Yotam Ottolenghi’s Latest, ‘NOPI: The Cookbook,’ Is for Home Cooks Who Like a Challenge
Yahoo Food’s Cookbook of the Week is NOPI: The Cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully (Ten Speed Press), featuring recipes from their popular London restaurant.
NOPI: The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully (Photograph: Sam Bolton)
Chef and restaurant owner Yotam Ottolenghi is known for making unusual ingredients and unique flavor combinations accessible. He also may have single-handedly made vegetables cool. The Israeli-born, London-based chef is no longer solely associated with veggies, but unexpected pairings like burrata with blood orange, coriander seeds, and lavender oil or butternut squash with ginger tomatoes and lime yogurt, continue to be his bread and butter.
Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook, NOPI: The Cookbook, features food from his fine-dining London restaurant and was written with Ramael Scully, NOPI’s head chef. There are some simpler, everyday recipes like burnt green onion dip with curly kale, paprika oven fries, and whole roasted celery root, but in the first few sentences of the book, Ottolenghi warns, “The dishes in this book are somewhat more complex” and will be “more challenging for home cooks.”
Butternut Squash with Ginger Tomatoes and Lime Yogurt (Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin)
While Ottolenghi’s previous cookbooks, the best-selling Jerusalem, Ottolenghi, Plenty, and Plenty More, were written in and for a home kitchen, NOPI is a restaurant cookbook through and through. Ottolenghi and Scully simplified some of their recipes but they were careful not to compromise. Maintaining the essence of a dish was always more important than making it easy. This means that many of the recipes require making multiple components and then assembling them at the last minute. Perhaps that’s not what you expect from an Ottolenghi cookbook and maybe you won’t cook from this book quite as often as you do Plenty or Jerusalem, but if you’re one of Ottolenghi’s many fans, you likely already know that a little extra effort is probably going to be worth it.
NOPI is also different because it’s less focused on the Middle East, which is where Scully comes in. While he was born in Malaysia, Scully has Chinese, Indian, Irish, and Malay heritage. Ottolenghi says that Scully’s food reflects “his rich and intricate background,” and this is certainly true. What you’ll notice most, is the profusion of Asian ingredients like tamarind paste, galangal, oolong tea, and pink peppercorns. But don’t worry: There’s still a lot of sumac, za’atar, pomegranate molasses, and preserved lemon in NOPI. And if you need help with any ingredients, there’s a handy glossary, complete with shopping advice, substitutions, and kitchen tips.
Burnt Green Onion Dip with Curly Kale (Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin)
Those who are up for a culinary challenge will find plenty of material in NOPI. Ottolenghi likes to call these recipes, “epic” and they include several of the restaurant’s most popular dishes, such as beef brisket croquettes with Asian coleslaw and twice-cooked baby chicken with chile sauce and kaffir lime leaf salt. For the slightly less ambitious, Ottolenghi and Scully often offer shortcuts, and they’re good about pointing out which components can be made ahead of time.
The Middle Eastern and Asian influences extend to the cocktail and dessert chapters. Drinks range from a Rooibos Old-Fashioned to a Sumac Martini, while sweets include Farro Pudding with Caramelized Orange, Tahini, and Pistachios and Roasted Pineapple with Tamarind and Chile, and Coconut Ice Cream. You’ll also find the less global, but surely quite delicious Caramel Peanut Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce and Peanut Brittle, a dessert Ottolenghi describes as “basically, just a seriously sophisticated Snickers ice cream.”
Visit Yahoo Food throughout the week for recipes from NOPI: The Cookbook.
Check out other cookbooks from Yahoo Food’s Cookbook of the Week:
My Kitchen Year by Ruth Reichl
