We Salute You... Ottolenghi

Unless you had been living under a rock for the last decade or so, it would be impossible not to have noticed the rise of "the chef" in popular culture. The recent extraordinary impact of Master Chef may mark the most recent zenith of "the chef's" ascent (or may just be a reflection of how bad most everything else is on commercial TV at the moment).

As ubiquitous as the chef has become, so too has then... "the cookbook". And here at Turner and Lane we see a lot of cookbooks. Generally the quality of them is very high - succulent photography, inspiring recipes and often asides that offer an insight to the rituals and culture that shape the meals presented. Amongst these quality offerings it is then very difficult for one cookbook to rise above this high benchmark... but it does happen.

...and Ottolenghi has done it. Why?

Firstly, and it's an unusual compliment for a cookbook, Ottolenghi comes across as... well, so damn polite. The book begins with a section touching onto the underlying cooking philosophy and some of the book's lesser known ingredients that is so unintimidating and conversational that you can't help feeling what lovely young men those two Ottolenghi boys must be (thank their mum).

Secondly the food is flat out "top notch". There is an emphasis on the inherent flavours of the ingredients... and the results are stellar. T&L just cooked a chicken recipe from the book. No fussy preparation and yet the mix of scents and tastes reached a level far beyond our natural cooking talents could hope to achieve due to our own cunning and wits alone.

Thirdly, as the previous mention of "unfussyness" suggests, there is a very low ratio of "pot cleaning" to "great flavour". T&L has now cooked regularly from Ottolenghi's pages and every time we blink in disbelief when we look at our kitchen and see no more than a baking tray and a pot to clean - a clean-up job completely disproportionate to the meal we just ate.

So here's cheers to the Ottolenghi boys and their mum and mint and za'atar and orange blossom and greasing-and-lining tips and the whole book from cover to cover.

We love it.

T&L