Yotam Ottolenghi is a cookery writer and chef-patron of the Ottolenghi delis and NOPI restaurant. He writes a weekly column in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine and has published four bestselling cookbooks: PLENTY and PLENTY MORE (his collection of vegetarian recipes) and, co-authored with Sami Tamimi, OTTOLENGHI: THE COOKBOOK and JERUSALEM. Yotam has made two Mediterranean Feasts series’ for More 4, along with a BBC4 documentary, Jerusalem on a Plate.
Sami Tamimi’s intimate engagement with food started at a tender age, whilst watching his mother prepare Palestinian delicacies at their home within the walls of Arab East Jerusalem. His first job was as a commis chef at the Mount Zion hotel in the city. He thereafter investigated some of his culinary passions, including the food of Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Persia and even the Eastern European Jewish communities. In 1997 he moved from Tel Aviv to London to work at Baker and Spice, creating a unique traiteur section with the strong identifiable flavours of the Middle East. In 2002 he teamed up with Yotam to open Ottolenghi.
One thing immediately evident at Ottolenghi is that you often see the chefs bringing up trays and plates heavily piled with their creations. It is a source of pride for them and for us to see a customer smile, look closely, and then gasp and give them a huge compliment. So many chefs miss out on this kind of immediate response from the diner – the reaction that leads to a leisurely chat about food.
This communication is essential to our efforts to knock down the dividing walls that characterise so many food experiences today. When was the last time you went shopping for food and actually talked to the person who made it? In a restaurant? In a supermarket? It doesn’t happen very often. So at Ottolenghi we are simulating a domestic food conversation in a public, urban surrounding.
When you sit down to eat, it is as close as it gets to a domestic experience. The communal dining reinforces a cosy, sharing, family atmosphere. What you get is a taste of entering your mother’s or grandmother’s mythical kitchen, whether real or fictitious. Chefs and waiters participate, with the customer, in an intimate moment revolving around food – like a big table in the centre of a busy kitchen.
But it’s not only the way you sit, it is also what surrounds you. In Ottolenghi you will always find fresh produce, the ingredients that have gone into your food, stored somewhere where you can see them. The shelves are stacked high with fruit and vegetables from the market. A half-empty box of swede might sit next to a mother with a baby in a buggy, until one of us comes upstairs and takes the vegetable down to the kitchen to cook.
Once the food is on the counter, we try to limit the distance between it and the diner. We keep refrigeration to a minimum. Of course, chilling what we eat is sometimes necessary, but chilled food isn’t something we’d naturally want to eat (barring ice cream and a few other exceptions). Most dishes come into their own only at room temperature or warm. It is a chemical fact. This is especially true with cakes and pastries.
Not many traditional hierarchies or clear-cut divisions exist in the Ottolenghi experience. You find sweet alongside savoury, hot with cold; a tray of freshly baked cakes might sit next to a scrumptious array of salads, a bowl of giant meringues or a crate of tomatoes from the market. It is an air of generosity, mild chaos and lots of culinary activity that greets customers as they come in: food being presented, replaced, sold; dishes changed, trays wiped clean, the counter rearranged; lots of other people chattering and queuing.
It is this relaxed atmosphere that we strive to maintain. Casual chats with customers allow us to cater for our clients’ needs. We listen and know what they like. They bring their empty dishes in for us to make them ‘the best lasagne ever’ (and if it’s not, we will definitely hear about it). This is what encapsulates the spirit of Ottolenghi: a unique combination of quality and familiarity.
We guess that this is what drew in our first customers. So many of them have become regulars over the years, meaning not only that they come to Ottolenghi frequently but also that we recognise them, know their names and something about their lives. And vice versa. They have a favourite sales assistant who always gets their coffee just right (probably an Italian or an Aussie), their pastry of choice (Lou’s rhubarb tart), their preferred seat at the table. Our close relationship with our customers extends to all of them, whether it’s the bustling city stars forever on their way somewhere; the early riser eagerly tapping his watch at five-to-opening; the chilled and chatty sales assistant from next door; the eternal party organiser with a last-minute rushed order; or a parent on the look-out for something healthy to give the children.
The Ottolenghi cookbook came into existence through popular demand. So many customers asked for it that we simply had to do it. And we enjoyed every minute of it. We also loved devising recipes for our cooking classes at Leiths School of Food and Wine, some of which appear in this book. The idea of sharing our recipes with fans, as well as with a new audience, is hugely appealing. Revealing our ‘secrets’ is another way of interacting, of knocking down barriers, of communicating about food.
The recipes we chose for the book are a non-representative collection of old favourites, current hits and a few specials. Some of them have appeared in different guises in ‘The New Vegetarian’ column in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine. They all represent different aspects of Ottolenghi’s food – bread, the famous salads, hot dishes from the evening service in Islington, pâtisserie, cakes, cold meat and fish – and they are all typical Ottolenghi: vibrant, bold and honest.
We have decided not to include dishes incorporating long processes that have been described in detail in other, more specialised books – croissants, sourdough bread, stock. We want to stick to what is achievable at home (good croissants rarely are) and what our customers want from the cookbook. We would much rather give a couple of extra salad recipes than spend the same number of pages on chicken stock.
Yotam Ottolenghi
My mother clearly remembers my first word, ‘ma’, short for marak (‘soup’ in Hebrew). Actually I was referring to little industrial soup croûtons, tiny yellowish pillows that she used to scatter over the tray of my highchair. I would say ‘ma’ when I finished them all, and point towards the dry-store cupboard.
As a small child, I loved eating. My dad, always full of expressive Italian terms, used to call me goloso, which means something like ‘greedy glutton’, or at least that’s what I figured. I was obsessed with certain foods. I adored seafood: prawns, squid, oysters – not typical for a young Jewish lad from Jerusalem in the 1970s. A birthday treat would be to go to Sea Dolphin, a restaurant in the Arab part of the city and the only place that served non-kosher sea beasts. Their shrimps with butter and garlic were a building block of my childhood dreams.
Another vivid memory: me aged five, my brother, Yiftach, aged three. We are out on our patio, stark naked, squatting like two monkeys. We are holding pomegranates! Whenever my mom brought us pomegranates from the market, we were stripped and banished outside so we didn’t stain the rug or our clothes. Trying to pick the sweet seeds clean, we still always ended up with plenty of the bitter white skin in our mouths, covered head to toe with juice.
My passion for food sometimes backfired. My German grandmother, Charlotte, once heard me say how much I loved one of her signature dishes. The result: boiled cauliflower, with a lovely coating of buttered breadcrumbs, served to me at 2 p.m. every Saturday for the next 15 years.
My other ‘nonna’, Luciana, never quite got over her forced exile from the family villa in Tuscany. When I think of it, she never really left. She and my nonno, Mario, created a Little Italy in a small suburb of Tel Aviv, where they built a house with Italian furniture and fittings; they spoke Italian to the maid and a group of relatives, and ate Italian food from crockery passed down through the family. Walking into their house felt like being teleported to a distant planet. There they were, my nonna and nonno, sitting in their refreshingly cool kitchen and sipping Italian coffee, nibbling the little savoury ciambelline biscuits. And then there was an unforgettable dish, unquestionably my desert-island food: gnocchi alla romana, flat semolina dumplings, grilled with butter and Parmesan.
But I started my professional life far away from the world of prawns, pomegranates and Parmesan. In my early twenties, I was a student of philosophy and literature at Tel Aviv University, a part-time teaching assistant and a budding journalist editing stories at the newsdesk of a national daily. My future with words and ideas was laid out for me in the chillingly clear colours of the inevitable – that is, a PhD.
I decided to take a little break first, an overdue gap year that was later extended into one of the longest ‘years’ in living memory. I came to London and, much to my poor parents’ alarm, embarked on a cookery course at Le Cordon Bleu. ‘Come on,’ I told them, ‘I just need to check this out, make sure it’s not the right thing for me.’
And I wasn’t so sure that it was. At 30, you are ancient in the world of catering. Being a commis-chef is plain weird. So I suffered a bit of abuse and had a few moments of teary doubt, but it became clear to me that this was the sort of creativity that suited me. I realised this when I was a pastry chef at Launceston Place, my first long-standing position in a restaurant, and one of the waiters shouted to me down the dumb-waiter shaft, ‘That was the best chocolate brownie I’ve ever had!’ I’ve heard this many times since.
Sami Tamimi
I was born to Palestinian parents in the old city of Jerusalem. It was a small and intimate closed society, literally existing within the ancient city walls. People could have lived their entire lives within these confines, where Muslims shared a minute space with Arab Christians and Armenians, where food was always plentiful on the street.
In a place where religion is central to so many, ours was a non-religious household. Although Arab culture and traditions were important at home, and are still very much part of my psyche, I did not have the identity that comes with a strong belief. I found it hard to know where I belonged and this was something I could not talk about at home.
From an early age I was interested in cooking and would spend many hours in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother. Cooking was the focus of daily life and formed the main part of most women’s lives. Men did not cook, at least not like women did. My father, however, loved cooking for pleasure alone. My mother cooked to share the experience with her friends and the food with her family. I believe I have inherited both my father’s love of food and my mother’s love of feeding people.
Some of my earliest memories are of my father squatting on the floor, preparing food in the traditional Arab way. He took endless trouble over preparation, as did my mother. She would spend ages rolling perfect vine leaves, stuffed with lamb and rice, so thin and uniform they looked like green cigarettes. I remember my mother’s kitchen before a wedding, when a group of friends and relatives gathered together to prepare for the event. It seemed as if there was enough food to feed the whole world!
My father was the food buyer. I only had to mention his name at the shop selling freshly roasted coffee beans and I got a bag of ‘Hassan’s mix’. Dad used to come home with boxes piled high with fresh fruit and vegetables. Once, when I was about seven, he arrived with a few watermelons. Being the youngest, I insisted on carrying one of them into the house, just like my brothers and sisters. On the doorstep, I couldn’t hold it any longer and the massive fruit fell on the floor and exploded, covering us all with wet, red flesh.
I was 15 when I got my first job, as a kitchen porter at the Mount Zion Hotel. This is the lowliest and hardest job in any kitchen. You run around after everybody. I was lucky that the head chef saw my potential and encouraged me to cook. By then I was cooking at home all the time, making meals for my friends. I knew that this was what I wanted to do in life. It meant making the break from the Arab old city and entering Israeli life on the other side of the walls. I wanted to cook and explore the world outside, and Israeli culture allowed me to do this.
I made the significant move to Tel Aviv in 1989 and worked in various catering jobs before becoming assistant head chef at Lilith, one of the best restaurants in the city at the time. We served fresh produce, lightly cooked on a massive grill. I was entranced by this mix of Californian and Mediterranean cuisines, and it was there that I truly discovered my culinary identity and confidence. I moved to London in 1997 and was offered a job at Baker and Spice. During my six years there, I reshaped the traiteur section, introducing a variety of dishes with a strong Middle Eastern edge. This became my style. Recently I was in the kitchen looking at a box of cauliflower when my mother’s cauliflower fritters came to mind, so that was what I cooked. Only then did I realise how much of my cooking is about re-creating the dishes of my childhood.
It was definitely some sort of providence that led us to meet for the first time in London in 1999. Our paths might have crossed plenty of times – we had had many more obvious opportunities to meet before – and yet it was only then, thousands of miles away from where we started, that we got to know each other.
We were both born in Jerusalem in 1968, Sami on the Arab east side and Yotam in the Jewish west. We grew up a few kilometres away from each other in two separate societies, forced together by a fateful war just a year earlier. Looking back now, we realise how extremely different our childhood experiences were and yet how often they converged – physically, when venturing out to the ‘other side’, and spiritually, sharing sensations of a place and a time.
As young gay adults, we both moved to Tel Aviv at the same time, looking for personal freedom and a sense of hope and normality that Jerusalem couldn’t offer. There, we first formed meaningful relationships and took our first steps in our careers. Then, in 1997, we both arrived in London with an aspiration to broaden our horizons even further, possibly to escape again from a place we had grown out of.
So finally, on the doorstep of Baker and Spice in west London, we chatted for thirty minutes before realising that we shared a language and a history. And it was there, over the next two years, that we formed our bond of friendship and creativity.
This new edition of the ground-breaking 2008 classic, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, celebrates the hallmarks of Ottolenghi cooking: generous gestures, inventive flavours, intense colours and a wide array of extraordinary ingredients. With everything from meat and fish, to lavish salads and the famously delectable cakes and breads, the imaginative yet uncomplicated dishes rest on numerous culinary traditions, from the Middle East to North Africa to Italy and California.
Unless otherwise stated, eggs are large and free-range, milk is full-fat, yoghurt is Greek and the tahini is one of the creamier Lebanese, Palestinian or Israeli brands available. Parsley is flat-leaf, olive oil is extra-virgin, lemon and lime pith is to be avoided when the zest is shaved, and onions and garlic and shallots are peeled. All meat and fish is organic or free-range. Two types of salt are used through the book: ordinary table salt and flaky sea salt. We refer to the first type as just ‘salt’ and use Maldon for the sea salt flakes. In the baking recipes, all chocolate has a cocoa solid content of between 52 and 64%.
Big thanks to Alex Meitlis and Tirza Florentin, not so silent partners, whom, in two opposite departments, had a huge part in moulding Ottolenghi.
We would like to thank Amos Oppenheim for his limitless trust and generosity. His constant smile is deeply missed. And thank you to the others who had early faith: Tamara Meitlis, Ariela Oppenheim, David Oppenheim, Itzik and Ilana Lederfeind, Danny Florentin, Keren Margalit and Yoram Ever-Hadani.
For making this book happen, infinite thanks to Felicity Rubinstein and Sarah Lavelle; for making it so breathtakingly beautiful, thanks to Axel Feldmann, Sam Wolfson, Richard Learoyd and Adam Laycock; and for taking care of the details, thanks to Jane Middleton.
For the spectacular dishes and plates used in the photography, we are indebted to Lindy Wiffen from Ceramica Blue. And thanks to Gerry Ure for smiling through the hassle.
For precious assistance in making the recipes work: Jim Webb, Alison Quinn, Claudine Boulstridge, Marianne Lumb and Philippa Shepherd.
And more warm thanks, for many different reasons, to: Charley Bradley, Leigh Genis, Dino Cura, Paul and Ossi Burger, Adrien von Ferscht, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Patricia Michelson, Sarah Bilney, Binnie Dansby, Patrick Houser, Caroline Waldegrave, Jenny Stringer, Viv Pidgeon, Max Clark, Sue Spaull, Gail Mejia, Dariusz Przystasz, Przemek Suszek, Karen Handler-Kremmerman, Dorit Mintzer, Sigal Baranowitz, Pete and Greta Allen, and Jenny and Tony Taylor.
Thank you to all our devoted suppliers, without whom the wheels of the machine would not be turning.
And most humble thanks to all the Ottolenghi customers, the ultimate source of our pleasure and livelihood.
Peaches and speck with orange blossom
Figs with young pecorino and honey
Radish and broad bean salad
Fennel and feta with pomegranate seeds and sumac
Cucumber and poppy seed salad
Etti’s herb salad
Marinated aubergine with tahini and oregano
Burnt aubergine with yellow pepper and red onion
Aubergine-wrapped ricotta gnocchi with sage butter
Roasted aubergine with saffron yoghurt
Chargrilled asparagus, courgettes and manouri
Asparagus and samphire
French beans and mangetout with hazelnut and orange
Baked artichokes and broad beans
Sweet broccolini with tofu, sesame and coriander
Chargrilled broccoli with chilli and garlic
Purple sprouting broccoli and salsify with caper butter
Baked okra with tomato and ginger
Roasted butternut squash with burnt aubergine and pomegranate molasses
Caramelised endive with Serrano ham
Cauliflower and cumin fritters with lime yoghurt
Chargrilled cauliflower with tomato, dill and capers
Fennel, cherry tomato and crumble gratin
Marinated romano peppers with buffalo mozzarella
Mixed mushrooms with cinnamon and lemon
Portobello mushrooms with pearl barley and preserved lemon
Roasted red and golden beetroot
Crushed new potatoes with horseradish and sorrel
Sweet and sour celeriac and swede
Parsnip and pumpkin mash
Roasted sweet potato with pecan and maple
Carrot and peas
Danielle’s sweet potato gratin
Roast potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes with lemon and sage
Butterbeans with sweet chilli sauce and fresh herbs
Camargue red rice and quinoa with orange and pistachios
Couscous and mograbiah with oven-dried tomatoes
Couscous with dried apricots and butternut squash
Puy lentils with sour cherries, bacon and Gorgonzola
Whole wheat and mushrooms with celery and shallots
Chickpeas and spinach with honeyed sweet potato
Kosheri
Tamara’s stuffed vine leaves
Chilled red pepper soup with soured cream
Red lentil and chard soup
Harira (lamb, chickpeas and spinach)
Grilled aubergine and lemon soup
Jerusalem artichoke and rocket soup
Serves 4–6
Simple starters are so often about the quality of the ingredients. Here, the peaches need to be sweet and juicy, the balsamic vinegar needs to be best-quality (look out for a DOP stamp) and the orange blossom water needs to be unadulterated. We like to use a Lebanese brand like Cortas for the orange blossom: it tastes sweet and perfumed, in a good way.
Get yellow-fleshed peaches, if you can: they tend to be less watery than the white variety, so will chargrill more readily. If you want to skip the grilling stage, though, you can: the salad still works without.
5 ripe peaches
1 tbsp olive oil
2 red or white endives, leaves separated
50g watercress
50g baby chard leaves or other small leaves
10 –12 slices speck, thinly sliced (100g)
flaky sea salt and black pepper
Dressing
3 tbsp orange blossom water
1 tbsp good-quality balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp maple syrup
3 tbsp olive oil
Cut the peaches in half and remove the stones. Slice each half into 3 wedges, place in a bowl and add the olive oil and some salt and pepper. Toss well to coat them.
Place a ridged griddle pan over a high heat and leave for a few minutes so it heats up well. Place the peach wedges on the pan and grill for a minute on each side. You want to get nice charcoal lines on all sides. Remove the peaches from the pan and leave to cool.
Place all the dressing ingredients apart from the oil in a bowl and whisk to combine. Trickle the oil in slowly while you whisk to get a thick dressing. Season to taste.
On a serving platter, arrange layers of peach, endive, watercress, chard and speck. Spoon over enough dressing to coat all the ingredients but not to drench them. Serve straight away.
Serves 4 as a starter
The quality of the ingredients is paramount here: the figs need to be perfectly ripe, sweet and heavy, the honey needs to be best-quality and the cheese needs to be as fresh and young as possible.
‘Pecora’ means ‘sheep’ in Italian. Loosely applied, ‘pecorino’ cheese refers to any cheese made from sheep’s milk. Within this term, of course, there’s a huge range in texture and flavour: it can be young or aged, salty or sweet, intense or mild, firm or soft. The more the cheeses age, the drier, denser, firmer and more intense they’ll be. Young, fresh pecorinos, on the other hand – the type we want here – have a softer texture, with a mild and milky flavour. It’s still got that unmistakably ‘sheepy’ tang but is almost sweet. If you can get to a cheese shop and they have a range, look out for a Pecorino Caciotta Etrusca Fresca, which we like to use.
Some chunks of salty well-cured ham also work very well against the sweet figs. For those not inclined to choosing between one thing and another, the combination of figs, cheese and ham is also rather good!
2 tbsp good-quality honey
3 tbsp olive oil
600g ripe green or black figs
300g young pecorino (or a similar cheese)
80g rocket, preferably wild
10g basil leaves
flaky sea salt and black pepper
Whisk together the honey and olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cut the figs into quarters. Use your hands to tear the cheese into large chunks.
Arrange the rocket, basil, figs and pecorino in layers on individual serving plates or a large platter. Drizzle over the honey dressing as you go along, and finish with some freshly ground black pepper.
Serves 4
This is an ideal brunch dish for a warm spring day. It’s a little meal in itself – bulked out with the tahini sauce and bread – but also works without these hearty additions, as a refreshing and colourful salad.
Shelling broad beans is an activity that requires either outsourcing – it’s a job that kids love to do – or a meditative stance. If neither are to hand and you are short on time then just leave the podded beans as they are: most – especially the ones sold frozen – are perfectly fine eaten with their skin left on. If you do this then just cook them for a minute longer. You’ll lose a bit of the light ‘bouncy’ texture (and amazingly vibrant colour) but save yourself a lot of time.
500g podded broad beans, fresh or frozen
350g small radishes
½ red onion, very thinly sliced
10g coriander, finely chopped
30g preserved lemon, finely chopped
juice of 2 lemons
10g parsley, finely chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
200ml Green tahini sauce (see here)
4 thick pita breads
salt and black pepper
Place the broad beans in a pan of boiling water and simmer for 1–2 minutes, depending on size. Drain through a large colander and rinse in plenty of cold water to refresh them. Remove the beans from their skins by gently squeezing each one with your fingertips.
Cut the radishes into 6 wedges each and mix with the broad beans, onion, coriander, preserved lemon, lemon juice, parsley, olive oil and cumin. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
To serve, pile a mound of salad in one corner of each serving plate, pour the tahini sauce into a small bowl and stand it next to the salad. Set a pita bread next to them.
Serves 4
This salad has all the little ‘bursts of flavour’ we look for in a dish. The little explosions of sweetness from the pomegranate seeds, for example, along with the tart astringency of the sumac. It’s lovely to eat as it is, or else served alongside some grilled fish or roasted meat. If you’re looking for a substitute to the pomegranate but want to keep the colour and sweetness, dried cranberries or sour cherries also work well.
½ pomegranate
2 medium fennel heads
1½ tsp olive oil
2 tsp sumac, plus extra to garnish
juice of 1 lemon
10g picked tarragon leaves
10g parsley, roughly chopped
70g Greek feta cheese, sliced
salt and black pepper
Start by releasing the pomegranate seeds. The best way to do it is to halve the pomegranate along its ‘belly’ (you only need half a pomegranate here), then hold the half firmly in your hand with the seeds facing your palm. Over a large bowl, start bashing the back of the fruit with a wooden spoon. Don’t hit too hard or you’ll bruise the seeds and break the skin. Magically, the seeds will just fall out. Pick out any white skin that falls in.
Remove the leaves of the fennel, keeping a few to garnish later, and trim the base, making sure you leave enough of it still attached to hold the slices together. Slice very thinly lengthwise (a mandolin would come in handy here).
In a bowl, mix the olive oil, sumac, lemon juice, herbs and some salt and pepper. Add the fennel and toss well. Taste for seasoning but remember, the feta will add saltiness.
Layer the fennel, then the feta and then the pomegranate seeds in individual serving dishes. Garnish with fennel leaves, sprinkle over some sumac and serve immediately.
Serves 4
Get hold of the small Lebanese cucumbers for this, if you can: they’re more robust, crunchy and full of earthy flavour than the larger, more water-filled varieties commonly sold. Don’t worry if you can only get this larger kind, though: just slice it in half lengthways and then use a teaspoon to scoop out the seedy core, which is the part full of water.
This was put on the menu by Sami in the very early days of Ottolenghi. It works well with other salads as part of a mezze spread or served alongside some roast lamb or pork. A few little radishes, quartered, make for a colourful addition.
6 small cucumbers or 1 large cucumber (about 500g)
2 mild red chillies, thinly sliced
15g coriander, roughly chopped
60ml white wine vinegar or rice vinegar
125ml sunflower oil
2 tbsp poppy seeds
2 tbsp caster sugar
salt and black pepper
Chop off and discard the ends of the cucumbers. Slice the cucumbers at an angle, so you end up with pieces 1cm thick and 3–4cm long.
Mix together all the ingredients in a large bowl. Use your hands to massage the flavours gently into the cucumbers. Taste and adjust the amount of sugar and salt according to the quality of the cucumbers. The salad should be sharp and sweet, almost like a pickle.
If not serving immediately, you might need to drain some liquid off later. Adjust the seasoning again afterwards.
Serves 6
For anyone who curses the instruction to ‘pick leaves’ for an Ottolenghi salad, we have chef Etti Mordo to thank (or blame, depending on your point of view). Etti played a key part in putting together the menus in the early days of our Islington restaurant and her influence is still felt today. If you want to get ahead with picking the leaves, you can: just keep them in a bowl in the fridge, covered with a sheet or two of damp kitchen paper. They’ll stay fresh this way.
This is a salad that doesn’t benefit from sitting around, so get everything ready beforehand: the herbs picked and washed, the almonds fried and chopped, the dressing ingredients ready to go. With everything in place the salad should then be assembled literally seconds before serving. Don’t be tempted to do it in advance as the leaves will wilt and discolour. It’s perfect as either a palate-cleansing starter or served alongside all sorts of mains.
35g picked coriander leaves
40g picked parsley leaves
20g picked dill leaves
35g picked tarragon leaves
30g picked basil leaves
40g rocket leaves
50g unsalted butter
150g whole unskinned almonds
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp olive oil
flaky sea salt and black pepper
Gently immerse the herb leaves in plenty of cold water, being careful not to bruise them. Drain in a colander and then dry in a salad spinner or by spreading them over a clean kitchen cloth. (Once dry, the herbs will keep in the fridge for up to one day. Store them in a sealed container lined with a few layers of kitchen paper).
Heat the butter in a frying pan and add the almonds, along with ½ teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Sauté for 5–6 minutes over a low to moderate heat, until the almonds are golden. Transfer to a colander to drain. Make sure you keep the butter that’s left in the pan. Leave it somewhere warm so it doesn’t set. Once the almonds are cool enough to handle, chop them roughly with a large knife.
To assemble the salad, place the herbs in a large bowl. Add the almonds, cooking butter, lemon juice and olive oil. Toss gently and season to taste, then serve immediately.
Serves 6 as a starter
Some combinations are just a match made in Middle Eastern heaven. With roasted wedges of aubergine and creamy tahini sauce, for example, it’s hard to go wrong. The fresh oregano needs to be added with slightly more caution: it’s great in marinades for roasted vegetables or substantial salads but, as with other hard herbs like rosemary or sage, it’s a potent herb that can dominate if used too liberally.
3 small aubergines
olive oil, for brushing
1 quantity of Green tahini sauce (see here; made without the parsley)
flaky sea salt and black pepper
Marinade
1 mild red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
10g coriander, finely chopped
5g oregano, finely chopped, plus a few whole leaves for garnish
1 garlic clove, crushed
3 tbsp lemon juice
60ml olive oil
Preheat the oven to 240°C/220°C fan/Gas Mark 9. Trim the stalk end off the aubergines, then cut each aubergine in two widthways. Cut the fat lower piece lengthways in half and then cut each half into 3 wedges. Do the same with the thinner piece but cut each half into 2 wedges. You should end up with 10 similar-sized pieces with skin on their curved side.
Place the aubergine pieces on a large roasting tray. Brush on all sides with plenty of olive oil and season with salt and pepper (if you want to get nice chargrill marks on the aubergines, place them on a very hot ridged griddle pan at this stage and grill for 3 minutes on each side; return them to the baking tray and continue with the next step). Place the roasting tray in the hot oven and bake the aubergines for 15–18 minutes, until they are golden brown and totally soft inside.
While the aubergines are roasting, make the marinade. Simply put all the ingredients in a bowl, along with 1 teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper, and mix well.
As soon as the aubergines come out of the oven, spoon the marinade over them and leave at room temperature for up to 2 hours before serving. You can store them in the fridge for up to 2 days at this stage. Make sure you don’t serve them cold, though; leave them out of the fridge for an hour at least.
To serve, arrange the aubergines on a plate. Now, you can either spoon the tahini sauce on top and garnish with a few oregano leaves, or serve the tahini in a bowl on the side, topped with oregano leaves.
Serves 4