SIMPLE, eight years on
How a cookbook is made, part 1
Today, a brief interruption to normal service. Simple Too comes out in September, and before it does, I want to take you behind the scenes of how a cookbook is made. Where the ideas come from, what the testing process actually looks like, what happens on a shoot, and what it means to write a second book about simplicity when the world has got considerably more complicated since the first one. We’re starting at the beginning, which means starting with Simple.
Yotam.
I look back on SIMPLE like a proud parent. My own kids were five and three when it came out, which means the book and the boys have grown up alongside each other.
The original SIMPLE came from a question I kept being asked, which was some version of: how do you actually cook ‘Ottolenghi’ at home? Not with a whole day to spare or a whole team of people to help - but when you’re tight on time, tight on ingredients, or, frankly, tight on patience.
My concern when writing the book was that one person’s idea of simple cooking is never the same as the next. I know people who see ‘simple cooking’ as putting something in the oven on a Saturday morning and leaving it alone for four or five hours. Others who just want 5 ingredients. Some who want everything to be prepared in advance - stews packed in the freezer and all vegetables chopped before anyone arrives.
So the idea behind the book wasn’t about one definition of simple, but many. Recipes that worked for all of them. Fast ones, slow ones, ones that required advance planning and ones that came together in twenty minutes. The only rule was that each recipe had to be simple in at least one way.
It’s now the book people tell me they cook from most, which is either a tribute to the recipes or a comment on how much busier everyone has got since 2018. Probably both. It also came out two years before a lockdown that sent everyone into their kitchens with nothing but time - which SIMPLE was perfectly built for.
I still cook from it constantly. The braised eggs with leeks. The cauliflower, pomegranate and pistachio salad. The gigli with chickpeas and za’atar, which appears on my table almost weekly. Simple Too is full of 2.0s of old favourites - plays on the baked rice, the fritters, the salads - alongside things we couldn’t have imagined writing first time around. Over the coming weeks I want to take you inside how it was made: the decisions, the arguments, the recipes that almost weren’t.
Simple Too started with the question: what has changed since 2018? The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot - in our kitchens, in our lives, in what we need from the food we cook. My boys are almost teenagers now. They raid the fridge at odd hours, have opinions about seasoning, and occasionally - occasionally - cook for themselves. The kitchen that SIMPLE was written for has become a different kitchen. Busier in some ways, calmer in others.
Out in the world, calm isn’t a term many use to describe their reality very often. There is a lot of noise around, a fair amount of anxiety, and the kitchen has become that rare place where you can seek - and occasionally find - a bit of peace and quiet. No screens allowed…
This is a dish I’ve been making in some version or another since before Simple even existed - one that captures, better than I can explain, exactly what both books are really asking for…
Hot charred cherry tomatoes with cold yoghurt
One of the beauties of this dish lies in the exciting contrast between the hot, juicy tomatoes and fridge-cold yoghurt, so make sure the tomatoes are straight out of the oven and the yoghurt is straight out of the fridge. The heat of the tomatoes will make the cold yoghurt melt, invitingly, so plenty of crusty sourdough or focaccia to mop it all up with is a must alongside.
Ingredients
350g cherry tomatoes
3 tbsp olive oil
¾ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp light brown sugar
3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
3 thyme sprigs
5g fresh oregano: 3 sprigs left whole and the rest picked, to serve
1 lemon: finely shave the skin of ½ to get 3 strips and finely grate the other ½ to get 1 tsp zest
350g extra thick Greek-style yoghurt (such as Total), fridge-cold
1 tsp Urfa chilli flakes (or ½ tsp regular chilli flakes) flaked sea salt and black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C fan.
Place the tomatoes in a mixing bowl with the olive oil, cumin seeds, sugar, garlic, thyme, oregano sprigs, lemon strips, ½ teaspoon of flaked salt and a good grind of pepper. Mix to combine, then transfer to a baking tray just large enough to fit all the tomatoes together snugly. Roast for 20 minutes, until the tomatoes are beginning to blister and the liquid is bubbling. Turn the oven to the grill setting and grill for 6–8 minutes, until the tomatoes start to blacken on top.
While the tomatoes are roasting, combine the yoghurt with the grated lemon zest and ¼ teaspoon of flaked salt. Keep in the fridge until ready to serve.
Once the tomatoes are ready, spread the chilled yoghurt on a platter (with a lip) or in a wide, shallow bowl, creating a dip in it with the back of a spoon. Spoon over the hot tomatoes, along with their juices, lemon skin, garlic and herbs, and finish with the picked oregano and chilli flakes. Serve at once, with some bread.
The recipe - yum! Looking forward to Simple Too!