Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love

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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. Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7. Start with the pepper sauce: put the peppers and tomato on a medium baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, and toss them with one tablespoon of oil, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Drizzle the garlic heads with a little oil, wrap tightly in foil and place them to one side of the tray. Roast for 35 minutes, or until the pepper skins are well charred and the garlic has softened. 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.

Transfer to a large, lipped platter and drizzle over half the tahini sauce and all the chilli oil. Sprinkle with half the pitta and serve warm, with the extra tahini and pitta alongside. Meanwhile, cook the eggs in boiling water for eight minutes, or until just hard-boiled. Drain, peel and discard the shells, then use a box grater to roughly grate the eggs and add them to the potato bowl.I have mixed feeling about this cookbook and have not cooked anything out of it, so I'm perhaps not the best reviewer. With ‘Make it your own’ suggestions and swap-outs, and space to jot down your own notes, this cookbook is all about embracing rule breaking and putting your own stamp on every dish. Time and fuss-saving tips, simplified ingredient lists, and cravings-inducing photography ensure you’ll never be short of inspiration again. Put the potatoes into a medium saucepan for which you have a lid, and pour over enough water to cover by about 4cm. Season with two teaspoons of salt and bring to a simmer on a medium-high heat. Turn the heat to medium, cover and cook for 25 minutes, or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a fork. Drain and, when cool enough to handle, peel and discard the skins, and roughly crush the flesh in a large bowl to give you a lumpy mash.

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. The focus of the book is cooking with what you have around, similar to Donna Hay's Off The Shelf: Cooking From the Pantry. In contrast to Donna Hay, who rarely exceeds five to seven ingredients in a recipe, the Ottolenghi team indulges in fairly long lists of ingredients. Fortunately, the cooking techniques are straightforward. For the two recipes I tried out, the steps were not challenging, based mostly on timing. I chose to saute the onion and garlic for one dish rather than adding them raw, and skipped the instruction to puree them. The techniques were mainly how fine to chop, what to mix together, and when to add ingredients to the roasting pan. Make the garnish by putting the butter into a small frying pan on a medium-high heat. Add the almonds and cook for three minutes, stirring, until lightly coloured. Add the pine nuts and cook for another two minutes, until golden. Remove from the heat and add the chilli.

A Creative Hub

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). 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. Put the reserved 100g of beans into a food processor with the herbs, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, remaining three tablespoons of oil, one eight of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Blitz until smooth, then transfer to a large bowl. In truth, the OTK is no new endeavour, it all began about ten years ago, founded by Yotam. Over the years it gradually expanded, as more people joined the forces to make up a group of creatives. This coming and going of voices and personalities has created a space you walk into and know, ‘This place is greater than the sum of its parts’.