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5 days ago | 
ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi
Here's a film to watch at the start of every summer - Little Miss Sunshine. The story follows this dysfunctional family on a cross-country journey in a yellow VW bus that barely makes it. I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it, but there's this scene near the end where Olive, the young daughter, performs at a beauty pageant to Rick James' Super Freak. Her dance is totally inappropriate for the setting - uninhibited, awkward, joyful. Olive has this endless supply of optimism.
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2 weeks ago | 
ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi
I've been receiving some animated memos about our colour-coded bookshelf... Apparently, it's ‘completely impractical.’ Surely we should organise alphabetically or by cuisine or some other system that makes logical sense? My colleague Gitai arranged the test kitchen shelves by colours a few years back and it stuck somehow. It's a bit precious, I know, but that rainbow of spines just makes us all very happy. Function with a side of beauty. I'm standing firmly by it.
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2 weeks ago | 
ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi
So much of what I do involves gathering ideas from different sources, processing them, and then turning them into recipes for the hungry cooking public. The greatest accolade is when one of these hits the spot and then becomes a household staple somewhere. “I have to tell you”, someone might say, “your soba noodles are on quick rotation in our house, and now my grownup kids cook it for their own families”. Music to my ears.
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3 weeks ago | 
ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi
I am happily hopping on the Australian bandwagon this week (especially with ANZAC day this Friday) and stopping for a moment to look at two bakes that have made their way into my kitchen over the years. It started with Helen Goh, whose brilliant Australian sensibility has shaped so much of what we do.
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3 weeks ago | 
ottolenghi.substack.com | Yotam Ottolenghi
I love you all!And I love you all equally. It’s just that I often get wrapped up in my own little world and neglect to look outside.
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1 month 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.
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1 month 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.
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1 month 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.
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1 month 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'.
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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).