Yotam Ottolenghi has changed the way we view vegetables, and pushes the boundaries even further in his new book, Flavour. Emma Higginbotham meets him.
For a nation that traditionally boils vegetables until they’re bland and squishy, Yotam Ottolenghi has been a gastronomic godsend.
Since opening his first London deli nearly 20 years ago – its platters piled high with vibrant roasted veg, spice-infused grains and salads bejewelled with pomegranate seeds – the Israeli-British chef has gradually transformed how we see the food that’s normally sidelined to a side dish.
His bestselling books have influenced everyone from dinner party hosts to restaurateurs, and supermarkets have rethought their shelves to embrace the herbs, pastes and spices that give his recipes an exotic punch. In culinary terms, the ‘Ottolenghi Effect’ has been little short of a revolution.
“You can say a million things about how vegetables are good for you – and they definitely are – that’s not going to make anyone eat them,” says the affable 51-year-old, when Weekend meets him for a socially-distanced chat in his newest restaurant, Rovi. “But if you cook vegetables creatively, do wonderful things to them and show how diverse they are, then people will see the light.”
Out this week, Flavour is the third book in Yotam’s vegetable trilogy after Plenty and Plenty More, which have sold two million copies. As ever, you won’t find any instructions to ‘boil for three minutes’: these veggies are charred, roasted, pickled, infused and generally cosseted until they assault the senses.
What’s more, he finds the wallflowers of the veg world – the unloved sprout, the watery courgette – and places them firmly in the limelight.
Take celeriac. Bulbous and ugly, it’s usually banished to soups. But in Flavour, it’s roasted and sliced into bistro-style steaks and topped with a buttery Café de Paris sauce. It’s served chopped and pickled in a herby salad with a sweet chilli dressing. It’s mingled with creamy goat’s cheese and date relish and stuffed into cabbage-leaf tacos.
“What we say throughout the book is that there is endless potential when it comes to vegetables,” he says. "All you need to do is unravel that potential.”
For Yotam, food has been a source of fascination since his childhood in Jerusalem. His parents – Michael, an Italian-born professor, and Ruth, a head teacher – were both were excellent cooks, and Yotam was an excellent eater; his dad nicknamed him ‘Goloso’, meaning greedy glutton.
“I was very interested in food, but I didn’t cook much when I was young. It was later on I started experimenting,” he recalls. “I lived near the fresh fruit and vegetable market when I went to university in Tel Aviv, really fell in love with the produce, and learned how to cook it from reading and asking questions.”
After completing a Masters in philosophy and literature, Yotam planned do a PhD in the States. But when his then partner, Noam Bar, came to London to study business in 1997, he took a year off to join him, and signed up at the Cordon Bleu cookery school. “It was just going to be for a short time. We were going to do some studies here and move on, but one thing led to another and I got a job.”
Working as a restaurant pastry chef was not an easy ride. “It’s hard to be in any kitchen, but it’s even harder to be a junior person in a kitchen,” he says. “It’s very long hours, and it’s hot and unforgiving. But despite all the challenges, I got a lot of positive feedback about the stuff I’d been producing, and that made me feel very happy.
“Academia is a very isolated world, but when you’re in restaurants you interact with so many people, and that’s really what I loved about it. I’m giving people a good time, and I’m getting the reaction, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
With his academic plans abandoned, Yotam worked in a couple of bakeries and cafés (notably Baker & Spice in Knightsbridge, where he met Sami Tamimi, now Ottolenghi’s executive head chef). Then Noam – by now an ex-partner romantically, but soon-to-be business partner – had an idea.
“He said why don’t you open a food shop or café? And I said ‘That would be nice. And slightly terrifying’. Every chef’s dream is to have their own place, but I’m not a big risk-taker and would never have thought that I could run a business.”
But he did. Gourmet deli Ottolenghi opened in Notting Hill in 2002 and, with its sunny, boldly-flavoured dishes, became a word-of-mouth hit.
“The vegetables were the main thing that got people excited,” he recalls. “The idea that you can take vegetables that in this country, historically, were not really seen as the centre of the meal, and put them at the centre with lots of colours and intense flavours, was kind of new, and people really loved it.”
Two years later he opened his first restaurant in Islington, and in 2006 was offered the vegetarian column in The Guardian, despite being a meat eater (and receiving a couple of angry letters).
“I don’t think that’s a contradiction, because you don’t need to be a vegetarian to love vegetables,” he shrugs. “There’s so many good reasons to eat more vegetables and less meat – health reasons, environmental reasons, animal welfare reasons – but vegetarianism isn’t a cult. We can all celebrate great vegetables.”
Naturally there’s plenty of fresh veg at the Camden home he shares with his husband, Karl, and their sons Max, 7, and Flynn, 5, who are both a couple of ‘golosos’ themselves. “Vegetables would definitely not be their first choice,” he admits with a grin, “but they’ll try everything.”
The boys were born with a surrogate and egg donor in the States – a process that was not, he says, straightforward. “It never is if you need a surrogate. But it’s been an amazing journey, and now we have them it just seems the most natural thing in the world. We have a classic division between the first one being quite predictable and responsible, and the number two being cheeky and restless, with ants in his pants.”
It was a similar childhood dynamic with Yotam and his younger brother, Yiftach. “I was generally good and quite a conformist, and my brother was much more rebellious. He was more like Flynn: he wouldn’t just take everything for granted and do as he’s told.”
Tragically Yiftach was killed by friendly fire during his military service, just a few days after his 21st birthday. “In a way it just breaks you totally, because…” he pauses. “We were close in age, and grew up very close together. It was really difficult, and losing him was probably one of the reasons why it was so important for me to have children.”
He is, he admits, “a bit of a pushover” when it comes to parenting. “I’m a softy. Karl is stricter than I am, so if they need something they come to me, because I find it very difficult to say no.”
While Karl stays at home with the boys, Yotam spends much of his working day with the recipe development team in his test kitchen. He’ll then drop in to one of the delis or restaurants, although coronavirus has taken its toll, with three of the six temporarily closed [at time of going to press]. “Like everyone else in this industry, we’re really negatively affected by this on every level,” he says.
Yet Yotam has much to back him up. As well as the deli and dining empire, there are the columns (he also writes for the New York Times), the eight books, the online larder, all the awards… Does he ever get a big head?
“I don’t think I do,” he laughs. “Although I’m the face of this, there’s so many people involved, and I don’t live under the illusion that it’s all my doing. I haven’t created every recipe – obviously I’m orchestrating it to a degree, but it’s really about very creative people doing what they do best.”
One of the key creatives is Ixta Belfrage, who’s been working in the test kitchen since being plucked from a junior position at his Soho restaurant, Nopi, four years ago. She’s so key, in fact, that Yotam asked her to co-author the book. And while the dishes in Flavour have the familiar Middle East-meets-the Med feel, the boundaries have been pushed further thanks to Ixta’s culinary background: a Brazilian mother, family in Mexico, a childhood in Italy and a passion for global cuisine.
“She brought in a lot of ingredients that I haven’t used much before – Mexican chillies, and Asian fermented pastes like miso and gochujang. Much of the exciting new stuff came from Ixta.”
It may be a team effort, but the book shows that Yotam is as fervent as ever about putting the ‘oo’ into food.
“The recipes have a very particular set of characteristics,” he says. “There’s a certain intensity to the flavours, and contrasts in terms of textures and colours. It’s not a quiet experience. It’s a loud, noisy experience. I don’t want people to eat the food as if it was like background music, I want them to really notice what’s going on, and have surprises in every bite.
“If you take a traditional soup that’s been pulverised and there’s no texture left and it’s all one flavour, for me that’s like baby food,” he concludes. “That’s just not how food should be.”
The ‘Ottolenghi Effect’
“When Yotam Ottolenghi opened his minimalist all-day café-deli in Islington in 2004, the seasonal produce, communal tables and long queues sparked a casual dining trend that resonates in our towns and cities to this day. More importantly, his inventive way of bringing Europe and the Middle East closer has inspired young British chefs to explore new realms of flavour.”
Elizabeth Carter, consultant editor of The Good Food Guide
“At Waitrose, we have always looked at Ottolenghi's recipes to seek inspiration on which ingredients we should be stocking to stay on trend, and offer what our customers might be looking for. Sumac, za’atar and pul biber are all examples of this.”
Stuart Owens, Partner and product developer
“Working in the test kitchen is really wonderful. We cook two to three recipes a day, so we’re doing a lot of work, but we never feel under pressure because he’s such a great boss. Yotam is one of those people who has an aura about him. He’s extremely kind, extremely patient, fiercely intelligent and, from the beginning, made me feel comfortable and free to express myself.”
Ixta Belfrage, co-author of Flavour
:: Flavour is out now, priced £27.
An edited version of this feature appeared in Waitrose Weekend in September 2020 (c) Waitrose