There is a lot I love about Yotam Ottolenghi. I’m telling you, it’s not just his appreciation for vegetables. He’s an incredibly non-assuming and humble person, too. Just pure coolness.
We were at Sydney Opera House last night for an Ottolenghi talk. An Evening with Ottolenghi. When I saw that he was going to be interviewed by Adam Liaw, I was quite happy about that as well.
As you may know, Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, Simple, recently came out. My ticket included a copy of it but I wasn’t sure if it was going to be signed or would there be a book signing at the end of the event. Usually, you find out when you’re there, not before. That’s how these events are organised.
Yotam Ottolenghi in conversation with Adam Liaw at the Sydney Opera House was a sold out event. As you can see above, the Concert Hall was packed before the event.
My problem here is all of my Ottolenghi cookbooks are signed. Especially, Jerusalem is signed by Ottolenghi as well as Sami Tamimi. I didn’t want Simple to be sitting next to those ones, feeling like an orphan, to be honest. So far, I have been very lucky. Because, John was in London at some stage and he brought back a few signed copies with him for me. So, that covered a large portion of the books. When Plenty More came out, this time we were both in London. So, I had a chance to buy it directly from Ottolenghi’s restaurant in Islington. Now, Simple is out and I am lucky again because there was a book signing at the end of the event, even though, I picked up my book just before the event started.
Here, Ottolenghi is just about to sign my book. And finally, I had a chance to tell him how much I appreciated his work. He took my VegFusion card to look at the stuffed pepper recipe. Do you think he’ll leave a comment?
Simple came with a lemon. Because I hadn’t seen the cover of the book until last night, I couldn’t make the connection when someone handed over a lemon or the t-shirt Ottolenghi was wearing.
The whole conversation with Ottolenghi was personal, warm and quite inspiring. Especially his view on cauliflower was quite interesting: “Cauliflower is more versatile than meat. You can eat it raw, deep fry it until crunchy, you can roast it so the centre is soft. Everything yields different results. I’m fascinated with how far you can take vegetables, and it’s very far.” No wonder, I find him incredibly inspiring. And on another personal note, he is the only Westerner chef who gets preparing Turkish style eggplant for stuffing right.