Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love

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In a medium bowl, whisk the mayonnaise, yoghurt, two and a half tablespoons of lemon juice, two tablespoons of oil, one teaspoon of salt and a generous grind of pepper. Add this to the potato mixture and mix well to combine. Transfer to a large serving plate, spreading it out to create a slight well in the centre. Cover and refrigerate if not serving right away. Drain the warm beans in a sieve set over a bowl, then add them and 100ml of their cooking liquid to the herb mixture, mixing well to combine. You want the beans to be well coated and for the whole mixture to be saucy (but not overly wet), so add a couple of tablespoons more of the cooking liquid if you wish (discard the rest). Shelf Love is meant to be more of a simplified home cooking recipe book but, as this is still an Ottolenghi cookbook, you will have to take this with a pinch of salt. The recipes are not difficult but they are often time consuming and involve and number of different elements (and a lot of washing up)!! Vegans are well catered for in OTK Shelf Life with a dish such as sweet spiced mushroom and rice pilaf being a stand out success. It does require a number of ingredients – three types of mushrooms and some dried ancho chillies – but nothing out of the ordinary. The cooking experience is one that Ottolenghi lovers will recognize. It takes time, there are several cooking utensils on the go on the hob, you need patience. But all is worth it when the fragrant rice is scooped onto your plate. Each bite of rice is gently spiced with the flavours of star anise, cinnamon and ancho chilli all baked into the grains. One mouthful is tart with dried apricot, the next is meaty and silky with chunks of portabello mushroom. Best of all is the spoonful with one of the ten garlic cloves that has caramelised during cooking into a sweet paste. While this pilaf might not be one of those dishes that could be called good-looking, it makes for seriously interesting eating. It’s the surest, fastest way to get all the juicy pulp and seeds – sans skin. All you need is a box grater and a wide bowl to catch the pulp and juice. You may also need a sieve if you want to drain the pulp of any juice. Place the grater upright in your bowl, gently push your ripe tomatoes against the coarser side of the grater and grate until you are left with just skin. Make sure to only go as far as you can – careful of your fingers! The riper the tomato, the easier it will be to grate. Discard the skin.

the book is a small, flexibound format
2. don’t worry, there is still at least one (but usually several) photo of every recipe
3. the book will not fit in with your other Ottolenghi books
4. because it’s not meant to. Yotam Ottolenghi is the restaurateur and chef-patron of the four London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. His cookbooks have sold over seven million copies worldwide. Amongst several prizes, Ottolenghi Simple won the National Book Award and was selected as a best book of the year by the New York Times. Yotam is a weekly columnist for the Saturday Guardian and a regular contributor to the New York Times. His championing of vegetables, as well as ingredients once seen as "exotic," has led to what some call "the Ottolenghi effect": meals full of color, flavor, bounty, and sunshine. Yotam lives in London with his family.Put 120ml of maple syrup and the scraped-out vanilla pod in the base of the lined baking dish. Top with the charred lemon slices, spreading them out so they cover the entire base and overlap in places. ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Epicurious, Serious Eats Every recipe offers full-on flavour: bold and vivid in the way we have come to recognise as distinctly Ottolenghian”— Nigella Lawson Eaten warm for breakfast, this will keep you full till dinner. Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian

You can also watch Yotam and Chaya make this dish on the OTK Youtube channel, which is what inspired me to make it in the first place. This recipe is a Middle Eastern take on a mac’n’cheese, thanks to the addition of cumin, a herbaceous za’atar pesto and crispy fried onions. Cooking the macaroni in the milk, as we do here, bypasses the need to make a bechamel. The starches are released into the soon-to-be-cheesy sauce, making it velvety and rich without the need for the more traditional flour-butter roux. This dish was born out of some leftover tomato pasta sauce, as well as a few aubergines that really needed using up. Scoop this up with warm pitta and eat it alongside other meze, or with soft-boiled eggs for a hearty breakfast. I have mixed feeling about this cookbook and have not cooked anything out of it, so I'm perhaps not the best reviewer.Add the spring onions and the parsley and two tablespoons of oil to the reserved mushroom mixture. Stir to combine. Spoon it over the rice. I will caveat my review by saying that I am a fan of Ottolenghi and had a number of his other cookbooks, which I love to read as much as cook from. What’s it about? OTK: Shelf Love is a recipe book that will teach you to fall in love with cooking intuitively from your cupboards and pantry, fridge and freezer. By cleverly using your kitchen finds, you’ll put a flavoursome, Ottolenghi-level dinner on the table any day of the week.

Whether they're conjuring up new recipes or cooking for themselves at home, the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team do what we all do: they raid their kitchens. But then, they turn whatever they find into approachable creations with an 'Ottolenghi' twist. Meanwhile, put the couscous, half a teaspoon of salt and the boiling water into a medium saucepan on a medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer, cover and turn the heat to medium-low. Cook for 10 minutes, then remove the lid and set aside to cool. Next I tried za’atar salmon and tahini and since all three of these ingredients make a regular appearance on my weekly menu, I knew it was my sort of dish. The fish was cooked beautifully, perfectly timed, but whether you like the taste of the sauce will depend on your attitude towards tahini. I love it but, much as it pains me to say, I know not everyone does like the slightly bitter taste of this sesame paste. If you do, then give this recipe a try, it is a one-pot dish with spinach – or other greens if you prefer – cooked underneath the fish. I simply served it with a bowl of baby potatoes. Towards the last 10 minutes of cooking, make the lemon-maple butter. Put the lemon juice and maple syrup into a small saucepan and bring to a simmer on a medium-high heat. Cook for about two minutes, then turn the heat down to low and, when no longer simmering, gradually add the butter cubes a little at time, whisking in each addition until incorporated. Don’t let the mixture boil at all – you should be left with an emulsified sauce. Remove from the heat. This warming spiced rice is a definite show-stopper, the kind of meal you would make for a special occasion. We toyed over including this recipe in the book, laborious as it is, but rice deserves to be prized and treasured – taking centre stage at many a family table – so make this one as a weekend project, a feast of feasts, a real cause for celebration. Yes, it takes time, but it is oh so worth it.

Berbere Spiced Chicken, Carrots and Chickpeas

Jazz up this veggie version with lemon, herbs and toasted seeds. Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian Buy the book here: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ottolenghi-test-kitchen-shelf-love-9781529109481 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize* A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book* A National Book Award Finalist* In a small bowl, combine the remaining chopped spring onions with the extra basil leaves and the last tablespoon of oil. Sprinkle the cake with the extra pecorino and top with the spring onion mixture. Serve the pepper sauce in a bowl alongside. Since 2002, the Ottolenghi team has slowly expanded, our scope has grown, and exciting new ingredients fill our cupboards, but so much, crucially, has remained the same. We continue with boundless enthusiasm and an unswerving dedication to detail; many of our team members have been with us for years, recipes, dishes and ingredients that are trusted favourites still feature on our menus and the philosophy at the heart of all we do is as true today as it ever was

The authors encourage you to get creative. Each recipe has suggestions of alternative ingredients, etc., and a space to make notes of what variations you've tried.Roughly chop the spring onions and add two-thirds to the spinach bowl. Add the cooked couscous, crushed coriander seeds, both cheeses, the garlic, basil, yoghurt, eggs, flour, half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, and mix well. Noor Murad is a Bahraini-born chef whose international work experience eventually brought her to the Ottolenghi family in 2016. She developed recipes for the books Falastin and Ottolenghi FLAVOUR, as well as for Ottolenghi's Masterclass series and other online Ottolenghi publications. Her Bahraini roots have a strong influence on her cooking, with Arabic, Persian and Indian flavours making a prominent appearance in her recipes. @noorishbynoor Recipes we love: (All The Herb) Dumplings with Caramelised Onions. Fish Kofta in Ancho Chilli and Tomato Sauce. Spiced Semolina with Fried Corn, Peanuts and Coriander. Upside-Down Lemon, Maple and Vanilla Pudding with Lemon-Maple Butter. We could go on and on… Place portobello and oyster mushrooms, onion, garlic cloves, chopped chillies, whole spices, apricots, 120ml olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt and a good grind of pepper into a roasting tin. Stir everything together and bake for 40 minutes. Stir halfway. The mixture should be well browned by now. With both grilling and roasting, there is a lot of heat involved. My top tip for you is not to make this on a boiling hot day, like I did, unless you enjoy sweltering over the stove. That minor gripe is the worst thing I can say about the whole experience though; the process was pretty simple and the end result irrefutably delicious. The blitzed, char-grilled vegetables were faintly reminiscent of romesco and made an unexpectedly creamy pasta sauce that felt hearty enough for autumn, yet light enough for an unseasonably hot day. The roasted aubergine added some nice texture, and the tahini dressing, with lemon juice and garlic, added some zing and set the whole thing off nicely. Needless to say, I will definitely make this one again.