COOK BOOK:Worshipping at the laden altar of Ottolenghi has taken on a fetishistic feel for London's foodies, writes Louise East
ALMOST EVERYONE I know here in London has a faintly fetishistic relationship with Ottolenghi. In theory, it's a deli-cum-bakery-cum-restaurant; in practice, it's Madame Fifi's Emporium of Fantastical and Forbidden Delights.
Showing a friend from Dublin around town last week, I insisted we take in Ottolenghi as part of our tour. He objected on the grounds that we had just eaten.
"No, but this is different," I said. "It's just, well, it's . . . look, we're going."
Ottolenghi did not disappoint. On white quasi-altars running the length of the shop, plates the size of hub-caps and the colour of a Hockney swimming-pool held roast pumpkin flecked with pomegranate, slices of aubergine, Jackson Pollock-ed with saffron yoghurt, mounds of purple-sprouting broccoli and ribbons of ruby seared beef.
Sistine-speechless, we rotated and gazed at the other side of the shop. Palm-sized tartlets filled with passion-fruit custard and topped with quiffs of perfectly-singed meringue. Tiny chocolate cakes baked in old-fashioned jelly moulds, fat sponge squares heaped with lemon peel and pistachios, conker-shiny brioche, buns like hats with cockades of sautéed plum.
"Do you see?" I panted.
"I see," he whimpered. "I see."
Where it all gets fetishistic and forbidden is that Ottolenghi is eye-wateringly expensive. Acolytes (and we are many) compare notes on just how badly we have been stung for adding one teensy extra scoop of jewelled couscous to our takeaway lunch carton - £14 (€17.50) is my current record.
I don't altogether object to this. Ottolenghi uses exquisite ingredients amply and that costs money - but it does severely limit the frequency with which I worship. News, then, of an Ottolenghi cookbook, is very good news indeed.
Flicking through its pages is like perusing a photograph album of great meals I have known. There's the harissa-marinated chicken with red grapefruit, bless it. Why look, doesn't the artichoke and swiss chard tart look well? And the raspberry meringue - I'd forgotten how very sticky we were.
Turning to the index is something of a shock, though. Where are the lemon tarts? Where's the cornbread? Where the hell is the okra?
"We had a long discussion about what we wanted to reveal and what we didn't," says Yotam Ottolenghi. "One of our business partners strongly felt we shouldn't give our secrets away, but we felt we had to be honest. We might as well not do a book if we're going to keep all these secrets to ourselves."
There are five business partners involved in Ottolenghi, but the food belongs to Yotam Ottolenghi and to Sami Tamimi, who are something of a Romeo and Juliet story, minus the romance. Both were born in Jerusalem in 1968. As young gay men, both moved to Tel Aviv (pop: 400,000) but they never met.
In 1997, both moved to London, met up, became friends and decided to start a business together. So why did they never meet? Ottolenghi is Jewish, Tamimi is Palestinian. "Jerusalem is very segregated. The Arab and Jewish communities really don't mix," Ottolenghi says with a shrug.
Each brought different food traditions to the Ottolenghi mix. Tamimi knew Arab food culture well, and had worked in professional kitchens since the age of 16 or 17: "I had a clear vision of what I wanted: to gather as much information as possible. Now though, I find I've gone back to the tastes of my childhood."
The savoury sections of the books are predominantly his, while Ottolenghi, whose father is Italian and mother is Central European, is the baker and pastry chef. Despite the virtuoso flair of those raspberry meringues, Ottolenghi was a late starter in the kitchen. Back in Tel Aviv, he was aiming for a PhD in philosophy and working as a journalist. It was only when he came to London and enrolled on a cordon bleu course that his conversion occurred. "There's something very liberating about cooking compared to being a university person. It's not on a computer somewhere. It's in your hands and all you've got to do is create a dish."
Although they share a common food heritage - Ottolenghi points out that even in a divided city, the vegetables come from the same place - both feel that what sets their food apart is its attitude rather than its home address.
"It's very ballsy, very in-your-face. There isn't this northern European shyness about flavours. There's lots of colours, lots of textures. It's a food that's not shy to show itself, to express itself," says Ottolenghi.
Right from when the first Ottolenghi opened its doors in 2002 (there are now four branches), appearance was important. The shop windows are so beautifully decked out with hundreds of chillies or sheaves of wheat, that people often mistake them for florists.
Any dish destined to become an Ottolenghi classic has to be as visually arresting as a Las Vegas showgirl. Green beans always sell. So does the chargrilled broccoli with chilli and garlic and, odd as they may sound, so do the turkey and sweetcorn meatballs. Yet no matter how delicious a slow-cooked stew, they just don't look punchy enough to leave the bowl. Sometimes, though, a dish gets through purely on taste alone.
"I came up with a really nice meat loaf. It took people a week and a half before they'd try it, but I insisted it stayed on," says Tamimi firmly. "I just said, it's really nice, they have to support it. Now it's working. Now they like it."
Although they claim not to have had a clue in the beginning ("we started cooking while the paint was still drying"), they did know they wanted to reinvent the takeaway.
"At that point, you could eat really good food in a restaurant but if you want to buy something to take home, all you could buy was a ready-meal, full of nasty additives, packed, wrapped and chilled, " says Ottolenghi.
Refrigeration is something of a bug-bear for these boys. Food that's served straight from the fridge tends to taste of nothing but cold, so within the bounds of safety, all the Ottolenghi food is served at room temperature. "I'm ridiculous. I even keep shop-bought sandwiches in my bag for two hours before I'll eat them," says Ottolenghi.
When it came to the cookbook, the problem was deciding which recipes to choose. Several bear the names of staff members who are all Nguyo Milcinovics and Reka Fabians with hardly a Janet or John amongst them. On a payroll of 110 people, some 25 nationalities are represented, and it shows. It also offers a cheering insight into what may happen to Ireland's food scene in years to come.
Moving from a professional kitchen to the domestic had its challenges; scaling everything down to serve six, identifying how much salt was in a pinch, ensuring it would work on a four-ring cooker. "Say you usually garnish with some toasted pine nuts," says Ottolenghi, who first encountered the process, writing recipes for the Guardian. "You have to time how long to cook them for, say whether to chop them or not, say whether to use them warm or cool. Now I don't find it so complicated. You just have to account for everything you do."
For the record, everything I've made so far from the book has worked out exceedingly well and my mid-week suppers have got decidedly frisky. Down the years, I've made several poor attempts at copying their saffron yoghurt dressing: now the secret's mine. The grilled mackerel with green olive salsa is a delight. And the missing recipes? Well, to be honest, I'm quite pleased. Some fetishes are best kept forbidden.
Ottolenghi; The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi is published by Ebury Press, price £25
French beans and mangetout with hazelnut and orange
Green beans are so popular at Ottolenghi that we seem to be constantly on the lookout for new combinations. Orange and hazelnut go wonderfully well together. They offer a good balance of freshness and earthiness and the flavours are subtle enough to complement the beans without overpowering them. The beans can be cooked and chilled a day in advance and then dressed before serving. Sugarsnaps, green peas and broad beans can be substituted for any of the other two beans or be added to the salad. Serves six.
400g French beans
400g mangetout
70g unskinned hazelnuts
1 orange
20g chives, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp hazelnut oil (or another nut oil)
Coarse sea salt and black pepper
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees/gas 4. Using a small, sharp knife, trim the stalk ends off the French beans and the mangetout, keeping the two separate. Bring plenty of unsalted water to the boil in a large saucepan - you need lots of space for the beans, as this is crucial for preserving their colour. Blanch the French beans in the water for four minutes, then drain into a colander and run them under plenty of tap water until cold. Leave to drain and dry. Repeat with the mangetout, but blanch for only one minute.
While the beans are cooking, scatter the hazelnuts over a baking tray and roast in the oven for 10 minutes. Leave until cool enough to handle, then rub them in a clean tea-towel to get rid of most of the skin. Chop the nuts with a large, sharp knife. They should be quite rough; some can even stay whole.
Using a vegetable peeler, remove the zest from the orange in strips, being careful to avoid the bitter white pith. Slice each piece of zest into very thin strips (if you have a citrus zester, you could do the whole job with that).
To assemble the dish, mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, toss gently, then taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve at room temperature.
Pistachio shortbreads
8 cardamom pods
200g unsalted butter
25g ground rice
240g plain flour
½ tsp salt
35g icing sugar
60g shelled pistachio nuts
1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
Use a pestle and mortar to crush the cardamom pods, then remove the skins and work the seeds to a fine powder. Using an electric mixer with the beater attachment fitted, mix together the butter, ground rice, flour, salt, ground cardamom and icing sugar. Run the machine until they turn into a paste and then stop the mixer at once. You don't need to incorporate much air (you could also do this by hand using a large plastic scraper; a strong wrist is required!).
Turn out the dough and, dusting with a little flour, roll it with your hands into a log 3-4cm in diameter. Wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for at least an hour.
While the dough is chilling, chop the pistachios finely with a sharp knife, but not as fine as ground almonds. Or, if using a food processor, pulse them a few times until ground with some chunkier bits remaining. Scatter the pistachios on a flat tray. Brush the log with the beaten egg and roll it in the ground pistachios. Wrap back in cling film and leave in the fridge to set for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 150 degrees/gas 2. Remove the cling film and cut the log into slices 5mm-1cm thick. Lay them out on a baking tray lined with baking parchment, spacing them at least 2cm apart. Dust with the vanilla sugar.
Bake the biscuits for roughly 20 minutes. They must not take on too much colour but should remain golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before storing in a sealed jar. They will keep for up to a week. Makes about 20.