Does your food smile?

Superstar (and perfectionist) chef Yotam Ottolenghi has been known to empty shelves displaying food in his delis because of the smile factor (actually, the no smile factor).

In Ottolenghi’s food world, you have to be able to taste the food before you raise your fork, as New Yorker food writer Jane Kramer put it in her lengthy 2012 profile of Ottolenghi, The Philosopher Chef.

That means the food has to be as beautiful as it smells. The senses, he says, have to work together. The food has to “smile.” That’s his aesthetic.

Little wonder, then, that his cookbooks are a feast for the eyes with gorgeous photographs of colorful and beautifully-plated food. If you are in the mood to add another cookbook to your shelves, Ottolenghi’s cookbooks include Plenty, Plenty More, Jerusalem, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook and Nopi. I own them all and I’ve spent many a happy hour thumbing through their beautiful pages for cooking inspiration.

So, who is Ottolenghi?

Simply put, Yotam Ottolenghi is hot stuff–a culinary phenomenon. He operates a number of restaurants and delis in Britain, and has won numerous accolades from, among others, the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He writes a regular food column for The Guardian. He’s cooked for the Queen, too.

Jerusalem-born Ottolenghi, didn’t start out to be a cook. Far from it. He earned degrees in philosophy and comparative literature in “the genius program” at Tel Aviv University where his master’s thesis addressed “the ontological status of the photographic image in aesthetic and analytic philosophy.” What?  (I’m going to ask my photography teacher, Al Nomura, to explain that topic at our next class.)

His cooking borrows liberally from the cuisines of the Middle East–his native Israel but also Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran as well. Some have characterized his bold cooking style as “noisy.”

Here is a recipe I’ve enjoyed from his cookbook Plenty More. Mixing fried eggplant, squash and peppers in a pungent, garlicky yogurt sauce and topping it with a chile herb oil, this dish is downright grinning.

Here is the New Yorker link:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/03/the-philosopher-chef

Recipe: Mixed Vegetables and Yogurt with Green Chile Oil

3 large plum tomatoes (each cut into four wedges)
2 medium zucchinis or yellow squash (cut into 3/4 inch chunks)
1 large eggplant (cut into 3/4 inch chunks)
2 large red peppers (seeds removed and cut into 3/4 inch chunks)
3/4 C. Greek yogurt
1 large clove of garlic (peeled and crushed)
1 T. shredded fresh mint
1 1/2 t. dried mint
1 1/2 t. lemon juice
Salt and black pepper

Chile and herb oil
1 green chile (coarsely chopped)
2/3 oz. flat-leaf parsley
1 T. chopped mint
1 t. ground cumin
1/4 C. olive oil and salt to taste

Directions:

In an oven that has been preheated to 325 degrees F., roast tomatoes that have been sprinkled with 1/4 t. salt for 40 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool.

Prepare herb oil by combining all ingredients in the bowl of your food processor with a pinch of salt. Process until you have a smooth, thick sauce. Add extra olive oil as necessary.

Pour 2 inches of a neutrally-flavored oil (canola, grape seed, sunflower) into a heavy pan. Heat until boiling. Turn heat down to medium high and fry eggplant, zucchini and red pepper in batches until the vegetables are a light brown. This will take about 12-15 minutes for each batch of vegetables. Remove from pan and place in a colander to drain. Sprinkle with salt.

Combine yogurt, garlic, fresh and dried mint, lemon juice and black pepper in a large bowl. Stir. Add vegetables and cooked tomatoes to this mixture and gently stir. Put this mixture on a platter and drizzle the herb oil on top. Serve at room temperature with fresh pita bread.

Cook’s Notes: I had trouble getting the chile oil thin enough using just 1/4 C. olive oil. I drizzled some extra olive oil on the dish before serving. I prepared this dish following the recipe from Ottolenghi’s cookbook Plenty. I have since found that a slightly different recipe has been posted online on Ottolenghi’s website. In that on-line recipe, he uses some dill in the chile oil. Sounds good. I’ll try that next time.

I’ve been making this soup for more than twenty years and it is still one of my favorites. Few things are more comforting than a steaming bowl of this lentil soup on a blustery cold day–like today, for example.

This is a pretty soup, too. Look at those beautiful chunks of carrot, celery, and tomato!  What is even better is that lentils also are good for us.  Rich in fiber and protein, lentils have the second highest ratio of protein to calories after soybeans.

There are many types and colors of lentils. This soup recipe introduced me to orange lentils and these delicate, fast-cooking lentils have become an important ingredient in my cooking ever since. Sometimes I just throw a handful of orange lentils into the soup pot with other vegetable soups. It gives the soups an extra boost of protein and flavor and thickens the broth.

Grown mostly in Turkey, India and Canada, lentils are the seed of a small shrub. Orange lentils, my personal favorite, have a mild flavor, don’t need to be soaked, cook up quickly (usually in an hour or less)  and are increasingly available in mainstream supermarkets. If you live near an Indian community as I do with Little India in Artesia, you can buy large bags of beautiful orange lentils at a very reasonable price. On the other hand, many health food stores, like Huntington Beach’s Mother’s Market, carry organic orange lentils.

Don’t take my word for the greatness of lentils. People have been eating (and enjoying) lentils for a very long time. Food historian Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking, writes that lentils are probably the world’s oldest cultivated legume with archeological digs finding evidence that the first lentils were consumed in Central Asia somewhere between 9,000 to 13,000 years ago. Throughout history, lentils have captured  the attention of cooks. Lentils have been discovered in Egyptian tombs. They were glorified by Greek playwright Aristophanes who labeled them “the sweetest of delicacies,” and their unadorned consumption was mandated by the French Revolution’s  Robespierre who characterized their consumption as an act of patriotism. (By the way, Robespierre got a whole lot of stuff wrong and lost his head in the process. Don’t let his churlish dictates cause you to pass up the opportunity to prepare lentils with a glorious abundance of spice and an array of complementary ingredients.)

I can’t credit the original source of this recipe. All I have is a hand-written recipe in my cooking notebook with an enthusiastic notation: “This is excellent!” I do remember that the original recipe did not contain tomatoes, but, over the years, I’ve become very fond of this soup with the addition of diced tomatoes.

Recipe: Egyptian Lentil Soup

4 T. butter or olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 stalks celery (with leafy tops), chopped

2 carrots, chopped

1 t. whole cumin seeds

1 1/2 C. orange lentils

8 C. water or vegetable broth

1 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes (or equivalent of fresh tomatoes in season)

Salt and pepper to taste

Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon

Directions:

Melt butter in a soup pot (or heat olive oil). Saute onion, celery and carrot until the vegetables begin to soften. Add 1 t. whole cumin to the vegetables as they saute. Add lentils, water or stock and diced tomatoes. Simmer covered for one to one and a half hours. Season with lemon, salt and pepper. Serve and enjoy. Garnish with chopped parsley or chopped cilantro.