For garlic, for ginger, for cheese. [But] you really don’t need that much. I don’t even use a food processor.
What’s really worth spending extra money on, ingredients-wise?
Things just taste so much better when they are at their prime. I’ve got a greengrocer around the corner and I walk in and I smell my way through. I look a bit weird, but I can tell what’s good. I think seasonal produce is worth spending money on.
Otherwise, if you can spend extra money on things, premium pulses (from any of the brands that sell them at the moment – the Spanish and Portuguese and British brands) are really, really, really good things to invest in, because it’s never as expensive as premium meat or fish. I also often use plain chickpeas that come out of the tin, but that’s for long cooking where it’s going to sit in the stew and absorb more moisture and turn into something better than how it started. But if it’s for salads or for quick stir fries or a topping for hummus or whatever it is, or even just a salad situation, then I would definitely, definitely invest in those prime pulses.
… And what’s something that isn’t worth the money?
Salt. I have them all: Maldon salt, Himalayan salt, smoky salt. But actually in a taste test, I trust you wouldn’t know what salt I use. I love using flaky salt for texture – it stays on the surface and you get this kind of spike of saltiness, so you don’t have that kind of uniform experience. But just for salting a stew or your pasta water, it really doesn’t matter.
How can you easily make a table feel dinner party-ready?
I think a really big ceramic bowl of red or green shatta (a hot chilli sauce) looks vibrant and beautiful and is a sign of generosity. I always set up a couple of little bowls or glasses with wildflowers, then as people sit down and we start putting the food on the table, I’ll put them on the side. I don’t do anything revolutionary – beautiful linen napkins, some flowers, candles. I think the key word is abundance.
As a guest, what is the best thing to take for your host?
It all depends how much time I have. If I have half a day, I bake a cake. But that is setting the bar very, very high. The other thing I often do is bring a tray of fruit in season, like a tray of apricots or peaches. Or just a bottle of wine. Like cooking, you don’t need to put unnecessary pressure on yourself.
Simple Too by Yotam Ottolenghi is out now