1. Israeli-born chef Yotam Ottolenghi has built an empire around vegetable-forward cooking, with numerous restaurants, cookbooks, and TV specials.
2. Ottolenghi’s complex recipes have garnered both praise and frustration, with some finding them time-consuming and hard to follow.
3. One writer adapts Ottolenghi’s “Eggplant Dumplings alla Parmigiana” recipe for a simpler and more efficient cooking process, using larger eggplant pieces and broiling instead of roasting.
Yotam Ottolenghi is a renowned Israeli-born chef who has gained immense popularity for his vegetable-forward cooking. He has built an empire with nine restaurants in London, multiple TV specials, 12 cookbooks, and numerous awards. Ottolenghi’s colorful and inspiring dishes have not only helped him sell hundreds of thousands of cookbooks but have also made Middle Eastern ingredients more readily available in this country. His recipes have changed the way many of us cook.
However, while Ottolenghi’s recipes are celebrated for their flavor and innovation, they are not without their complexities. Many people who own his cookbooks have stories about recipes that required numerous pans in the kitchen or ingredients that were hard to find. The complexities of Ottolenghi’s recipes are so widely recognized that The New Yorker even published a satirical round-up of his “easiest recipes ever” which highlighted the elaborate list of ingredients and steps involved in preparing some of his dishes.
As someone who owns four of Ottolenghi’s cookbooks and follows his weekly column in The Guardian, I can attest to the fact that there are both easy wins and hard-fought struggles when it comes to his recipes. Recently, I tried a recipe for eggplant dumplings alla Parmigiana from Ottolenghi’s 2022 cookbook, Flavor. It is a vegetarian version of the classic Italian dish, which traditionally uses meatballs. I was attracted to the recipe because I love meatballs, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and eggplant. However, I soon realized that it required a significant amount of time and effort, as all meatball recipes do, especially vegetarian ones.
What I didn’t anticipate was the frustrating inefficiency of the recipe, which led me to scribble numerous notes in the cookbook’s margins. Ultimately, the recipe yielded vegetarian meatballs with a satisfying meatiness and a creamy interior, along with an okay red sauce. However, in the process, it made a mess of my kitchen, resembling a Category Five hurricane that had passed through a ketchup factory.
After my experience with Ottolenghi’s recipe, I felt that there had to be an easier and more efficient way to prepare it. So, I decided to make some revisions. For example, instead of making sourdough breadcrumbs as instructed in Ottolenghi’s recipe without providing a specific method, I used panko breadcrumbs, which saved me time and reduced the number of dishes to wash. Additionally, Ottolenghi asks you to cut four eggplants into one-inch cubes to make 12 cups, but he does not specify the type or size of eggplants. To streamline the process, I simply roasted the eggplant, saving myself from the tedious task of cubing them.
In conclusion, while Yotam Ottolenghi has revolutionized the way many of us cook with his vibrant and inventive recipes, it is important to acknowledge that his recipes can be complex and time-consuming. However, with a little adaptation and streamlining, it is possible to simplify his recipes without sacrificing their flavor and essence.
Leave a Reply