Israel born chef and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi presides over something of a food empire, with hugely successful restaurants, delis and cafes in London.
His latest cookery book, Shelf Love is a collaboration with Ottolenghi Test Kitchen chef Noor Murad, who comes from Bahrain.
It is full of everyday tricks to make home cooking easier, and to be creative with what you already have in your pantry.
Yotam Ottolenghi & Noor Murad Photo: Eleanor Heatherwick
The pair first met at the Spitalfields deli where Murad was working.
“Yotam came in to taste some of the salads and he came into the kitchen and had a big smile on his face, that was the first time I met him,” Murad says.
Ottolenghi recalls seeing Murad around the kitchen a number of times but it wasn’t until she joined the test kitchen that he saw her huge potential.
“She joined the test kitchen and was, and still is, amazing. Now she runs the test kitchen.”
Murad says Ottolenghi taught her how to really strip back food and let ingredients shine in their own right.
“Especially vegetables, letting vegetables shine on a dish. I think young chefs, in particular, will sometimes throw a lot of different flavours and spices and all these different things at a dish. One of the first things I had to unlearn was doing that and instead letting an ingredient shine and add just enough to make it really sing.”
And Ottolenghi says he’s learnt from Murad about different cuisines and how to combine them in unusual and excellent ways.
“One of the examples from the book is the filo pie that has cauliflower centre. It’s really unusual and it’s a hybrid of both food cultures she grew up in because Noor’s mum is English and her father is from Bahrain. It has those spices from that part of the world with the cauliflower cheese that we have in the UK. All together it’s an explosion of flavour. The way she cooks and her recipe ideas are brilliant.”
Learning to write recipes for the layman was a new experience for Murad and she says Ottolenghi told her to always put herself in the shoes of someone inexperienced when she was tackling a dish.
“Really talking through every motion and every step and giving precise timings and visual cues to make sure that recipes will be as fool proof as we can make them.”
Ottolenghi says the idea for the book came out of the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK in early 2020, but they didn’t want to bring the “c word” to the book.
“We all had to go our disparate ways and cook in environments which are not our test kitchen and, in a world where you couldn’t get every ingredient wanted – empty shelves of pasta, no yeast, quite difficult to get rice – it was a little bit trickier than our normal day to day where we’re spoiled for riches.”
Ottolenghi, his husband and their two kids decided to spend lockdown in Ireland where they found they couldn’t gather many ingredients to cook.
“In typical Irish fashion, I cooked many a potato. That ended up being a very basic thing that was in my larder because we had a lot growing around us from different farmers – endless potatoes. We became quite creative with the old potato.”
Murad says that at the back of her larder it was mainly rice and chickpeas, but mostly chickpeas.
“In fact, there was so many chickpea recipes in Shelf Love I had to restrain myself from adding a few more. These ingredients like rice and chickpeas are so humble, they’re easily found, but the great thing about them is you can turn them into something quite flavourful, quite amazing – you can still bring the wow factor to your table and that’s what the whole premise of Shelf Love is and how the book was built. It’s humble ingredients made really good.”
Ottolenghi believes that one of the benefits of the otherwise very tough lockdowns is that people have become more creative and confident with their home cooking.
“I think everybody has become more adventurous because they had to. It’s not only about the shortage of ingredients, there was all this time and a need to put three meals on the table. You have to pace the day because, if you’re stuck at home and don’t go to work, making those meals keeps you sane.
“I have spoken to a few people that told me that, before lockdown, cooking was a kind of a take it or leave it kind of thing but, afterwards, so many people told me how excited they are to cook, how much they discovered new cooking techniques or cuisines they haven’t really known about. I think it’s a very special moment because we are reacquiring skills we may have lost and all of a sudden, in a moment of crisis, people realise they really miss those skills. I think it’s quite a special moment in time.”
Here's some delicious recipes, including Cauliflower Cheese Pie and Sweet Potato Shakshuka.
