Yotam Ottolenghi Quotes
-
If I must choose between healthy and tasty, I go for the second: having only one life to waste, it might as well be a pleasurable one.
-
Tossing doughnuts, fritters or fried dumplings in fennel sugar adds grown-up complexity without diminishing the indulgence factor.
-
I used to love fine dining, but I lost my appetite for it to a degree because sometimes it is too much about the effort and too little about the result.
-
I love the way soft white cheese such as ricotta or the creamier mascarpone reflect the milieu in which an animal has been raised.
-
Yoghurt cuts sweetness and richness, tempers spice, and makes a dish sing.
-
How can something that's 95% water be so divisive? Alone among vegetables, the poor, innocent stick of celery elicits the most vicious attacks.
-
You can really taste the difference between a shop-bought and a good homemade mayo.
-
The taste of any simple tomato-based salad is dependent on the quality of the tomatoes.
-
Jerusalem artichokes have a great affinity with nuts. I love them with chopped walnuts or almonds, lemon juice, garlic, herbs and plenty of olive oil.
-
If the British Isles had an official vegetable, it would have to be the potato.
-
Going out for a meal, especially for young urbanites, is less about socialising over enjoyable food than about enjoying food as a way to socialise.
-
I get great pleasure from stuffed foods, from an apple strudel to a vegetable samosa, from a whole roasted bird with a sweet and savoury stuffing to a vine leaf filled with rice and spices.
-
Conflict is very much a state of mind. If you're not in that state of mind, it doesn't bother you.
-
As with lemon juice, the more sorrel you use, the more it has to be balanced with something sweet, starchy or creamy - it's a yin-yang approach to cooking that I find rather calming.
-
Almost every culture has its own variation on chicken soup, and rightly so - it's one of the most gratifying dishes on the face of the Earth.
-
I have yet to meet a carnivore who doesn't love a sausage roll.
-
Polenta is to northern Italy what bread is to Tuscany, what pasta is to Emilia-Romagna and what rice is to the Veneto: easy to make, hungry to absorb other flavours, and hugely versatile.
-
Most pumpkin dishes involve scooping out the seeds, cutting off the skin, and chopping up the flesh before cooking.
-
Dinner parties are still highly popular, and I believe they always will be.
-
The smells of slow cooking spread around the house and impart a unique warmth matched only by the flavour of the food.
-
Rice and vermicelli is a common combination in Arab and Turkish cooking - it has a lighter texture than rice on its own.
-
Food was always important in my family, but I didn't think of it as a vocation until a later point in life.
-
Fresh egg pasta is traditionally served in the north of Italy with butter, cream and rich meat sauces, whereas dried pasta is more at home with the tomato- and olive oil-based ones of the south.
-
When I was a kid, there was always food to be had on the street in Jerusalem, but anything above a falafel stand was mediocre or worse.