Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love

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I tried again with Simple. It seemed to be so much more in line with my way of cooking, but with the trademark Ottolenghi flavour profiles. And yet… With both grilling and roasting, there is a lot of heat involved. My top tip for you is not to make this on a boiling hot day, like I did, unless you enjoy sweltering over the stove. That minor gripe is the worst thing I can say about the whole experience though; the process was pretty simple and the end result irrefutably delicious. The blitzed, char-grilled vegetables were faintly reminiscent of romesco and made an unexpectedly creamy pasta sauce that felt hearty enough for autumn, yet light enough for an unseasonably hot day. The roasted aubergine added some nice texture, and the tahini dressing, with lemon juice and garlic, added some zing and set the whole thing off nicely. Needless to say, I will definitely make this one again. Make the chilli oil by putting the oil and chilli flakes into a small frying pan and placing it on a medium heat. Cook for four minutes, then add the paprika and remove from the heat. Set aside. Next I tried za’atar salmon and tahini and since all three of these ingredients make a regular appearance on my weekly menu, I knew it was my sort of dish. The fish was cooked beautifully, perfectly timed, but whether you like the taste of the sauce will depend on your attitude towards tahini. I love it but, much as it pains me to say, I know not everyone does like the slightly bitter taste of this sesame paste. If you do, then give this recipe a try, it is a one-pot dish with spinach – or other greens if you prefer – cooked underneath the fish. I simply served it with a bowl of baby potatoes.

Whether they're conjuring up new recipes or cooking for themselves at home, the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team do what we all do: they raid their kitchens. But then, they turn whatever they find into approachable creations with an 'Ottolenghi' twist. Meanwhile, cook the eggs in boiling water for eight minutes, or until just hard-boiled. Drain, peel and discard the shells, then use a box grater to roughly grate the eggs and add them to the potato bowl. Peel the peppers and tomato, discarding the skins, and put the flesh into a food processor. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their papery skins and add to the machine along with the vinegar, maple syrup, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Blitz for a few seconds, then, with the motor running, slowly drizzle in the remaining three tablespoons of oil until the sauce is smooth. Since 2002, the Ottolenghi team has slowly expanded, our scope has grown, and exciting new ingredients fill our cupboards, but so much, crucially, has remained the same. We continue with boundless enthusiasm and an unswerving dedication to detail; many of our team members have been with us for years, recipes, dishes and ingredients that are trusted favourites still feature on our menus and the philosophy at the heart of all we do is as true today as it ever was Every recipe offers full-on flavour: bold and vivid in the way we have come to recognise as distinctly Ottolenghian”— Nigella Lawson

Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7. Start with the pepper sauce: put the peppers and tomato on a medium baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, and toss them with one tablespoon of oil, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Drizzle the garlic heads with a little oil, wrap tightly in foil and place them to one side of the tray. Roast for 35 minutes, or until the pepper skins are well charred and the garlic has softened. Make the garnish by putting the butter into a small frying pan on a medium-high heat. Add the almonds and cook for three minutes, stirring, until lightly coloured. Add the pine nuts and cook for another two minutes, until golden. Remove from the heat and add the chilli.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment in place, and mix on medium speed to combine. Add the softened butter, eggs, egg yolk, vanilla seeds, brown sugar, milk and the remaining three tablespoons of maple syrup, and mix on medium speed for two minutes until combined. It will look as if it’s split a little, with some smaller cubes of butter, but that’s OK. In truth, the OTK is no new endeavour, it all began about ten years ago, founded by Yotam. Over the years it gradually expanded, as more people joined the forces to make up a group of creatives. This coming and going of voices and personalities has created a space you walk into and know, ‘This place is greater than the sum of its parts’. This magnificent pudding was made with the purpose of showcasing winter lemons, their bitter flesh a great way to cut through an otherwise decadent eating experience. In a happy accident, this was tested alongside a separate dish that included a maple-butter sauce. A squeeze of lemon and a generous amount of maple butter was spooned over the pudding because, well, why not? And it suddenly dawned on us that lemon‑maple butter had been the missing component all along. Lesson learned: sometimes that which is very, very wrong can turn out to be really quite right. Be sure to remove the butter for the pudding from the fridge well in advance – it needs to be super softened at room temperature before making the base. Jazz up this veggie version with lemon, herbs and toasted seeds. Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian This is Ottolenghi, unplugged. The Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team takes you on a journey through your kitchen cupboards, creating inspired recipes using humble ingredients.

To make the crispy onions, finely slice a couple of onions into thin rounds, toss with two tablespoons of cornflour, then fry in hot vegetable oil in about three batches, for four minutes per batch, or until golden. In a medium bowl, whisk the mayonnaise, yoghurt, two and a half tablespoons of lemon juice, two tablespoons of oil, one teaspoon of salt and a generous grind of pepper. Add this to the potato mixture and mix well to combine. Transfer to a large serving plate, spreading it out to create a slight well in the centre. Cover and refrigerate if not serving right away. A friend gave me Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love for Christmas (2021). I've been thumbing through it for two months, reading through the lists of ingredients and contemplating how interesting they all seemed. This past week, I dug in and made two of the main course dishes. Both were delicious. The bananas you use should have almost completely yellow skin, with only the tiniest bit of brown spotting.

A far cry from a classic shakshuka, yes, but we’ve found that sweet potatoes provide just the right amount of moisture and heft to serve as a base for these eggs.p 179 Curried cauliflower cheese filo pie--yummy, had a partial collapse. Delicious but SOOO much cheese. Perfect for showcasing winter lemons. Photography: Louise Hagger. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Valeria Russo. Homeware: The Conran Shop Vegans are well catered for in OTK Shelf Life with a dish such as sweet spiced mushroom and rice pilaf being a stand out success. It does require a number of ingredients – three types of mushrooms and some dried ancho chillies – but nothing out of the ordinary. The cooking experience is one that Ottolenghi lovers will recognize. It takes time, there are several cooking utensils on the go on the hob, you need patience. But all is worth it when the fragrant rice is scooped onto your plate. Each bite of rice is gently spiced with the flavours of star anise, cinnamon and ancho chilli all baked into the grains. One mouthful is tart with dried apricot, the next is meaty and silky with chunks of portabello mushroom. Best of all is the spoonful with one of the ten garlic cloves that has caramelised during cooking into a sweet paste. While this pilaf might not be one of those dishes that could be called good-looking, it makes for seriously interesting eating. Yotam Ottolenghi is the restaurateur and chef-patron of the four London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. His cookbooks have sold over seven million copies worldwide. Amongst several prizes, Ottolenghi Simple won the National Book Award and was selected as a best book of the year by the New York Times. Yotam is a weekly columnist for the Saturday Guardian and a regular contributor to the New York Times. His championing of vegetables, as well as ingredients once seen as "exotic," has led to what some call "the Ottolenghi effect": meals full of color, flavor, bounty, and sunshine. Yotam lives in London with his family.

Add the spring onions and the parsley and two tablespoons of oil to the reserved mushroom mixture. Stir to combine. Spoon it over the rice. Our commitment to the championing of vegetables, as well as unusual ingredients has led to what some call “The Ottolenghi effect”. This is shorthand for the creation of a meal which is full of colour, flavour, bounty and sunshine. While the pasta is cooking, make the pesto. Finely grate the lemon to give you one and a half teaspoons of zest. Then use a sharp knife to peel and segment the lemon and roughly chop the segments. Place in a bowl with the lemon zest and set aside. Put the za’atar, coriander, garlic, pine nuts, one eighth of a teaspoon of salt, a good grind of pepper and half the oil into a food processor and pulse a few times until you have a coarse paste. Add to the chopped lemon in the bowl and stir in the remaining oil. This recipe is a Middle Eastern take on a mac’n’cheese, thanks to the addition of cumin, a herbaceous za’atar pesto and crispy fried onions. Cooking the macaroni in the milk, as we do here, bypasses the need to make a bechamel. The starches are released into the soon-to-be-cheesy sauce, making it velvety and rich without the need for the more traditional flour-butter roux. Drain the warm beans in a sieve set over a bowl, then add them and 100ml of their cooking liquid to the herb mixture, mixing well to combine. You want the beans to be well coated and for the whole mixture to be saucy (but not overly wet), so add a couple of tablespoons more of the cooking liquid if you wish (discard the rest).If you want to get ahead, make the day before and keep refrigerated, loosening it with a splash of water to serve, if needed. Roughly chop the spring onions and add two-thirds to the spinach bowl. Add the cooked couscous, crushed coriander seeds, both cheeses, the garlic, basil, yoghurt, eggs, flour, half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, and mix well. With ‘Make it your own’ suggestions and swap-outs, and space to jot down your own notes, this cookbook is all about embracing rule breaking and putting your own stamp on every dish. Time and fuss-saving tips, simplified ingredient lists, and cravings-inducing photography ensure you’ll never be short of inspiration again. p 158 Herby cabbage and potato gratin with Gruyére and Ricotta--this was good (husband LOVED it). But IMO not worth the amount of time it took. The recipe says prep time of 15 min, but I think that is a typo for 1 hour 15 min. I spent 1 hour 20 chopping, mixing, and deconstructing a green cabbage (it takes forever!!). Buy the book here: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ottolenghi-test-kitchen-shelf-love-9781529109481