So the other day when I was at home for the weekend we started to discuss who would be the best chef to work for. Personally I am completely obsessed with any food that Ottolenghi makes, it's even starting to get a little embarrassing how much I talk about his recipes and every time I go to London, no matter how little money I have (credit card...), I always try to go to Ottolenghi in Islington. Every time I see a picture of the food in the recipe books (Ottolenghi or Plenty) I go into some sort of food reverie and wish I could work for one of the restaurants. The food is so ridiculously pretty and better still tastes even more beautiful than it looks. Last night for instance I made two recipes out of the self-titled 'Ottolenghi' book; Cauliflour fritters and the sweet potato, pecan and maple salad. After later looking up the sweet potato recipe to see if it was online, I came across it on their website http://www.ottolenghi.co.uk/recipes/roasted-sweet-potato-with-pecan-maple HOWEVER the photo on here does not do it justice!
The picture surprisingly makes it look quite dull relative to how amazingly colourful it looked in real life! This warm salad has to be one of the most fragrant side dishes I've eaten in a long time, with the dressing of maple, orange + lemon juice, sherry vinegar (I improvised with a mixture of raspberry vinegar and rice vinegar) and oil suprisingly complimenting the potatoes, pecans, sultanas, coriander and parsley. I was initially worried that it would be too sweet but somehow by some sort of magic it isn't. I wonder how this recipe was thought out?
Furthermore the cauliflour fritters with their delicately spiced flavour were surprisingly filling (recipe not online!) and went perfectly with the accompanying sauce (300g greek yoghurt, zest of 1 lime, 2tbsp lime juice, 2 tbsp coriander, 2 tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper). I served this to my family with a side salad of mixed leaves with cubed cucumber and plenty of chopped mint mixed in (making it a very fresh accompaniment). I wish I could eat like this every day and experience the joys of being home and having more expensive ingredients.
I could not recommend Ottolenghi cooking books more to people, they have the most beautiful pictures in them that even people who don't like cooking could appreciate. I really have found these recipes to be the most inspiring I've come across in the past few years. Although enough of my outpouring (it's getting a little much I know) I will now talk about my views on Heston Blumenthal.
Now everybody knows Heston to be a wacky food scientist, and it was for this reason my mum suggested that in our fictional 'who would I like to work for conversation' maybe I would be on his wavelength (I love food, I study science etc.) and I definitely admire his creativity. However after watching 'Heston's Roman Feast' last night I came to realise my outlook was rather different. Whilst preparing an intriguing array of cleverly crafted food, I still don't think I can get to grips with being comfortable eating calf brain (BSE/prion diseases anyone?) and I wasn't so sure of his cooking of a pig in a jacuzzi (seems a bit twisted) although still novel/innovative. I definitely respect his ability to challenge the norm but this poor pig had probably gone through enough that cooking it in a glittering pool of light was a bit macabre. Also restuffing the pig with fake intestines to create a reaction (though of course it was a Roman feast) did make me feel a little ill. Perhaps I'm becoming too sensitive.
One thing I did love though (apart from the name) was the ejaculating pudding; after watching the chefs blow up a cake tower Heston then managed to create a reaction between the custard and the inside of the cake to create a frothing bubbling dessert. I definitely loved this and given how much I've always enjoyed Chemistry it is definitely my sort of thing (who doesn't secretly like experiments that blow things up?). The question is what would it be like to work for Heston? Overall I think it would definitely be intriguing and maybe even enlightening but would I want to eat my scientific creations? If anyone would care to take me to the Fat Duck however I would be more than willing.
I would love to work for both Ottolenghi and Heston just to see how different their approaches are, but day-to-day I'll take the sweet potatoes over the brains....
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