Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

There are some great positive reviews of this book that are detailed and informative. I bought this book at least a year ago without reviewing it. Having tried several recipes, I've come back to review it briefly. I enjoy cooking but consider a meal incomplete without meat or dish as the principal flavour. Wanting to broaden my repertoire and provide some really alternative options for preparing vegetables (particularly those I don't usually include in my typical grocery list) I turned to this book. I go to it every time I want to add something interesting for my guests or when I'm producing something for a pot luck party. What this book compels you to do is combine flavours you wouldn't think to put together. The best thing about this book for me is that the ingredients are generally available from the big four supermarkets. An occasional trip to a speciality store is sometimes called for, but I don't begrudge going out of my way for the result. I always thought I hated beetroot, but stunning images of roast red and golden beetroot salad changed my mind. This salad is sweet and refreshing. I love beetroot! Who knew I liked Jerusalem artichoke until I bought it having seen a simple soup recipe for this. Figs with pecorino and honey is sublime. I've never ventured towards a fig in my life, until I picked up this book. The fact is that the recipes are generally simple, no great culinary skill is required ,just the best (preferably seasonal) ingredients and perhaps some beautiful crockery for displaying your creations. Most of the recipes are carefully detailed in 6 steps or less. Where there is photography as you would expect, the dishes look amazing. What's great is that you have some shots of dishes as they are displayed in their London restaurant, stacked beautifully on large, brightly coloured platters irresistibly salivating the palette. If you can recreate this for your guest you won't go wrong. The best discovery is that I really like foods I've never liked the look of and changed my view that meat is the carrier for lifting bland vegetables. Since buying this book, there have been two further publications by Ottenlenghi and an interesting tv series. I intend to work my way through the recipes here (meat and fish included in this cookbook) then treat myself to further delights in due course.

As usual, excellent book by Ottolenghi.

Love this book and enjoying using it. First Class delicious recipes..

For some reason this book sometimes gets lumped in the "middle eastern food" category. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi may both have been born in Jerusalem, and there's the occasional recipe from that part of the world (chicken with sumac, za'atar and lemon is as middle eastern as it gets) but the recipes here owe much more to the delicatessens and patisseries of Italy (where do you think the name "Ottolenghi" comes from?) and France than to the east. I would say that there's nothing really spectacular presented in this book, nothing for that special dinner party to impress your friends. Having said that, much in here may still seem quite exotic to many Britons, even in this age of widening culinary horizons. But everything in here is relatively easy to make, and not many hard-to-source ingredients. It's mostly the sort of thing that you could provide for an informal lunch or dinner with friends or could do as an everyday 'family' meal for yourself - good, honest and flavoursome food. The book is presented in handy format; a single recipe will be on a single page, so no flicking back and forth (a common annoyance in many cookbooks when actually cooking a recipe in the kitchen - too many cookbooks are laid out by art departments whose staff probably never cook); its size and shape also lend itself to easy kitchen use; and the nowadays obligatory blurry arty photos of staff and customers in the restaurant are kept to a relative minimum compared to many cookbooks, but on the other hand the photography of many of the recipes is welcome.

I have this book which I bought from the restaurant in Islington London... People always comment how lovely my food is when I use the recipes so as a gift I like to get my close friends a copy of there own You can not go wrong with the easy recipes and you soon start making up your own versions ...great gift ...

Nicely bound, clearly printed with well explained recipes and lots of mouth watering photographs.

Ottolenghi siempre me sorprende con sus recetas. Son estupendas.

Bellissimo libro foto molto accattivanti, per gli amanti del genere anche le ricette sono fantastiche

In a somewhat backwards fashion, I came to this book after being really familiar with his other work. Because this was his first cookbook, I expected this to be less polished and maybe less complex than some of his later works. I am still not sure how to compare this to his other books, as it really stands out among the rest of them. He clearly had not yet perfected his style, as the food photography and layout is quite different from his other works. I would also say that this book will sometimes have several recipes on one page, rather than the more typical layout of one page for recipe and the other for photography. In fact, there's many recipes in here that are not photographed at all, while there's two page spreads of his restaurants, many out of focus. The lack of food photography in the way that may be expected by today's standards may turn some people off, but I found the book to be really refreshing. I was excited by the challenge of how simply some of these recipes were written, especially given that many of them are actually either complex or challenging, or both! Some of these recipes have really enticed me. I particularly love the roasted eggplant salad with saffron yogurt and pomegranate seeds and toasted pine nuts. It is so good, and the saffron yogurt alone is now a staple in my home. One of the recipes for couscous has you homemake labneh--I decided to give it a try, Why not? It was fun, and led to an incredible experience! I would completely recommend. The chicken dishes pack such incredible flavor and are different. This book really teaches you some great techniques if you're patient and willing to really explore and make some the recipes in the Larder section, too. I should also note, this book is worth it alone for the baking section in the back. Ottolenghi actually started his career as a pastry chef, and this book shows off his skill there quite well, given that he is really far more known for his cooking than baking at this point. There's tons of recipes, and although they don't necessarily reinvent the wheel, they're great for things like little Christmas gifts or something to bring to a party. The sour cherry amaretti cookies were a huge hit for me. I even made my own almond meal with his instructions, though you could easily skip that step for less effort. I was not expecting to come away from this book so excited and particularly, like I really learned something new. I recommend this mostly to people that are already really invested in Ottolenghi and not just a casual observer, as this is probably less approachable than most of his catalogue, especially due to the way it was written (less instruction, with an unwritten expectation that you already have quite an extensive knowledge of cooking) and the lack of photos of many of the dishes.

This book is beautiful - the food, the photos, the design and the passion for fresh, healthy, delicious food of the authors. Some of the ingredients are a little harder to find in Japan, but many of the recipes have ingredients that are easy to source. The salads and cakes are my favourites. This is one of those rare cookbooks that you actually want to read, not just flip to the recipes. Highly recommended