Rising star chef Ben Lebus on making cooking simple
Cook passes on his love for food with easy to follow recipes
In the next few weeks, students will be shipping off to university, many armed only with hand-me-down pots, pans and utensils from their parents’ cupboards, and a vague recollection of making runny béchamel sauce during home economics classes.
It’s not exactly a recipe for haute cuisine – and perhaps why so many young people fuel late-night study sessions with Pot Noodles and pizzas rather than whipping up something fresh in the kitchen.
However, Ben Lebus wasn’t like most students, and seeing his classmates struggle in the kitchen during his first few weeks at university gave him an idea for an online community that would help young people develop a passion for food. He started sharing his knowledge by shooting simple overhead videos showing the most novice chef how to cook a tasty meal, and after sharing his guides online, popularity for his recipes soon started to grow.
Today, MOB Kitchen is one of the most popular websites for students and young professionals hoping to find easy-to-follow, affordable recipes – more than a million people now enjoy Ben’s dishes.
MOB’S online back catalogue has been adapted into five books, including the latest, released this month, Comfort MOB.
“My dad ran an Italian restaurant for 15 years, so I’ve always been into cooking,” explained Ben. “I never actually worked in the kitchen – I worked as a waiter – but just being around the food, and seeing people enjoy their meal, had a really big impact on me.
“I’ve always loved food and cooking. I remember watching one of Jamie Oliver’s early TV shows where he was pottering around his garden, cooking lots of nice dishes. I always found that show incredibly comforting. Just very easy to watch and reassuring.”
The theme of the new book is particularly relevant for now, Ben admits, and follows the same ethos of affordability and accessibility, which are the key ingredients of MOB’S online guides and previous cookbooks, including MOB Veggie and Speedy MOB. However, it’s not just comfort classics as there’s a few healthy options in there, too, as well as chapters covering everything from “Indulgent” dishes to “Old-school Bangers”.
He explained:“we wanted a book filled with comforting dishes that would make people feel good, especially during a stressful moment.that was the key motivation. Two chapters that I really love are ‘Fresh’ and ‘Nourishing’. In a comfort cookbook, we have mac & cheese, spaghetti Bolognese, and big, hearty comfort food, but we wanted lighter dishes, too.
“The miso cabbage poke bowl, for example, is totally plant-based, and something I’d eat every night. Sriracha crispy tofu is on the lighter
side, and one of the dishes you could imagine eating much more regularly.
“We decided every recipe in this book needed to earn the tagline,‘food that makes you feel good’, and the recipes that are in Nourishing and Fresh do make you feel good but in a different way to, say, the slightly more indulgent food in the other chapters.”
Having inherited his passion for food from his dad, Ben says no comfort cookbook would be complete without one of his recipes.
He continued:“comfort food brings up nostalgia and memories, and my dad cooked puttanesca for me and my brothers every Sunday when we were growing up. It’s a super simple sauce made with garlic, anchovies, capers, kalamata olives, tomato sauce and parsley, tossed with spaghetti. It’s a beautiful dish.”
Now he’s galvanised a new generation of chefs, does Ben see himself and MOB as the next Jamie Oliver? He laughed:“well, we were actually ahead of him in the bestseller charts yesterday, so I feel we’re already there.”
Comfort MOB by MOB Kitchen, Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99, out now