The chef on pushing against the fetishised food trend, reining in recipes, and embracing comfort food with his latest book
The chef on spending time in Northern Ireland, making soda bread and embracing comfort food with his latest bookabout comfort food, but true to form, he offers an original viewpoint on the subject. There is never anything formulaic about Ottolenghi’s responses, no sense that he’s jaded with the interview circuit and endless questions about why his exhaustive ingredients lists read more like riddles.
Considering the theme is comfort food, the challenge was to find the middle ground between what represented comfort food for Goh and what would resonate as comforting to the typical Ottolenghi reader, who he describes as predominantly western. Both found the recipe development process to be highly creative, always questioning if a recipe was too niche, or if the addition of a more unexpected ingredient might take it in an exciting new direction.
I walk into a supermarket in the UK at this time of year, or even the autumn, and I see apples from New ZealandThis is Ottolenghi’s 10th cookery book, and the ingredients lists are considerably shorter than Jerusalem, when he and Sami Tamimi turned cooks everywhere into culinary scavengers, desperate to unearth Aleppo peppers, pomegranate molasses, Iranian dried limes and za’atar in speciality food shops. Part of the magic of his recipes is that they bring a little bit of the world to the table.
There is also the issue of obscure ingredients and, although you may need to stock your larder with a few additional South East Asian ingredients, you’ll see plenty that are familiar, and none of the recipes have lengthy inventories. “I think in a way, it’s quite unfair that Yotam has the reputation for that because really, he is the one that tries to rein us in,” says Goh.
As for their own food memories and what they will one day look back on as comfort food, the boys have also been introduced to traditional Irish food as Ottolenghi’s husband, Karl Allen, is from Co Down. At Christmas, the boys are on-hand to help Allen with the roast gammon, studding it with cloves after he’s coated it with brown sugar, and they’re very partial to a roast dinner. Quite predictably, they love sweets and desserts. There is, of course, a “sweet things” chapter.
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