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The new Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook is a busy cook's saviour

Emma Breheny
Emma Breheny

In their latest book, Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad pull back the curtain and show us their human side.
In their latest book, Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad pull back the curtain and show us their human side.Elena Heatherwick

Discovering that Yotam Ottolenghi and his team occasionally turn to frozen vegetables to get dinner on the table feels like hearing your grandma swear for the first time. Once you get over the shock, it's actually a relief to know that even saints aren't perfect.

The big news mightn't be that there's a new Ottolenghi book out, but that frozen veg is fully endorsed in Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love. In fact, the freezer receives its very own chapter.

Grilled courgettes with warm yoghurt and saffron butter.
Grilled courgettes with warm yoghurt and saffron butter.Elena Heatherwick
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Other key ingredients include canned beans and chickpeas, tinned tuna and blocks of plain old Greek feta. Compared to the kashkaval, black garlic and pomegranate molasses that previous Ottolenghi books have asked us to procure, it sounds downright boring.

But this is Yotam Ottolenghi, remember? Boring isn't a possibility.

The superstar chef's eighth book is, undoubtedly, a product of its time, written mostly in 2020 when even professional chefs were put on the spot by cooking for themselves and their household three times a day.

Instead of cooking just for the sake of it, all the recipe testing happened in real homes with real ingredients that you could or couldn't get.
Yotam Ottolenghi

"Instead of cooking just for the sake of it, all the recipe testing happened in real homes with real ingredients that you could or couldn't get," says Ottolenghi on the phone from London.

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In Shelf Love, you'll see recipes for confit chickpeas that could easily become confit butter beans if that's what's in your cupboard. "All the herb" dumplings are a saviour for the coriander, dill and other soft herbs that are one day away from ruin. You might transform the book's almond and barberry brittle into a walnut and cranberry one after rifling through your pantry (which is strongly encouraged).

Every recipe suggests alternative ingredients and leaves space for cooks to add their own notes on how they experimented with the dish.

Confit tandoori chickpeas.
Confit tandoori chickpeas.Elena Heatherwick

"I don't see it as a pandemic book, because I think it's a wonderful thing to know just going into the future. It's maximising what you've got and creating really fabulous food out of what you've got to hand," says Ottolenghi.

He wrote the book with Noor Murad, one of the many parts of the orchestra that is the Ottolenghi test kitchen: a group of around eight individuals who all bring their own culture, training and experiences to the party.

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And it does look like a party. The team's recently launched YouTube channel shows Murad, who was born in Bahrain and has worked in the US, cooking and goofing around with Ottolenghi in front of yellow and pink walls. Occasionally they swear and they often tease one another. In one video, Ottolenghi says Murad has been spreading a rumour among the kitchen that he doesn't wash his rice. His Mauritian co-star, Chaya Pugh, seems outraged and she's only half-joking.

You'll see the test kitchen crew in the pages of the book, too, smiling and holding up a cake or demonstrating how to fold a paratha or make biang biang noodles.

"This is not about me," says Ottolenghi. "The kind of environment that we created is all about creativity and everybody contributes."

For Shelf Love, the team have pooled their home-cooking triumphs to offer plenty of easy wins for burnt-out cooks feeling the effects of lockdown cooking.

Making mac and cheese? Try it with zaatar pesto on top. Feeling uninspired by sausages and potatoes? Bake them with plums. Can't face another round of dishes? Head straight to the one-pot chapter.

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Ottolenghi, father to an eight-year-old and a six-year-old, says his greatest lockdown cooking skill wasn't mastering sourdough or babka, but the art of one-pot pasta.

This nifty method, which has become more popular in recent years, involves cooking the pasta not in water but directly in the sauce. His Shelf Love version calls for nothing more than tomato paste, onion, garlic and chicken thighs that are served alongside spaghetti. The result is a jammy tomato sauce enriched by the pan juices and delicious crunchy bits where the spaghetti has stuck to the pan. And one less dish to wash. Genius family cooking that, yes, his kids also approve of.

His own go-to dish when energy levels are low is a riff on mejadra, that Middle Eastern cornerstone of rice, lentils and onions with the warming spices of cumin, coriander and cinnamon. It reminds him of what he grew up eating.

"This is a really simple thing and, with the addition of spices and herbs, can be made so delicious that I don't really miss anything else."

He'll often substitute the rice for grains such as burghul (cracked wheat) or cous cous.

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Would he ever stoop as low as making a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner? Hardly ever.

But if he were to make one, his formula is to cook it in a hot pan (not a sandwich press), using a fairly mild cheddar (for the kids) and adding a bit of parmesan for flavour. He spreads both mustard and mayonnaise on the bread and definitely recommends sliced pickles.

The book itself feels a lot more relaxed than previous ones, like Flavour or Jerusalem, from the design and photography right through to the way it's written. The recipe headnotes share cooking failures or moments of genius, like somehow making pancakes without any flour in the house. It's quite lovely to see your heroes with the layers peeled back.

"It's almost like the opposite of old Ottolenghi recipes," the chef says, joking about how you usually have to go speciality shopping for the ingredients.

How do he and his team do it? Putting out hit recipe after hit recipe, leading the food zeitgeist year after year, whether it's with burnt eggplant or black garlic or enormous salads or whole cauliflowers treated with the same reverence as a steak. It's a lot of pressure, he admits.

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But after 13 years at the forefront of a remarkable vegetable-led revolution in Western food, the 52-year-old trusts himself and his team when it comes to picking the breakout stars of his books.

"I always have a bit of an intuition and often it's right," he says. Eggplant, hearty vegan main courses, potatoes and vegetables roasted whole to show off their best side are guaranteed gold.

While fans should not expect future Ottolenghi books to get any more casual than Shelf Love, more Test Kitchen books are planned, and each will try to give readers skills for life, not just a couple of fabulous dinner party dishes.

While Ottolenghi himself says his cooking style changed somewhat – using fewer ingredients, for example – he believes that what he and his team can offer are well-tested recipes that work and will impress.

And after more than a year of survival cooking, that is exactly what we need.

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Sweet potato shakshuka with sriracha butter and pickled onions.
Sweet potato shakshuka with sriracha butter and pickled onions.Elena Heatherwick

Yotam Ottolenghi's five foolproof flavour hacks

What tricks does the vegetable whisperer keep in his back pocket? These are five combos you'll often see in the Ottolenghi kitchen. For all of these combinations, it goes without saying that olive oil and garlic are usually present, too.

1. Cauliflower, allspice, pomegranate seeds and pomegranate molasses

  • How to serve it: Roast the cauliflower with allspice to form the basis of a salad that will pop with pomegranate's acidity and sweetness.
  • How to amp it up: Add tons of herbs.
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2. Zucchini, garlic and tarragon

  • How to serve it: Slowly cook the zucchini and turn it into a filling for a filo pie. Or go the other way and grill it on high heat after tossing it with garlic, tarragon and oil.
  • How to amp it up: Add basil for an extra aromatic hit. Add a salty cheese for oomph.

3. Pumpkin, cinnamon and chilli

  • How to serve it: Toss pumpkin in cinnamon and chilli (either fresh or dried) and then roast the veg for a delicious side or the basis of a salad.
  • How to amp it up: Layer in dried herbs, such as oregano.

4. Cardamom, lime and crushed tomato

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  • How to serve it: As a sauce. In Flavour, this was used to simmer slices of roasted sweet potato, but you could braise fish, green beans or other veg. "It's got really interesting sweetness, acidity and freshness from the lime," says Ottolenghi.
  • How to amp it up: This is such a knock-out it doesn't need much more added to it. But you could scatter green chilli and herbs such as dill or coriander on top.

5. Rice, herbs and currants

  • How to serve it: Warm as a side dish or cold as a rice salad. Chop whatever soft herbs you have on hand: coriander, dill, tarragon, basil or parsley.
  • How to amp it up: Add fried onions or garlic. Add broken feta or grated parmesan. Soak your currants (or golden raisins, or barberries) in lime or lemon juice before draining and adding them.
Emma BrehenyEmma BrehenyEmma is Good Food's Melbourne-based reporter and co-editor of The Age Good Food Guide 2024.

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