A Chat With Yotam Ottolenghi, the New King of Vegetables

Over the course of his career, chef Yotam Ottolenghi has positioned himself as a champion of vegetables. The Israeli-born, U.K.-based chef—who in London runs three canteen-style eateries (all called Ottolenghi) and one fine dining restaurant, Nopi—is behind Plenty More, a vibrant, vegetarian cookbook that hit shelves this month. The collection of recipes, which joins his other two titles, the best-selling Jerusalem and Plenty, is Ottolenghi at his meat-free best.

But the chef is hardly a grass-eater—he’s a card-carrying carnivore—and his attitude toward vegetables is largely shaped by that key fact. Here, Ottolenghi talks about his particular brand of vegetarian cuisine and why, among other things, fake meat will never pass muster in his book.

The recipes in your last two cookbooks, Plenty and Plenty More, use vegetables but don’t seem “vegetarian” in the stereotypical sense. What’s the distinction?

I don’t come from a background of staunch vegetarianism. I speak in these terms because vegetarianism feels strong, in a kind of religious way. Ottolenghi, my business [in London], does many exciting things with vegetables and there isn’t really ever the sense that there is anything lacking.

For me, one of these things I dislike is making vegetables taste and look like meat. I think all these substitutes and veggie burgers… this just makes my skin crawl. It’s just wrong. The world of vegetables.. it’s diverse and interesting and exciting and [there’s no] need to turn them into something that they are not. I think steak will always be steak and nothing will be as good as a steak. It is what it is. But the same applies for an eggplant. To try to make things taste like what they are not is where, I think, many cooks go wrong.

You grew up in Jerusalem. How did you eat as a kid?

I had a very diverse diet growing up. My parents are from Europe, first generation. So we had a lot of European food, kind of Northern Eastern European food from my mom and Southern European food from my dad. I was never a vegetarian. I never tried to be one. But historically, we didn’t eat so much meat at home. There was meat at dinnertime most nights, but my dad is of Italian origin, so we did eat a lot of pastas. 

What’s an example of a dish in Plenty More that is inspired by the Middle East, but ends up in a very different place?

There are many examples. One of them is a dish called “Eggplant Kadaifi Nests.” Kadaifi pastry is like very thin pastry strands, like angel hair pasta, but it’s a kind of phyllo. It’s used quite a lot in making desserts in the Middle East, like baklava. My kadaifi nests are stuffed with cheese and aubergine or eggplant, and then brushed with butter and baked in an oven. It looks like little nests sitting next to each other. They are baked and served with a Spanish tomato [and] red pepper sauce.

In a sense, it’s a perfect example: It uses this unusual pastry that is very Arab or Turkish in its origin. And it uses burnt eggplant, which is again very familiar in the Middle East, but then it adds the cheese and the baking and the savory context. Then the Spanish-inspired sauce to go with it—it’s very fresh, and [the pastry is] quite rich with the butter and the cheese, so it cuts into that richness.

What is one of the strangest places you’ve found inspiration?

Every place that I go to has an interesting, unique food culture. Next door to my test kitchen, there is a bakery that services our restaurants. We make breads there and some doughs and pastries for the shop. There are a lot of Poles working there, and they make pierogi, which is a kind of dumpling.

Those dumplings stayed in my mind, although I’m not by any stretch of the imagination Eastern European in my outlook on life in terms of food. But those I just love. Based on those, I decided to do a column [for The Guardian] about dumplings. There are pierogis, there is wonton, and there is gnudi, [which are] Italian ricotta dumplings.

This is kind of an unusual way to be inspired, because my colleagues are just bringing into work these pierogis their wives made at home. But any encounter with food normally brings inspiration with it for me.

What are you inspired by in Israel?

There are two things I am inspired by in Israel. The produce is fantastic, but it’s hard to take the produce back home with you. So you bring things like za’atar and condiments and stuff like that. But also, I find exciting the dynamics of the whole food culture in the last few years. It is quite a new phenomenon, [maybe the past] 10 or 15 years, where young chefs and cooks take their cues from things that are in their past, in their diasporas, and mix it with all that’s local and current in Israeli cuisine and really make it into something quite special. 

There is a lot of ingenuity and a lot of inventiveness going on in Israeli food at the moment. I go to restaurants quite a lot and I’m always surprised to see new combinations and new ideas coming to fruition.

What are you inspired by in London?

I moved [to London] in 1997, when I was about to turn 30 and I’ve been there ever since. [Before that] I was doing other things: I was studying philosophy and literature at the Tel Aviv University, and then I came to London and started cooking. I’ve become who I am in London, so it’s very relevant. I mean, London is cosmopolitan in many senses and it draws so many people from around the world all the time. They come and go or stay. I work with a bunch of people from all over: Australians, Malaysians, Europeans from every possible country, North Americans, and South Americans. You come into contact with quite a lot of ways of looking at food, and that affects me.

British food isn’t traditionally considered particularly vegetable-friendly. What’s changed?

Well, traditionally [the British] did some horrific things to vegetables. But now things are changing. There’s a real interest in new cuisines. There is real openness all over to engage in food.

No wonder London is considered the culinary capital of Europe now and not Paris. The Brits are very happy to adopt other foods and make them their own and celebrate them, while the French are quite tight fisted and are more about [thinking], “This is our food, and this is what we do and what we do best, and we are not about to change it.” I think London benefits from that open mindedness and plurality.

Do you think the shift toward vegetables and away from meat comes from thinking about vegetables as a main dish rather than a side?

I think definitely. But I think also there is a problem when you talk in terms of main courses, starters, and desserts. It is very conventional. It limits the way you look at things. In many parts of the world, you eat a mezze, or a selection of things together. There isn’t that starter, main course approach.

We’ve been trained to see meat as the main course on the plate. Whenever something doesn’t come in the shape of meat you think, “How can that turn into a main course?” If you have a lot of little things, then you don’t ask yourself where the meat is.

I often design events for people. They say, “I love all these eggplant salads and grilled broccoli… but can we have a main course?” [I’ll ask,] “Why do you need a main course? That eggplant with the yogurt sauce and nuts, what disqualifies it from being a main course?” I think that is something we need to break away from.

Try some of Ottolenghi’s recipes here:
Honey-Roasted Carrots With Tahini Yogurt
Cauliflower Cake RecipeCauliflower Cake Recipe
Dear Garlic and Onions: Mellow Out

What’s your favorite Yotam Ottolenghi recipe? Let us know!