Ottolenghi

1 week ago | ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi

Forgive me for the cliché…"Give me any word, any word, and I show you how the root of this word is Greek."Easter? Clearly from the ancient Greek "Easteros," meaning... well, I have no idea, but you get the point. My late father had a similar tendency. He would find a Jewish connection in anything! At the end of a TV show he would watch the credits like a hawk, spotting names that sounded Jewish. “Production designer Becker - what else can it be!” They all proved his point, naturally.

2 weeks ago | ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi

The clocks changed last weekend, and suddenly dinner feels all wrong. Not wrong in a bad way—just different. After months of eating at around 6pm because the darkness outside demanded it, the evening light has thrown off my rhythm. As if my body and the sky are now operating in different time zones. This seasonal jet lag is something I notice every year when British Summer Time begins. Walking back from the test kitchen at 7pm now, the streets are still light.

3 weeks ago | ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi

If you read my last post about bean-rich recipes to save the earth, you've seen my interest with ingredients that tread lightly on the planet. But there's something even more direct than cooking with planet-friendly produce – growing it yourself. Which, admittedly, isn't my strong suit. Watching seedlings push through soil, harvesting them at peak ripeness... But the truth? I can barely keep houseplants alive. My surviving plants persist through sheer resilience rather than any skill on my part.

3 weeks ago | ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi

There’s an exhibition about soil at Somerset House (who knew dirt could be so fascinating?). It is all about the world beneath our feet - the most biodiverse place on the planet. Electron microscopes revealing tiny creatures. Sound art capturing the hum of roots drawing water. Psychedelic films showing fungi networks glowing like motorways. Before leaving the exhibition, they ask people - mainly kids - to write down their ‘recipe to save earth'.

1 month ago | ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi

This week, I was sent the most unexpectedly beautiful six minutes of film I’ve seen all year. I watched it over breakfast, half-asleep, but still absorbed. It follows the Cook family in West Yorkshire (during their Spring harvest)– fifth-generation rhubarb farmers who harvest by candlelight in vast, cathedral-like sheds (the darkness prevents photosynthesis and keeps the rhubarb bright-pink and tart).