Even Yotam Ottolenghi Gets Nervous Before a Dinner Party

The Dinner Plan

In this episode, acclaimed chef Yotam Ottolenghi discusses his new cookbook Simple Too and how it builds on his original work to make weeknight cooking more accessible for

Key takeaways

• Yotam Ottolenghi's new cookbook Simple Too aims to provide culinary refuge by focusing on familiar, doable recipes that lower the pressure of home cooking in a noisy world.
• His number one rule for dinner parties is to only cook dishes he has successfully made multiple times before to avoid unnecessary anxiety and ensure success.

Main topics

• Home cooking anxiety & dinner party rules
• Simplifying recipes & pantry shortcuts

Notable quotes

"Perfect is the enemy of good, right? Perfect is something that is actually quite counterproductive to any kind of activities because you set the bar really high, you add anxiety..."

Conclusion

Ottolenghi's philosophy empowers home cooks to embrace simplicity and practicality

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This episode is brought to you with support from Just Date, a little company on a big mission to replace refined sugar in the baking aisle with date sweeteners, pomegranate syrup, and chocolate sweetened with 100 % organic dates and nothing else. After you taste the rich caramel-like sweetness of date syrup, you'll understand why chefs use it as their secret ingredient. and why Just Date's date-sweetened chocolate chips are the number one bestseller on grocery store shelves. Find Just Date at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Kroger near you or online at enjoyjustdate.com. Speaker 3 (0:42) Welcome to The Dinner Plan, where we start every week with fresh cooking inspiration. I'm Maggie Hoffman, and today my guest is Yotam Adelenghi, who I'm guessing requires no introduction for cookbook lovers like you. Yotam is a best-selling cookbook author with a weekly column in The Guardian, and he's been called one of the most influential chefs of recent times. I'm sure you've seen the long line of books released by the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, but today we're going to get into what Yotam actually cooks at home and his new book, Simple Too. Yotam, welcome to The Dinner Plan. Speaker 1 (1:18) Thank you. It's such a joy to be here and talk dinner party or dinner in general. I'm Speaker 3 (1:24) so excited to talk to you. Let's jump right in. Paint us a picture of what... dinner looks like at your house? Who are you feeding? What's the scene? How are you making it happen? So Speaker 1 (1:36) I've got two boys. One is 11 years old and one is 13 years old. And I was just making this attempt to put some stuff in the fridge for the next few days for dinners. It sounds very mundane, but I made some really nice chicken schnitzels that are covered in different seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, coriander seeds. and some nigella seeds on top of the breadcrumbs. And I put a bit of mustard in the egg as well, and I fry them. And those are ready to go. They keep really well in the fridge, or I freeze them sometimes, but they get consumed within three or four days anyway. I put those out very often. And the other thing that I also do, and that's also a recipe from Simple Too, is I take a whole lot of tomatoes that I've got. and there's still some nice tomatoes around, and I throw them all, and it's literally throw, into one roasting pan with some are sliced if they're big, some are whole if they're little. I add hard herbs like thyme, oregano, rosemary, and I add three heads of garlic, just shaved at the top, and a lot of olive oil, and all that goes in, and it's such a great thing to do, and I roast it. for a good hour, and it's amazing. And that's the tomato sauce. I don't need anything else, which is pretty incredible. And that would be dinner, for example. Those schnitzels I'll warm up, the sauce, and maybe I'll cook some egg noodles to go with, something like that. That's a very simple, kid-friendly dinner. What have you been cooking? Speaker 3 (3:11) I cooked something crazy. It was one of those things where... I was having people over and I'm reading the recipe and I'm like, this doesn't make sense. And I started working on it, but you kind of just have to trust it sometimes, especially in a book that you trust. I don't know if you've seen Hilary Sterling's new book. It's called Amatsa. And she has this whipped pecorino that's basically like a dip, but she spreads it on a platter to serve with raw vegetables. And it starts by putting half a cup of water in a high speed blender. Water. and a bunch of grated pecorino. And then you kind of whip it together and you add a little bit of olive oil and it feels like, okay, we're making cheese water. What are we doing here? And then it doesn't really thicken, but it does sort of blend together and emulsify and it becomes kind of milky. And then you stir that stuff into a bowl of Greek yogurt and you put it in the fridge and it does thicken up a little bit and becomes... This sort of silky, really flavorful, because pecorino is sharp. Speaker 1 (4:16) Yeah. Speaker 3 (4:17) Really flavorful. People couldn't identify what this stuff was. Tastes like cacio e pepe, but it tastes like yogurt and it's creamy. And it was so fun and surprising. And so, you know, now I trust her with anything. And you could do it with raw vegetables or grilled vegetables. So that was pretty fun. Speaker 1 (4:37) Wow, that sounds delicious. Because I love all these condiments and I love those things that you make in advance and sit in the fridge. I have a whole section in the book about them. And this sounds like the sort of things that you could have there and it's good with everything. I can easily see that with vegetables, but I can also see that being something that you put a breadstick in or make little canapes with. I can see it in all sorts of contexts. I can do it. smushed over like roasted eggplant and make it made into a platter. So I can see a lot of applications. Speaker 3 (5:07) Totally. And I think with meat too. And I was sort of like, okay, now I'm going to try this with all different things. And then I looked in the fridge and my husband had finished it all. Speaker 1 (5:14) Really? Oh gosh. Speaker 3 (5:15) So we'll have to make it again. Tell me what are some of the challenges of dinner for you? Speaker 1 (5:22) I suppose it depends. So I think like everyone else, you want to impress, right? So I think there's two types of dinners. There's the weekly dinners that you serve to yourself and to your family or to your friends. And there's much less anxiety built into them. You know, you're not trying to impress too much. You go for the tried and tested things that have always worked and always will work. And I find those dinners very... comforting, you know, like for me, like just what I've just described, the schnitzels, the tomatoes, the roasted tomatoes in the oven with a bit of garlic, you know, the pasta sauces, all the steamed vegetables, the grilled vegetables, those are always fine because I just know that it's a matter of half an hour and working on autopilot and that's good. People will love it. And I think that familiarity, you know, people know them, people recognize them and there's no risk attached. The stakes are quite low. However, when you have people coming over that you don't see very often, and when the group grows from four to six to eight to 10, it becomes a bit more challenging because you Speaker 2 (6:28) are Speaker 1 (6:28) there to impress. There you go. I put it out there. I said it. You want to impress the people that come over. You want it to be. You're the perfectionist, right? Because you are on show, right? Like when six people come for a dinner party, you're slightly on show and you want it to be perfect. And I think as cleverer people than I did said like perfect is the enemy of good, right? Perfect is something that is actually quite counterproductive to any kind of activities because you set the bar really high, you add anxiety, you know, all those kind of things added into the mix. It's not a good thing. So what I do when it comes to a dinner party in which I want to impress, there's a bunch of things that I don't do. I don't cook anything that I haven't cooked before. That is the number one rule that I always have for myself for a dinner party, even though it looks very intuitive and it looks like, oh, I could do that. And that makes a lot of sense, etc. Why add that level of anxiety? Why would you cook a cuisine? Let's say you've never cooked Vietnamese and you love Vietnamese and you love Vietnamese restaurants and you've just set up on doing like Vietnamese spring rolls. And then you go, actually, I don't know how to roll them exactly. And they do look really non-professional compared to what you get in a restaurant. And you kind of harden yourself and people feel that. The number one rule for me is just cook something you're very familiar with and has served you well on a number of occasions. That's rule number one. Speaker 3 (7:57) It is wild for me to picture you being nervous cooking for anyone. So, you know, this book really serves both purposes. You can make simple food when people come over. And in fact, maybe you should. But this is also a great resource for regular dinners. And what kinds of challenges were you and your co-author trying to address when you were putting together Simple 2? Speaker 1 (8:21) So my co-author, Verena Lochmuller, and Vivi and I have been working together for many years, and we've published, amongst, between us, many recipes. And we wanted to do a few things with this book. We wanted to do, so this is a kind of a sequel to my book. simple that was published in 2008, so eight years ago. And a lot has changed in the world in this particular period, in those eight years. For me, I think we live in a world where there's good things and there's bad things. Let me start with the bad things because we can, we'll end up with the good things. There's more social media, there's more screens, there's more anxiety. So people are feeling compelled to do certain things in the kitchen, to cook. according to certain diets. They don't know exactly what they're doing because they want to feed themselves well, but they don't want to harm themselves. There's all this noise, noise, noise, noise, noise. And we want quiet. We aim for quiet. And how do you achieve quiet? You achieve quiet by going into a kitchen and doing something, cooking something which is doable, nutritious, delicious, familiar, comforting. So that's actually quite a good starting point for a book because in a sense it sets... very clear standards or parameters to what you do. So it has to be easy. It has to give you the comfort that comes from recognition. So you see, there's meatballs, there is roast chicken, there's steamed vegetables and roast vegetables, there's whole sections about pastas. They're all the kind of things that make you feel comfortable because they are... familiar. So that was the starting point for the book. We wanted to give people the idea that they can go and find refuge in their kitchen from a very noisy, stressful world. And I think the recipes deliver on that. The other point is that we wanted to lower the bar for cooking because for the longest time, when people... thought about cooking, they thought about, we think about, oh, we're doing cooking from scratch, right? What does that mean? I'm going to go and grab the onion and the garlic and the olive oil and the celery, and I'm going to go and buy that fish and the aromatics, and I'm going to have 14 ingredients in front of me, and I'm going to cook a little sauce, and then I'm going to add, and then I'm going to poach. These are long processes that take a long time, and they're great. I love cooking like that. but I don't always have the time or the energy to cook like that. So Verena and I just wanted to lower the bar. We were thinking, okay, well, actually, you can take a jar of pesto or a jar of harissa, or there is a bunch of things that we use in the book that are absolutely fine as a starting point. And this is why we have this section with our essentials, which are things that you could just have either shop-bought or have made yourself in advance that make... the cooking so much easier. So a quick blitzed up chili paste or a quick infused za'atar oil. That za'atar oil is just amazing. I'm just going to take a little detour and just tell you about it. Effectively, it's olive oil and some shaved lemon skins and some spices, sliced garlic. And you kind of warm that up. And you know how like when you fry lemon, it curls up and goes all hard and a bit leathery in a good way. And the garlic. goes nice and crispy, and your za'atar goes all toasty. It's a toasty za'atar oil with all these aromatics. And I love eating an aromatic, even though people, oh, they take them out. But actually, it's really nice because it makes the experience much more interesting. So you have all those things sitting in your, and you could really use also a shop-bought version of that particular thing. And then all you need to do is roast the vegetables or cook the pasta or... quickly fry the fish and the rest follows. I think we set the standard for a meal at quite a high level. And I don't think, I think we should really take advantage of all the things that we have at our disposal that are just there. I don't know about, I know the market in the UK better than I know the market in the US, but I'm sure the same applies. If you get a packet of rice that's been pre-cooked and there's no additives or the pre-cooked rice. There is a recipe in this book that I really love. It's a bit like a shepherd's pie. It's like a cross between a shepherd's pie and a moussaka. So it's lamb and lentils cooked together, but already in the tray that they go in the oven. And so you just put everything, you put your onion, garlic, celery, carrot business. I'm not sure all of them, but at least some of them. And you cook them in olive oil in the pan with your mince. and your cooked lentils, and you have like an, kind of an instant meat sauce. And on top, and I really love that combination, rather than making like a bechamel, we mix together some, what is in there, a bit of like cream, like sour cream, grated pecorino or parmesan, and some cooked rice, ready cooked rice that you just buy in a packet. So you get like this layer. like this white layer on top that sits so well on top of your cooked mince and lentils, etc. And you have a pie. Now, this whole pie involved two processes. One, the first one is throwing everything in the pan in the oven to cook together. And the next is just mixing all those other ingredients that's just come ready. And like halfway through, you spread that on top and put it back in the oven. And when people think about these things, about a moussaka, or about a shepherd's spice, they think, and rightly so, a long process. This is one of the easiest things in the world. But you need to allow yourself to slightly break the mold and break the rules. And we do a lot of that in the book. We cook things from start to finish in a saucepan or in a baking tray in the oven. And it works really well. It's magical. Speaker 3 (14:13) Thanks to Un Femme Wines for supporting this episode. Un Femme was founded by Jen Pelka, the owner behind The Riddler, the champagne bars in San Francisco in the West Village. Jen took everything she knew about great wine and great hospitality and put it in a can, which means Un Femme Wines are exactly what you want to pop open when you're cooking with friends. Their whole thing is that wine pairs well with fun. Use code DINNERPLAN at unfemwines.com for 20 % off. That's U-N-E-F-E-M-M-E wines.com code DINNERPLAN. Must be 21 or older to enjoy. Speaker 3 (14:52) Thanks to Cookshelf for supporting this episode. Cookshelf is an app that I'm obsessed with. It makes your cookbooks instantly searchable. The team told me that one of the app's most bookmarked recipes is the roasted butternut squash with tahini and satar from Jerusalem, proof that an old Ottolenghi favorite still gets cooked on repeat. Cookshelf helps you find the recipes worth returning to across every book on your shelf. Get it on iOS or Android and use code DINNERPLAN for 25 % off. Speaker 3 (15:27) So I'm thinking back to when that first simple book came out eight years ago. How do you think your cooking has changed in the intervening years? What's different? Speaker 1 (15:37) I've allowed myself for simple to be even more simple. I know that sounds a bit of a tautology, but actually I think... for the modern cook or for the cook of today, of now, as I said, because there is just so much going on, it really is okay to cook less, to reduce the number of processes, etc., and still feel absolutely fine about it. There's also certain techniques,