In Yotam Ottolenghi's aptly titled new cookbook, Plenty More (Ten Speed, Oct.), the follow-up to his 2011 bestseller Plenty, the famed chef continues to celebrate the versatility of vegetables, legumes, and grains. In it, The London-based Israeli restaurateur and award-winning food writer, who just completed his 400th column for The Guardian, offers more inventive and flavorful vegetable-based dishes with an international bent. Ottolenghi talked to PW about moving beyond the expected with surprising combinations, working with "exotic" ingredients, and the one question he can't be pinned down on.
When you finished writing Plenty, did you know that you had another all-vegetable cookbook waiting in the wings?
No. It’s always been more of a case of organic growth for me, rather than an organized five-year plan. It was very much one book at a time in 2010 when Plenty was published. The scale was much smaller then—just me and my knives at home in my back-of-the-airplane-sized kitchen. Our test kitchen in Camden is hardly industrial now—the team is still small enough to count on one hand—but I’m certainly able to produce more recipes than I could when writing Plenty.
Plenty More is arranged by cooking method, instead of by course or ingredient. Why did you choose this setup?
Plenty More really came alive for me when the penny dropped about organizing the chapters around cooking method rather than ingredient or course. One of my hopes for the book is that it will fire up people’s imaginations about all the different ways that vegetables can be cooked. It’s all too easy to get stuck in a rut with our thinking about veggies: carrots get roasted, zucchini gets steamed, eggplant gets chargrilled and then baked, tahini comes to the table with a savory dish – but what happens if we play around and see what happens? What happens if we roast our zucchini until their skin is blackened and falling apart, or if we leave olive oil out of the eggplant equation and steam it instead? Let’s cook our rice in a baking tray, in the oven, and serve tahini drizzled over vanilla ice cream or banana bread with a small cube of honeycomb. The results are really exciting and really allow people to see the amount of potential that’s often untapped in our day-to-day cooking.
Are you ever concerned that your recipes require ingredients that are somewhat unusual or exotic for average home cooks?
No, I’m not! It’s something that often comes up, so I’m aware that this is a concern for others. I’ve always been unapologetic about my ambition to spread my enthusiasm for ingredients I love and which I think should be more available. If you live in a city, there are heaps of specialist shops which are fun to seek out, and their shelves will be full of ingredients which are deemed “exotic” by others. The number of places you can shop online is also extraordinary, and I’m always suggesting alternatives along the way: chopped dried cranberries instead of my favorite barberries, etc. I wouldn’t dream of reining in my ambitions for a dish, though. To do so would both feel patronizing and would not pay heed to the reality that, once upon a time, sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil or balsamic vinegar were sitting there, peeking out at us from their “exotic goods” aisle.
If you could give all of your love to one vegetable, which one would get it?
I can’t say tomatoes or squash, as they are technically fruits. It would be churlish not to mention eggplant, as it’s been kind to me, but turnips and leeks could both do with a lot more love from everyone so I’ll give them all of mine here and see if it spreads. Thin wedges of blanched turnip, marinated in a red chili paste with chopped preserved lemons; braised leeks dotted with currants and creamy cheese; warm wedges of turnip roasted in harissa and served warm with watercress. Is that five?! The question is an impossible one to pin me down on!
For cooks who want to be inventive with vegetables, do you have any particular words of wisdom or advice?
Get a nice large sauté pan, a good garlic crush, a sharp knife, a bottle of olive oil, a hot oven and have fun. Things don’t need to be fussy or complicated to be inventive. One of my favorite recipes in the book simply involves roasting batons of carrots with some honey and spices. The magic, as it were, is the drizzling of a tahini and yogurt sauce on top of the dish before it gets served. There is nothing tricky or hard about any of the elements, but it’s their combination which feels like something new has been invented. If you can read you can cook, and if you happen to live near a good greengrocer, then your playground is a very large one, indeed.
