menu a taster of Yotam ottolenghi’s new work, Simple
Yotam Ottolenghi’s newest title, Simple, is just that – simplified, big-on-flavour dishes anyone can master
Watching Yotam ottolenghi and sami Tamimi cook together is like seeing the rolling stones in concert. The partners are a finely tuned machine after 12 years behind the London delis and restaurants that have piqued the world’s palate with their eastern Mediterranean flavours. They have seduced customers with bounteous platters of vegetable-forward salads and that now-iconic roasted eggplant jewelled with pomegranate and za’atar. But seeing them build dishes and riff off of one another’s ideas – even the way they work with their hands – is to witness the magic that has made them so successful. These are men who can make food ‘smile’, to borrow a term frequently used in their company.
It can be said without envy that the ultramodern kitchen in Yotam’s London townhouse – with its 1960s danish light fixture, silent dual dishwashers, and slot carved into the countertop for discreetly whisking scraps into the garbage – is the kitchen that he deserves. ‘sami will testify that I had the worst kitchen. Like an aeroplane,’ says the charismatic Israeli chef, as his Palestinian executive chef grimaces and nods. now he has a custom drawer for spices and room for his cookbooks, which range from
Mastering the Art of French Cooking to Mission Street Food.
as Yotam rummages through the cabinets, he checks out the salad that sami is composing from fried eggplant, cucumber and tomato; it’s their update of a typical arab cucumber-tomato salad. The two have been friends and colleagues since 1999, when Yotam walked into the upscale London bakery where sami was working and asked for a job; today, their relationship is nicely worn-in.
‘That looks good, sami,’ he says. ‘I know,’ sami replies in his droll, deadpan manner.
Yotam oversees a nonstop yet still manageable juggernaut of restaurants, cookbooks, TV shows, and a weekly newspaper column he’s been writing since 2006. (In 2011, the first compilation of its recipes became Plenty, a cookbook that did for eggplant what Mario Batali did for prosciutto – his restaurants now go through more than 115 kilograms of it a day.) on weekends, he still cooks for the friends and guests who readily fill the house’s extra bedrooms. Today’s lunch, however, is just for the business partners and their life partners, plus Yotam and Karl’s son, Max.
While the spiced chicken roasts with lemon, sami makes the yoghurt sauce and an herb oil that will get swirled on top of the eggplant salad. Yotam uses his hands to mix basmati and wild rice with favas, pistachios and dried Iranian lime in a beautiful metal bowl that he brought back from a video shoot in Morocco.
Then he begins to whack the back of a halved pomegranate to release the seeds that will be layered into dessert, a heady Middle eastern spin on the traditional British ‘mess’, a jumble of fruit, cream and meringue. Like a couple of the other recipes being made today, even the mess will get a dusting of tart, crimson sumac.
‘You can put sumac on everything, right?’ Yotam wonders aloud. sami shrugs, ‘We like the colour.’
The platters of food that make their way to the table have all of the duo’s signature features: strong flavours, varying textures, contrasting colours, plenty of acid, tons of fresh herbs – and delicious at room temp.
‘can you pass the brown stuff?’ asks Jeremy Kelly, sami’s partner of more than a decade. ‘do you know what sumac is?’ Yotam sweetly chides, as he fixes Max a second helping.
Everyone smiles – food included.