Got a favorite Ottolenghi?
I am an Ottolenghi fan girl. I’ve seen him speak a couple times. There’s even a photo of me next to Ottolenghi, published in a magazine, after he visited a Modern Israeli restaurant in Toronto a while back. 
The recipes I follow or look to for inspiration the most often over the past 15 years have been Ottolenghi’s, David Lebovitz’s or Felicity Cloake’s recipes from her Perfect column in the Guardian.
While I own Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem, Plenty and Simple, the only one I’ve used many times is Jerusalem.
Most of the recipes I’ve used from Jerusalem can be found online, as recipe links on newspaper sites or food sites, or as adaptations by bloggers.
For comments from other poster’s about specific recipes, and links to Ottolenghi recipes published online https://www.hungryonion.org/search?context=topic&context_id=32846&q=Ottolenghi%20%23cooking&skip_context=true
7 Likes
It is really a good one for Italian-American recipes. The penne alla vodka and pasta pomodoro are in constant rotation here. The Carmine’s salad and Carmine’s lasagna are party favorites. There’s a lot of good stuff in there!
1 Like
Got it as well. Remember some delicious meals there many, many years ago. Their Chicken Scarpariello and penne alla vodka used to be family favorites!
1 Like
The chicken saltimbocca is another favorite of mine. Yum!
2 Likes
Really depends on what you like to cook. Ina Garten focuses on American and European recipes for the most part.
Ottolenghi became famous with middle-eastern / levantine recipes, and expanded to include broadly asian flavors and techniques without making “asian dishes” (and most recently Mexican because someone on his team has mexican heritage).
So it boils down to what kind of food you cook, or want to cook / eat.
(People get flustered by his ingredient lists, but if you cook any kind of asian or middle eastern food already, you probably have 75% of the ingredients, and are not thrown by a list of spices. Simple was his attempt to have no more than 10 ingredients in a recipe, but Jerusalem and both the Plenty books have better recipes.)
There are a few Ottolenghi threads you can browse, the Guardian has a pile of his book recipes, as does his website and if you google any recipe name (check EYB or the Amazon previews).
6 Likes
I cook a very wide variety. Ottolenghi sounds more interesting. My pantry is well stocked from cooking a lot of Asian and Asian subcontinent, Mexican and Central American, African, European, and middle eastern foods. BTW, I love going to Indian, Chinese, and Halal grocers for spices. In Texas there is a wide array of Mexican and Central American offerings in most grocery stores. I am not daunted by technique issues (former professional plus training in France). I just want something to spark new ideas for dinners I can do in about 15-30 minutes… I can save the very complex dishes for weekends or other more leisurely days.
2 Likes
The idea behind Ottolenghi’s Simple was what you’re talking about, although I find the recipes take me longer than 20-30 minutes prep time.
2 Likes
Simple it is!
1 Like
Here are a few Index pages from Simple.
The other short cut cookbook I like, which I purchased in March 2020 at a discount store similar to Marshalls, is one of the Milk St Tuesday Night Cookbooks.
5 Likes
I actually like Simple a lot (probably more than most Ottolenghi fans) because of the day-in, day-out nature of cooking for a family (especially after the grind of doing so during the pandemic). And I do love the Milk Street books, and rely on them a lot. Also going to throw in another name - Melissa Clark. Her Dinner cookbook is probably my most used book, with tons of dog eared pages and post it notes.
3 Likes
Love the layout of Milk Strret books. Also Dinner In One is a favorite
1 Like
I think Simple may be the least rewarding / most diluted of the Ottolenghi books if you already have a full spice cabinet and are not daunted by a long list of ingredients.
The techniques in any of his books are not complicated, though he does tend to fuss it up for seemingly no reason (you’ll be able to cut through that).
ETA: I added a few links on the 20 years of Ottolenghi thread; this one may be of interest:
2 Likes
I love some Ottolenghi recipes. But yeah, I think they can be overly fussy sometimes.
1 Like
These sound enticing!
1 Like
I have been enjoying Hannah Che’s Vegan Chinese Kitchen - a few favorites off the top of my head: Spicy Dry-fried Potato, steamed tofu skin with a bunch of toppings, multiple eggplant recipes.
Speaking of eggplant, my son expressed an interest in learning to make a few easy Indian-ish dishes he could cook at home. So naturally I checked out Indian-ish from the library. Amazingly, there are zero recipes in there for eggplant.
Bainghan bharta is always on my order!
2 Likes
My vegetarian friends always order this at my nearby Indian restaurant. They rave …
1 Like
660 Curries has more if it’s available at your library.
Or here’s a good online collection of recipes.
(It’s interesting, Indian vegetarians have mixed feelings about eggplant – it’s considered too meat-like by some.)
3 Likes
A vegetarian restaurant in my neighborhood has some kind of eggplant gyro that I’ve been told is very good. That must explain it.
2 Likes
