I feel bad for vegetarians. I think they need a superhero. For those of us who eat meat, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of cookbooks out there just for chicken. Since we need to come up with new and interesting dishes for dinner every night, cookbook authors offer up every conceivable option for meat they can come up with—roasted, fried, braised, sauteed, grilled, and so on. Imagine that many cookbooks out there for kale, or for cauliflower. They just don’t exist yet.
Well, put a cape on Yotam Ottolenghi, because he is a superhero for vegetarian and vegan cooks. He is doing everything he can think of to add interest and flavor to vegetables. His cookbooks are a love letter to the taste and texture of vegetables, and his latest, Flavor, is his strongest missive to date.
In Flavor, Ottolenghi, along with his test kitchen chefs Ixta Belfrage and Tara Wigley, focus on 3 Ps: process, pairing, and produce. Add in his homemade condiments (aka his secret weapons: flavor bombs), and you can find vegetable recipes for main dishes, sides, and even desserts for the most vegetable-averse out there.
We start with process, meaning a way of cooking a vegetable that brings out the most flavor. For this, he focuses on four processes: charring, browning, infusing, and aging. Charring bumps up the taste of dishes like Calvin’s Grilled Peaches and Runner Beans, Herb and Charred Eggplant Soup, and Slow-Cooked Charred Green Beans. Whereas browning adds depth and color to the Hasselback Beets with Lime Leaf Butter, Celery Root Steaks with Cafe de Paris Sauce, Curried Carrot Mash with Brown Butter, and Lime and Coconut Potato Gratin.
Garlic-infused olive oil adds extra flavor to the White Bean Mash with Garlic Aioli. The Pappa al Pomodoro with Lime and Mustard Seeds gets its unique taste from an olive oil infused with chilis, curry leaves, and mustard seeds. And the Black Beans with Coconut, Chile, and Lime are also infused with garlic to add an extra burst of savory satisfaction. An aged miso butter adds a level of depth to the Rutabaga Gnocchi with Miso Butter, miso and wine add the complexity of aged flavors to The Ultimate Roasting-Pan Ragu, and parmesan adds a new level to the Spring Vegetables in Parmesan Broth with Charred Lemon Sauce.
Pairings of ingredients can also add depth of taste, from adding sweetness to the Butternut, Orange and Sage Galette to adding acidity to Rainbow Chard with Tomatoes and Green Olives. Adding fat can add flavor to Kimchi and Gruyere Rice Patties, and chili heat can add pungency to the Spicy Berbere Ratatouille with Coconut Sauce.
Produce shows the way to bring out the best in your vegetables, by adding the umami of mushrooms, the magic of onions and garlic, the texture of nuts and seeds, and the sugar in fruit and alcohol. The Spicy Mushroom Lasagne, Dirty Rice, Radish and Cucumber Salad with Chipotle Peanuts, or Tangerine and Ancho Chile Flan can demonstrate this with ease.
Yotam Ottolenghi has long been known as the chef who can make vegetables sing. Flavor takes that melody he started in Plenty, the harmony he added in Plenty More, and added orchestration to his dishes in Flavor.
That being said, I would not suggest these recipes for beginning cooks. These dishes are elevated and elegant, the equivalent of meals from a four-star restaurant, and the ingredients he uses as his go-tos are hard to find on the shelves of many local American grocery stores. These are intermediate to expert dishes, with the refinements that come from many years of cooking. But there is nothing wrong with getting the cookbook to read and aspire to, trying one of the simpler recipes to add a dramatic flair to a holiday dinner or dinner party, and then working up to the more complicated recipes.
And those who are looking to elevate their vegetarian or vegan cooking will definitely find new ideas that can expand their cooking horizons and inspire new levels of taste and texture. The gorgeous photos used liberally throughout the entire book will entice and encourage all readers to try new recipes for their meat-free nights or side dishes.
A copy of Flavor was provided by Ten Speed Press for an unbiased review, with many thanks.
