The secret of the innovative chef Yotam Ottolenghi is that he retains the curiosity he had as a child to try things, to open the cupboards in his house and secretly eat the chocolate. The same boy who knew the richness of difference when his uncles sent him anchovy paste from Italy in tubes that looked like toothpaste or in marzipan that came from Switzerland.
Ottolenghi, perhaps the person who has brought the Israeli and Palestinian cultures closer to the same table, remembers those years of childhood, of first tastes, which are the protagonists of the spirit of his new book, Passion for the Pantry (Salamandra), which can read on an empty stomach (but it is not recommended).
The Israeli chef attends Magazine in London. He is proud of having (once) beaten his children to Nintendo and of having managed to ensure that his calm and peaceful crusade for vegetables and the most distant flavors of our Mediterranean has penetrated many homes.
The chef knows very well the secrets of his success: trying, imagining, combining and having a powerful team that provides better ideas than those he can take. The result is dishes, especially vegetables, that look a lot like a small work of visual art. This supplement spoke with him five years ago. In that time he has changed a lot and very little.
There was a time when he thought he knew everything about, for example, tomatoes or pomegranates, but not that they could be mixed. How do you get these ideas, these combinations?
When you are in the kitchen you look at the possibilities. You think maybe there are too many ingredients, maybe not enough, you try to combine them and over time the mixtures come to you naturally. You get the tomato and the pomegranate to like each other and from there the tomato also goes well with the peach, for example. One idea leads to another. And the team is essential, each one has their opinions and their personal stories. It is a waterfall of ideas, of experiments.
You shy away from the idea of Michelin stars, but you are well known. Do you consider yourself a celebrity?
A lot of people think I am, but if you think about it, what is it like to be a celebrity? Everyone can be one because they have a lot of followers on social media. My daily life is cooking, thinking, experimenting, being hospitable. The notion of celebrity chef is empty, it is superficial. What I do believe is that chefs are approaching other concepts such as culture or the environment. But that is another story.
What adventures can you tell about your forays into your mother's pantry as a child?
My mother had cooking chocolate in the pantry and it was one of the ingredients that I most liked to work with. And when she went to make the cake, she wasn't there. I remember that my parents grew capers, we prepared them, we salted them. It's funny, when I was little I hardly liked them, but as I grew older I loved them, eating them with cheese. Oh, and something I loved was the anchovy puree that came in a tube and that you could barely buy in Israel, but that our Italian relatives sent us. I spread the bread with that paste and butter and it was very good. I still love that combination.
There is always the feeling that you have always been very disciplined... when it comes to breaking the rules.
Yes, I understand you. I can come to agree. There is a very fine line when you mix ingredients from different cultures, from different culinary traditions, and that line is the one that tells you that you are doing it right. When we worked on the book that mixed ingredients from central Europe, southern Europe and Asia, that dish of tofu with caponata comes to mind.
Curious combination...
They're supposed to be two ideas that can't go together, but it made sense. For me, I like to serve caponata with ricotta to soften it because the vegetables are sweet and salty and vinegary. The ricotta is bland without much flavor and the tofu worked very well. It's not that we go crazy, sometimes those combinations are very easy."
Is your Italian heritage flourishing more lately?
I think it's rather the opposite. I grew up with my Italian grandparents and with my father, who was also Italian, although he emigrated when he was young. People ask me what I like to eat when we have to eat quickly and I make rice with parmesan and butter or olive oil. But many dishes have their roots in Italy, so…
Once you told us that you and your husband cooked different dishes, your children gave you points, and you used to lose in the savory dishes...
…(Laughs) The truth is that today, since they have grown a little, I still lose most of the times.
The other day they asked me if they dare to try new things at mealtime.
It's funny, if we look at all those salads in the display case, many ingredients... you wouldn't eat them. But if you only put the crudités on them, they love them. If you mix many things, no. They haven't changed much in that regard in the last five years.
In The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise gets trapped in enemy territory and learns to fight with the katana. The advice they give him is: “Don't think.”
When it comes to cooking and creating, sometimes it works like that too. Completely. When I face the dish, before thinking about it, I think a lot, but I like to try when presenting the dish because I am seduced by its appearance. Sometimes I have the ideal image in my head long before I get to it. One of these days I saw some dumplings floating in a soup on a website and I started to think about something similar but changing the texture of the broth or the color... Sometimes everything starts with an image so that the food is attractive, seductive.
You have always said that you are not an artist.
And I still think the same, but the truth is that art influences everything, including food, of course. And we have one of the most spectacular genres of art, which is the still life of the Golden Ages in the Netherlands, in the Italian Renaissance: it presents us with food as a form of art. I see a cauliflower and I think of those wonderful still lifes, that it is a work of art.
He has always been the figure that has represented the whole of Mediterranean cuisine in the United Kingdom.
I have gone to Greece a lot, last year to Spain. It's the lemon juice, it's a magical element, the casual way of presenting the food, sometimes it's the mild spiciness, it's probably the olive oil, which monopolizes everything... but we also have an Asian touch. Of course, what defines us is vegetables.
When you go to Spain, what surprises you?
The color, I know it is a very regional cuisine, but that ability to use paprika, for example, I find it fantastic whether sweet or smoked... I love it.
It has been characterized by avoiding starry awards and not venturing into its establishments beyond London.
We are going to make an exception to the rule: this year we want to open a bar like this one we are in in Paris. We have thought about it a lot. We thought of Paris, due to its proximity to London. The two cities are very similar, and in nothing, but they are similar in their appetite for international food. I still have that fear of not being able to control all the establishments we have. Let's see how the Parisian experiment turns out, I'm not so arrogant to assume that it will turn out well. We'll see.
What are your forbidden culinary pleasures?
When I was little I didn't have any, everything I ate was a pleasure, I ate what I wanted (laughs). I loved the marzipan with candied fruit from the Christmas markets in Switzerland or Italy. I adored him. I was very disciplined and ate one a day so that the box would last as long as possible. Marzipan and chocolate, I still like them. Nowadays I can eat fast food, I don't feel guilty. Sometimes we go to Taco Bell, the kids love it. I'm not an anti fast food fanatic nor do I want to ban. If I tell you 'don't go to McDonalds' you are creating a desire. Sometimes fast food can be good, the key is what's inside.
You already know that in Great Britain, the gates of heaven only open to those who have been invited to Desert Island Discs, on BBC Radio 4. What seeds would you take to the desert island?
(Laughs). Nice question. I was there about six years ago or so, in fact. I would definitely take a lot of different tomato and eggplant seeds, I would cook that, because you can get a lot of textures with them. And I would love to see almond trees grow, trees with pistachios, for the touch they give to the dishes. And cauliflowers, please. Of course you would need onion and garlic. And I would order the oil online (laughs).
And lastly, do you have any free time left?
I spend the one I have with my children who are at an age where you can already do things with them, I even like to play the Nintendo switch with them, I lose almost every time, except on one occasion, three days ago. I am very competitive. I like people coming to eat because I don't really cook in restaurants... now I couldn't keep up... so I relax at home.
