Cooking the Books 5

Ottolenghi's Comfort

Hello everyone,

Before I get onto today’s book review a little bit of housekeeping/book stuff. First of all thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment on Everyday Pressure Cooking - it is thrilling to hear that people are cooking from it. If you are enjoying it, please consider rating or reviewing, it really helps get the book out there!

Remember also that I am offering a 25% off subscriptions until the end of Thursday (14th November). A paid subscription will allow you to attend the zoom talk with me and Jeannette Hyde this coming Sunday - the subject is pressure cooking and nutrition. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far - as promised, I am sending a book out to the 10th new paid subscriber and as I reached that target I’m now extending the offer to the next 10th person too.

When I started writing this review piece we were still very much in the middle of a very prolonged period of grey. A homogenous, amorphous blanket of dirty off white covering the sky. Still quite mild for November, it felt colder as it was just so relentlessly damp and lightless. I had to force myself out for a walk in the mornings. I now know that this is called an “anticyclonic gloom” and that we were lucky to have had as much as 2 hours of sunshine (or at least a brief break in the cloud cover) this month as some people haven’t had any at all.

So I was not feeling my happy best when reading through Ottolenghis’s Comfort, but even before testing any of the recipes I felt much better as it is just pure joy. I loved how it is a proper collaboration (between Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller and Tara Wigley); the intro in particular feels like a converstional exploration of what comfort food means to different people and how we define it. Is it “nurture, convenience, nostalgia, indulgence”? All of the above? How much is it tied to relationships, places, culture? Which of the senses do we engage? (All of them). I think all of us would agree that much of it is tied up with childhood memories but that new favourites can take root pretty quickly. I have felt this a lot as over the years I have eaten other people’s ideas of comfort (Shariq’s mum’s spiced eggs in spinach, laden with cream and cheese, our never the same twice fusion versions of poutine) and absorbed them into my own repertoire. Of course, one person’s comfort is another person’s complete nightmare. The most extreme example of that in my household is porridge. It’s Readybrek glow to Shariq and Adam, gag reflex for me.

I think many of us think about comfort food as the carb laden winter staples which are immensely satisfying and there is plenty of that here (stroganoff meatballs with flat noodles, lamb with butterbeans, potatoes galore, cheesy baked rice, lasagne, Dutch apple cake), but these dishes and the rest of the book are still brimming with colour and vibrancy and of course so much flavour. These are comfort foods to be wallowed in - soothing and requiring little thought or attention, you just know they are making you feel good as you eat - but they also acknowledge that colour in our food helps distract us from the grey outside and the gloom which can seep into our hearts and minds when we are deprived of light and colour. I really appreciate this - I am someone who wants all the citruses throughout the winter, to adorn my dishes with a sharp crunch of ruby pomegranates or plumped up dried cranberries and bright zingy herbs. The beige is rarely enough.

So while there are many very recognisable dishes in this book, none of the recipes feel remotely generic - they all have character of their own, a simple little tweak, a pop of colour, flavour that elevates, a contrast in texture. These are often cleverly done via the inclusion of sauces for drizzling and dipping, butters, instant pickles, sprinkles such as dukkah. This makes the dishes flexible to prepare - you can make a peanut rayu or a spice mix or you can use something bought in. Or tweak to suit yourself. It also gives you flexibility in how you eat - like eating your bowl of ramen unadorned to start with and gradually adding the chilli oil at the table as you go. This is possibly what I like best about the book - as well as being full of other people’s ideas on comfort, inspiring in itself, there are so many examples of ways to jazz up your old favourites.

In terms of pressure cooking, around three quarters of the recipes can either be cooked in their entirety or have at least one element which can be sped up by the pressure cooker. Quite a high proportion are one pot dishes too - or are easily adapted to one pot pressure cooking. You will find soups, casseroles, braises, gratins, curries, pastas, rices, pot roasts and traybakes, egg dishes such as shakshuka and steamed savoury custards all very easily convertible. Then there are all the vegetable dishes which lend themselves brilliantly to my pressure roasting method - charred brussels sprouts with chilli, tarragon, dill and preserved lemon (this was an inspired combination, eats much better than it sounds, see photo below), hawajj coated cauliflower with gribiche, roast wedges of cabbage with miso butter, carrots roast with curry leaf dukkah. A lot of these work as side dishes of course, but I really like them all scattered across a big, soothing pot of mellow beans. Some of the bakes - savoury loaves, a bottomless baked cheesecake, a bundt marble cake, a glorious malty figgy self saucing pudding will also work perfectly. I imagine most of you will be able to adapt these recipes with timings you will find in my books, but let me just remind you all if you are not sure, you can always ask.

Here are a couple of things I have cooked (besides the Brussels sprouts). First off, a soup. Judging a book by its soups is something I often find myself doing, simply because although they are frequently simple, it can be really hard to a) get decent flavour into them and b) get the balance of flavours right. I am quite hard to please. I made Roasted Aubergine, Red Pepper and Tomato Soup, starting the vegetables off in the pressure cooker, searing to get smokiness into them rather than charring in the oven/on a grill, knowing that the pressure cooker will do a good job of developing those flavours the searing has started. And it did. I then added everything else, made sure I deglazed thoroughly, then used the same method I use for all of my tomato soups. 10 mins HP, natural release, blitz. And the flavour was sweet, smokey, a good hit of saffron and - and this is important, I always have to add texture to smooth soups - the spiced, toasted flaked almonds worked brilliantly.

As you might expect, aubergines feature quite heavily in the book - my absolute favourite thing was the Tortang Talong - an aubergine omelette with a sprinkling of rose harrisa spiced lamb and a tahini sauce. For this one, instead of charring the aubergines on gas flames or griddles, I blacked them a little as above- probably for 5 minutes in total, then finished cooking them - just 2 minutes HP - in the pressure cooker. (No photo - it was woefully bad, worse than usual).

Our favourite one pot meal (so far) has been Braised Fennel and Cod with Black-Eyed Peas and Nduja butter. It was a toss up between this and a fish pie with a celeriac and white bean mash and the nduja butter won out. Obviously you can save yourself money by pressure cooking the black eyed peas instead of buying a tin - to get a tin’s worth, you need around 85g dried. Once that’s done, the dish takes no time at all. Fennel and shallots are seared and then braised for just a minute at high pressure, natural release, then the peas and fish are added and brought up to low pressure and left for a minute before releasing remaining pressure. Fennel is one of those things that has to be raw or very well cooked (but not soggy) and pressure cooking achieve that very well - just be careful as it will overcook if left to natural release. I sometimes pressure cook it with a bit of melted butter as a confit. And the combination of nduja, chipotle and Urfa chilli flakes really balanced it out.

I honestly think this is the best Ottolenghi book in a while. It does at times fall prey to the Ottolenghi tendency of super long lists of ingredients (why use 1 spice when you can use 5, something I am a bit prone to myself) , but as you can cherry pick a little and as it is often a case of assembling, this does not make the recipes feel onerous. Every book on my shelves has to earn a place these days - I have thousands of cookery books and having to implement a one in, one out policy. This one impressed me more than enough. It’s a keeper.

Thank you all for being here and reading! This is a free post, so please feel free to share with anyone who you think might like it, or will be interested in the book. And if you liked, please do click on the heart, it really helps with visibility.