Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

Have dashed through the book and marked many, many recipes to try. First impressions ...

• Lots of wasted space. Pages and pages lost to photographs, full page pics of dishes (of minor use) and other food-related stuff (of no use at all). I have the feeling that something like 1/4 of the pages are photographs. No wonder the book is so expensive!
• Way too many recipes for sweets in relation to real food.
• This is clearly not a book aimed at beginning cooks, but there are overly detailed instructions for things like peeling tomatoes which you probably already know how to do. Weird.
• Font is difficult to read. Will update comments after cooking from this a bit.

I love this book!

Not only does Mr. Ottolenghi have a way with vegetarian food, as seen in the book Plenty, but his talent and that of his partner extends to non-vegetarian mains and baked goods as well. After making only a dozen recipes, all of which turned out well, some have already become family favourites…...lamb with coriander and honey, turkey with cumin. The layered flourless chocolate cake is to die for and I want to put the mascarpone cream on every dessert I make!

I’ve just discovered that a North American-friendly version is being released in fall 2013 but I’m not sorry I bought this one as I’m used to working with the metric system and weighing ingredients.

This is definitely my go-to-cookbook. Lot's of vegetarian dishes you can either serve as a side or a main dish, always with an interesting take on common or rarely-used ingredients. Some of them use slightly more exotic ingredients or are slightly complicated, but it's never more than 'slightly' complicated - some you can even whizz up in a few minutes! Brilliant book!

This is the book out of my entire collection that I'm the most satisfied with. Luscious salads and innovative ideas.