Stream Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Feast at SBS On Demand and watch as he travels the southern and eastern Mediterranean to explore its cuisine and relaxed and rich culture.
It’s a safe assertion that Yotam Ottolenghi has taken over our kitchens and transformed how we cook, eat and view Mediterranean food and Middle Eastern flavours. Growing up in Jerusalem, to a German mother and an Italian father, his kitchen was excitedly diverse and full of many flavours. So, in his upcoming tour to Australia and New Zealand in January 2023, , it feels fitting to be talking about the ingredients and flavours that have made up his life – and there is plenty to marvel and write onto our next shopping lists.
From a young boy who was, “keen on the eating side, and a little less on the cooking side,” to a wise cook sharing recipe insights; “the smaller something is, the more you can eat,” I have personally resonated with his eyes-wide-open approach, and I still resonate with his “I never feel guilty about what I eat” sentiments.
It’s the desert island (feast) question: You can only take one cooking utensil, one ingredient and your favourite snack. What would they be and why? “A very good sharp knife, but you really need one if you want to cook anything; a good glug of olive oil because it makes anything taste better and chocolate, because I am addicted to it,” Ottolenghi shares with SBS Food.
As he developed a passion and a creative restlessness in his own kitchen, this has now spanned his café and restaurant counters across the UK and infiltrated kitchen counters through smudged cookbook pages that sit lovingly on our own shelves and get much use and for me, they have provided some grand kitchen conversations. Talk us through a typical day in Yotam’s flavourful life. I don't normally eat anything until I get to my test kitchen around 10am. That is unless I have to finish off the kid’s breakfast: fried egg, feta, cucumber, or whatever is left on the plate. I hate seeing food go to waste. Then I often taste food with the team, either in the test kitchen or in the restaurants. This could be anything from a sandwiched biscuit we're planning to sell in our shops to a spicy root vegetable gratin for one of my columns. When I get home, around 6pm, I am not normally hungry, yet I still miraculously manage to join the family dinner. Whatever the kids are having - lasagne, sausages, tacos, chicken soup – I am also having, with lots of my homemade chilli sauce.
Abundance is a word that immediately springs to mind whenever I hear Ottolenghi’s name uttered in any context. There is a flavourful celebration behind anything he puts his stamp on, even while playing tour guide through his Mediterranean Island Feasts (coming back to SBS Food screens at the end of January 2023). A series, which encompasses suns-soaked islands and richness through community – exactly summing up what the world is craving right about now. What has been a cooking memory that you hold dear? with my children, which happens often. They take part by arranging the fruit nicely all over the sponge and "help" a lot by licking the meringue off the whisk and out of the bowl. It's messy…
Ottolenghi has opened a world of flavourful possibilities. From sharing the joys of (baking soda and patience) to finding a place for and , I have also thoroughly enjoyed his crumbly endeavours with So much so, that as I write this, I reach for a second piece of his where sesame reigns supreme and where a little tahini can certainly go a very long way to raising the brownie bar; if crumbs could talk.
What are 5 of your key sweet ingredient must-haves at home? Sugar, eggs and flour are a good start and then I always have a floral essence – rose water or orange blossom, for example – to make a sugar syrup. Syrup-drenched cakes remind me of my childhood and take me back to being a kid which, at its core, is so often what baking is often about. I also like to have a bar of gianduja around, the sweet chocolate and hazelnut paste, or some really dark chocolate, to snack on after supper if I want something sweet without going the full hog. Garlic, olive oil and preserved lemon are certainly ‘Ottolenghi essentials’ and if we delve a little deeper through your kitchen right now, what ingredients do you use to make an incredible Mediterranean Feast at home? I have some more central staples for creating the flavours I want at home; tahini, cumin, allspice, za'atar and sumac. And I also have my favourite basic ingredients of aubergine, cauliflower, tomato, rice, bulgar wheat and lentils. And altogether, they can make the feasts I am after.
While flavour combos and pairings are completely subjective, this is also where cooking can get exciting and very personal. As Ottolenghi shares alongside co-writer Ixta Belfrage in their 2020 cookbook, Flavour, “pairing explains how flavour can be dialled up by what you pair it with; sweetness, fat, acidity and chilli heat”. There is a seat at the table for it all and while Ottolenghi shares with us his enjoyment when pairing acid and heat in a simple tamarind broth to the sweeter notes that barberries or currants can bring to hearty pilaf, it is the beauty of flavour and experimentation that piques his interest the most, which might just be the most flavourful combination of them all.
