David: Congrats on OKT Shelf Love! I have to say, I'm such a big fan of yours. Every recipe you create and share online is something I want to eat. I have really been looking forward to this book – can you tell me some more about it?
Noor: Thank you! Even though I have been in the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen for some time, this is my first time as an author, so it's all very exciting. The book came together during lockdown, where we've all become more used to cooking with what we have at home – and that's really the essence of this book. All recipes include one or a few pantry items that most of us always keep at home, like a bag of dried lentils, a sack of onions, a jar of butterbeans, a few wonky looking vegetables or some polenta. Ingredients with so much potential that often are forgotten. And we wanted to show how to make them shine in new ways and how to create wonderful meals with simple ingredients.
D: Is that how you cook at home, simple pantry meals, or are you more into more elaborate meals?
N: I do enjoy simple dishes a lot, but I've got loads of jars of dukkah, za'atar, pickled onions, chilli paste and so on, on my shelves to make dishes interesting. You can make something as simple as fried eggs really fantastic with pickled onions on top and a sprinkle of dukkah.
D: One thing I really love about your recipes is that they are so vegetable-centred. Most people make a point of a dish being vegetarian, but it seems so natural to you to turn to vegetables in almost everything you make. What is your relationship to vegetables?
N: I grew up in the Middle East and so much food there is centred on vegetables. Sure, we cook with meat as well, but it's expensive. Therefore it's more of a weekend thing, whereas vegetables, fruit and legumes are always the base and more what we eat and cook during weekdays. So, cooking with vegetables has always been very natural to me .
D: How do you create your recipes? Where do you start?
N: Well, we eat with our eyes, so I often start graphically. I decide on a vegetable and think: "How can I make this courgette taste amazing and look stunning so no one can resist cooking the recipe?"
D: That's surprising to me! Your recipes are so flavour-driven, I assumed you worked with flavour first and that they just kind of happened to look good?
N: Flavour is always the focus, but you know, there are so many great tasting dishes in the Middle Eastern cuisine, that are actually really ugly. Like courgette cooked for a long time until it smells amazing, but have lost all colour, and then is mixed with meat so it's all just brown on brown. A fantastic tasting dish, but really hard to sell. So I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can make it look good – topping it with some shiny pink onions, red chilli, fresh herbs, or chopped pistachios. Or plating it differently to make it prettier.
D: Speaking of plating; this is something you and the Test Kitchen team do in your own special way – often working in layers. In Scandinavia, it's traditional to place all the elements in little sections on a plate. I think many, including myself, have started plating more like you after having seen all the beautiful Ottolenghi dishes.
N: I do really love to work in layers, when I create a recipe. You know, you want something creamy in there and something with more crunch, and you need to balance the salty with some tanginess and also adding a little sweetness. And when you plate in layers, you can just stick your fork into the dish and get all those flavours and textures in each bite.
D: What's your favourite vegetable to cook with right now?
N: It's not my favourite vegetable, but I'm cooking with swede at the moment. I'm working on a recipe, where I'm trying to roast it whole with a chestnut crumble and miso gravy for a Christmas feature. I think, if we treat vegetables like meat, we can get surprisingly great results.
D: I've also been roasting cauliflower and roots whole, but my problem is, when it's cut open and time to dig in, I always think it lacks flavour in the middle and would be better roasted as wedges instead. What's your trick?
N: I agree, getting flavour into the middle is the tricky part. I'm going to try submerging it in a salt brine first, which might give it more flavour. But also just letting it roast for a long time so the middle gets all soft.
D: I'm curious to know a little bit more about your role in the test kitchen in terms of working with Yotam and the Ottolenghi brand, while maintaining your own personal style of cooking?
N: We are pretty small and tight-knit team and my role is Head of the Test Kitchen. I make sure we got recipes going for all the different projects we're working on – New York Times, The Guardian, restaurants, Masterclass, books, and more. Yotam is there as often as he can and also cooks a lot, but he is very generous with giving us space, so we get to work on an idea or a recipe from start to finish. So it really feels like we are doing our own thing. And often, when we are stuck with a recipe, we lean on each other for help and can ask: "I really like this sauce, but I don't know what to pair it with?"
D: I have noticed that Yotam is also very generous in crediting you guys all the time, which feels pretty unique?
N: Yes, definitely. You know, most great chefs have staff or a test kitchen working for them, but never talks about it. Yotam has always been super transparent with things like that, which we're all very grateful for.
