Do you have any of the Ottolenghi and/or Tamimi cookbooks and are in North America (or the UK)? Ottolenghi (the company) has built out a website where digital editions of the books’ recipes reside, meant to be accessed by those in the UK who own physical copies, or elsewhere if they own UK editions. Starting with Sweet, some of those editions contained a unique code you could use to register a book so you could access all its recipes online in a searchable way, making them completely portable. BUT HERE’S THE THING: They’ve since added all the books, going back to the beginning, and a) you can add them without a code, and b) it also works for the North American editions.
To register a book, you have to answer a specific question about a recipe, like “What is the third ingredient listed” or “how many tablespoons of olive oil” — sometimes it gives the recipe name, sometimes the page number, but the pagination and recipe formatting are the same in the North American editions as in the UK editions — it’s mostly the terminology that has been altered, except that they changed some ingredient amounts in the US edition of Sweet, so that might be an issue. I have been able to add all my books successfully, though sometimes it takes a few tries and you’ll be told a correct answer isn’t. I just kept refreshing and trying new question. Just note that all answers have to be a single word or number (i.e. coriander, not coriander seed, even if the recipe lists coriander seed).
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
84
That’s an innovative idea, although one I doubt I’ll be using. I have three Ottolenghi/Tamimi books sat on the shelves. Had them for years and never cooked from them. Ottolenghi contributes recipes for my Saturday newspaper - these days I just turn the page without reading, as I know I’m never going to cook one.
Yeah, I have tp think the choice was made just because it rhymes with Snacking Cakes and is a similar concept (one bowl, no mixer, quick). But it’s very very like how a few years ago there was a rash of books with the word “simple” in the title.
I got the Salt & Straw ebook since it was cheap and I read their inclusions are really good. The base is all over the internet, and in grams at that (unlike in the book), so not really worth it for that.
This is another book where there’s not much to get out of it for me. Most of the flavors are inaccessible given the ingredients, and so many are novelties that I’m not the least bit interested in.
Their base is the best thing, which is kind of funny because obviously it’s not really their base. Making ice cream on their scale is not happening with just xanthan gum as a stabilizer, and one can see that immediately by checking the ingredients list for their pints. In any case, their cookbook base has the benefit of not being very sweet and incorporating things like milk powder and corn syrup, though still at amounts too low to really make a difference.
The inclusions do indeed seem well-thought out so that they remain soft (or crunchy) when frozen.
We’ve talked on here about Chrissy Teigen cookbooks but today I downloaded one she published in 2021:
Cravings: All Together (ebook from my library).
I skimmed through it, lots of chicken recipes (I am in favor!) some recipes take shortcuts like canned beans, frozen vegetables or Pillsbury pie dough.
Great photos but a lot wouldn’t download to my I Pad (I Pad getting old?)
Anyway, this following paragraph about her husband John Legend reminded me of a discussion here about many men not wanting to “work” for their food.
LLM:
“I can’t decide if I love or hate a meal that makes you work for it. I do know that I love the ballsiness of a restaurant saying, “Put it together your damn self!” and what I also know is that John HATES it. I’m the one cooking his meat at the Korean BBQ. He barely likes putting his raw, thinly sliced steak into his pho. Basically, all this man wants to do is chew.”
Masala: Recipes from India, the Land of Spices, by Anita Jaisinghani, 2022
She has a restaurant in Houston called Pondicherry.
There is a lot about the history of India, Partition in 1947. Israel was established in 1948, dramatic changes in that time period.
2 Likes
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
97
Is there anything in the book that gives an idea of how the French colonial period might have effected the cuisine in Pondicherry? I’m assuming here that the restaurant name suggests she has an interest in that part of India.
It was about 16 years ago … I think if the chicken pecked on one side it was yes, other side no. Think she asked if she’d find a husband. I think the chicken predicted yes.
She married about a year later, married 11 years, now divorced but still best friends.
There’s a beach in Pondicherry, that’s where the fortune telling chicken was, along with other vendors.
