Test Kitchen: Extra Extra Good by Yotam Ottolenghi

For a limited time we have copies of this book signed by Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi, who visited us on their whirlwind trip to the US.

This vegetable-intensive book offers highly-flavored food developed for home kitchens but consistent with the style of the wildly popular London restaurants. Middle Eastern ingredients predominate, but since a hallmark of the Ottolenghi approach is an exciting twist to the familiar, there are plenty of crossovers from other cuisines.

For example:

• Kohlrabi with tonnato sauce
• Broccolini with peanut gochujang dressing
• Butternut squash pie with pickled chiles
• Chicken wings with banana ketchup
• Slow-cooked lamb with fig and pistachio salsa

This is definitely not a book in which you’ll find recipes you feel you’ve seen many times online.

The book’s endsheets fold out to offer further ideas for combining the recipes in different ways, suggesting those which, for instance, are vegan or kid-friendly, go well on toast, pasta, or rice, or have a wow-factor that makes them good for parties.

Like most Ottolenghi books, this one works best when you have a very well-stocked pantry or the time to do some specialty shopping. But it’s hard to beat the freshness and range of the ideas.