Ottolenghi FLAVOUR

Absolutely love Ottolenghi. Always has super creative, easy to follow recipes that inspire you to try new things.

I was really looking forward to getting this book and I have not been disappointed. I like that it uses a lot of the same ingredients in the recipes. Please do not be put off by the ingredient lists, they create delicious recipes! It even inspired me to try cooking with tofu for the first time. So far I have cooked are Hasselback beetroot with lime leaf butter, Curried carrot mash with brown butter, Asparagus and gochujang pancakes, Sweet potato in tomato, lime and cardamom sauce, Fusion caponata with silken tofu, Giant couscous and pumpkin in tomato and star anise sauce, Miso butter onions, Romano pepper schnitzels, Aubergine dumplings alla Parmigiana, Noor's black lime tofu, Cabbage with ginger cream and numbing oil, Super-soft courgettes with harissa and lemon, Cauliflower roasted in chilli butter. The cauliflower, Miso butter onions, and the caponata dishes are my favourites so far and we have cooked them several times. If you are not a fan of tofu, the caponata is really nice alongside steak, prawns or even as they suggest with a cheese toast or on cheese on toast. The numbing oil is a regular staple in our fridge to drizzle top of various foods.

A fantastic book for any chef. Great for the collection

We resolved to cook every recipe in Flavour during 2024. We are up to five of the ninety-nine recipes. Most also have an accompanying recipe for salad or a side dish. My wife and I often cook together and we enjoy our time in the kitchen. Ottolenghi doesn’t even offer a suggestion for how long the recipes will take to prepare. All have taken between one and three hours, so far. And then there are the dishes. Pictured is “Bkeila, potato and butter bean stew.” It took two cutting boards, a Dutch oven, a sauce pot, a frying pan, and a soaking vessel to prepare. I realize Ottolenghi has an army of sub and sous chiefs, and doesn’t have to worry about dishes, but we do and there are lots of them. By the time we plate the food, we tend to be a bit tired and maybe a bit grumpy, but WOW! The tastes and how the foods titillate all your senses makes it worth while. I recommend this cook book, but with the caveat — so far this book is the slowest, most tedious food I have ever cooked.

This is an inspiring book, not only from a methods perspective but combinations of ingredients and why didn’t I think of that moments, aubergine dumpling parmigiana, such a great idea, I’m doing that today with regular meatballs too....dumpling roulette! Swede I tend to mash and roast only but now will definitely be making the steak and gnocchi. I’m growing celeriac and now have 3 new recipes that I can’t wait to make! Spookily I had purchased mushroom growing kits earlier this week before the book came out, so glad I did! Lots of new recipes for mushrooms, baked ragu looks amazing. I am also a massive onion fan and to have new recipes I have not tried (and I have tried a lot) is great. I really like how this book is organised as quite often you find yourself fancying something smokey or charred or acidic or sweet, to have the recipes organised this way really helps. I really liked that at the end of the book there is a guide to which recipes can be done quickly, for a dinner party, in one pan etc so you can go straight to something you need and the flavour bomb guide to take you back to some of the dressings and sauces quickly, there are several dressings from previous books that we do all the time....so to have the quick reference is really helpful. I will come back when I have tried more of the recipes, the problem I am having is which to do next, so many I like the look of! So I have tried the aubergine parmiagana, and the comment was “the best tomato sauce ever” and I have cooked a lot of tomato sauces! The ingredients were roughly the same as other sauces I have tried, the method wasn’t, so must have made the difference. I have now also used this same tomato sauce recipe for pizza topping and a pasta salad, by stopping after first stage of the tomato sauce...3 for 1 recipe, inspired by the method, it works really well. Spicy potatoes with the tahini dressing were a big hit, and I used the dressing again with the cucumber salad. I chucked in an avocado as there was one in the fridge which was not in the recipe, but it went well, I might throw in some microherbs next time too. The roasted cauliflower in chilli butter was delicious, the method of roasting the cauliflower worked better than other recipes I have tried. I like the suggestion of roasting a chicken with this butter too, that is next on the to do list.

Lovely book with colourful photos of finished dishes. Easy to follow recipes, however, the list of ingredients can be a bit daunting. Have already cooked a couple of recipes when they were online so looking forward to the rest of the book.

When I ordered this I'd noticed a lot of reviews expressing disappointment at the recipes for being either too complicated or too 'side-dishy' or just not appealing....and was curious. This is the first Ottolenghi book I've bought and it is wonderful. I've made the portobello mushrooms, which are out of this world, several of the festive dishes....everything so far has been incredible, and of what I haven't tried yet, half or more are on my to-try list. So I am baffled by what seemed to be widespread disappointment though obviously everyone's tastes are different. I think of this book as more of a special occasions/weekend book - the kind of delicious that you definitely want in your life but maybe isn't health enough for every day - I combine it with some simpler staples from Dan Beutner's Blue Zones Kitchen (I have a few issues with that book but that's another story).

It came without plastic protective cover so all the white cover was dirty stained

Hervorragende Rezepte, ausgefallene Kombinationen und viele neue Anregungen. Allerdings nichts für Anfänger. Man sollte (wie bei anderen Kochbüchern auch) in der Lage sein, die Rezepte an seinen eigenen Geschmack anzupassen. Die Kritik, dass ausgefallene Zutaten verwendet werden, verstehe ich nicht. Wer nur Senf, Salz und Pfeffer verwenden möchte, sollte Oma Emmie's Kochbuch für deutsche Küche kaufen! Alle Zutaten - wenn nicht schon vorhanden - sind in DE zu bekommen (manche online). Mein einziger Kritikpunkt ist, dass sehr wenig frische, knackige Rezepte zu finden sind. Trotzdem volle Punktzahl. ------------------------------------------ As I bought the English version, here are my comments in English: Excellent recipes, unusual combinations and many new suggestions. However, nothing for beginners. You should (as with other cookbooks) be able to adjust the recipes to your own taste. I don't understand the criticism that unusual ingredients are used. If you only want to use mustard, salt and pepper, you should buy Granny Emmie's cookbook for German cuisine! If not already in stock, all ingredients are available in Germany (some online). My only criticism is that there are very few fresh crisp recipes to be found. Still, five points.

Ottolenghi flavor è pieno di ricette interessanti. tutte nel suo stile. vegetariane. ho provato già diverse e sono rimasta soddisfatta.

Another great book from Ottelenghi, with lots of fabulous recipes.

Love this author and his recipes.