Yotam Ottolenghi: Middle Eastern Cooking with Flair

Have you ever wanted to learn about cooks that became renowned chefs? In this blog post, we will learn about Yotam Ottolenghi, an Israeli-British chef who opened restaurants and published cookbooks in order to bring Middle Eastern-inspired dishes to others. Read more to learn about Ottolenghi’s career as a chef, his food, and his advice for new cooks.

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Ottolenghi’s background

In the late 1990’s, Ottolenghi completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in comparative literature at Tel Aviv University. He was contemplating a doctoral program at Yale, but instead of pursuing a doctorate, he began his culinary journey at Le Cordon Bleu in London.

Soon after, he opened his first deli with his business partner, Sami Tamimi, and they began bringing Middle Eastern flavors to London. Before long they opened additional locations as more and more Londoners fell in love with their Middle Eastern dishes.

Ottolenghi restaurants and cookbooks

Ottolenghi’s culinary empire grew to include delis, restaurants, cookbooks, and columns published in the Guardian and New York Times. He is well-respected in the culinary world as a chef whose food brings them together while trying new flavors.

Ottolenghi’s dishes use a wide variety of flavors influenced by Arab, European, and Jewish flavors; these flavors reflect the unity he tries to encourage in people.

Dishes to try

Ottolenghi’s dishes are rooted in traditional Middle Eastern staples that can be enjoyed as initially prepared or built upon. If someone wanted a shareable meal (similar in style to Spanish tapas) one could prepare some flatbreads and a few of his recipes, such as the quick-pickled chiles, dolmas, and tabbouleh, for a flavorful experience that can feed multiple people.

In Ottolenghi’s restaurants, he incorporates an array of vegetables into his dishes to add flavor and texture, encouraging guests to feast their eyes and then their mouths. He encourages guests to use these methods in their kitchens when they create their own feasts.

Ottolenghi uses many types of Middle Eastern condiments as components for his dishes, such as labneh, dukkah, quick lemon paste, quick-pickled chiles, and rose harissa. While these condiments are used in the recipes mentioned here, they can also be used in other dishes.

Several of his condiments can easily become components of delicious dishes such as grilled carrots with labneh (a yogurt dish) and dukkah (a seed and nut condiment), a roasted eggplant salad combined with a quick lemon paste and quick-pickled chilies, or salmon and prawns (shrimp) in spicy tomato sauce.

You can view his condiments, sauces and other recipes on our Recipes page.

Yotam’s advice to new cooks

Figuring out how to get started can be overwhelming to new cooks, but it should not stop someone from starting. Someone wanting to follow in Ottolenghi’s footsteps should hone their basic skills by choosing a recipe and practicing with it until they feel confident.

After gaining confidence with the first recipe, they can move forward with more dishes. As the cook grows their skills, they can move on to developing their own menu with different combinations of dishes, learning to balance flavors and textures that can bring the dishes to another level.

Learn more about Yotam Ottolenghi

This blog post has provided a snapshot of Yotam Ottolenghi’s work and achievements, but there is far more to see. In the current state of the world, traveling to London may be a challenge, but Ottolenghi can be found on Instagram, his personal website, and you can learn to cook from Yotam via his MasterClass.