Yotam Ottolenghi sources comfort food recipes from around the world

With game-changing, low-lift recipes as well as recipes you can spend an afternoon making, Ottolenghi Comfort presents creative dishes that are comfortable to cook and eat. In more than 100 recipes, Yotam Ottolenghi — and co-authors Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller, and Tara Wigley — bring together childhood memories and travels around the world, celebrating food and friends and the connections they build together.

A bowl of pasta becomes Caramelized Onion Orecchiette with Hazelnuts & Crispy Sage. A warming soup is Cheesy Bread Soup with Savoy Cabbage & Cavolo Nero. Potatoes are transformed into Garlicky Aligot Potato with Leeks & Thyme. In Ottolenghi Comfort, they tackle everything from crepes to hummus, lamb meatloaf to quick ramen, savory rugelach to chocolate mousse.

Evan Kleiman: We've talked to so many members of the Ottolenghi team over the years, but Verena, we've never had the good fortune to have you during the conversation before. You're the development chef at Yotam Ottolenghi. I have so many questions. How long have you been working there? What does your job involve? And did you start at the top or did you work your way up?

Verena Lochmuller: Ooh, lots of questions. I've been with the company about nine years and at the test kitchen, I would say, six years? It'll be six years this November.

Yotam Ottolenghi: Who's counting?

Verena Lochmuller: Yeah, I've been at the test kitchen for about six years. I work with the team here developing recipes and I also kind of head up our quality assurance and product development.

Evan Kleiman: Oh, how fun.

Verena Lochmuller: Yeah, lots of fun stuff.

Evan Kleiman: Before we started recording, the two of you, while you were waiting for us to get our stuff together here in the studio, you were chatting about R&D about a particular dish. It was really fascinating. You were talking about everything from how something should be sliced to how it should appear in a photograph.

Verena Lochmuller: It was a butternut squash thing that I'm working on at the moment, sort of a bake, very comforting. We're just trying to figure out how to bring the Ottolenghi angle. Maybe it's the way that we cut the vegetable, the butternut squash, in this case, and also how we present it. We always try and think of everything,

Yotam Ottolenghi: The dish is a spoiler because it's going to be published in the future but I'm sure nobody's listening. We have the butternut squash. It's all one bake. There's a mixture of nduja and grated tomatoes and olive oil and some sweet spices, like allspice and cinnamon. It's roasted together in these beautiful juices and then at the end, Verena added Taleggio cheese and some crumbs.

Verena Lochmuller: A garlicky za'atar panko breadcrumb topping. Really yummy but we're in an enclosed space right now and I can feel the garlic.

Evan Kleiman: Yotam, who else worked on this book?

Yotam Ottolenghi: It's a four-author book, so Verena and myself and then there's Helen Goh and Tara Wigley, who is a long-term collaborator. Everybody has been working at Ottolenghi for many years. Helen grew up in Malaysia to a Chinese family then she moved to Australia. Verena grew up between Germany and Scotland. I'm saying all these things because it's really important to this book. 

When we started working on this book, we didn't even call it comfort. We really wanted to create a book of recipes that represent what we like cooking at home or what is the kind of food that is the most immediate and nostalgic and yummy that we can think of for the domestic setting. 

It was quite challenging because when you think about comfort, it's so culture-dependent and also very individual. What did you have when you were growing up at home? What we realized is that we had so much to offer together, in terms of our individual histories, that it became something which is, on one hand, eclectic and, on the other hand, makes complete sense to us because it's the food that we love eating when we're at home.

Evan Kleiman: I was thinking as I started to page through the book that you must have had to define the word comfort at some point in the project. I'm curious about how memory and nostalgia are part of the recipe.

Verena Lochmuller: For all of us, it's different things, right? Comfort means different things for people. I think the common thread that we had running through was memories of childhood, first and foremost, or memorable meals that we had in a particular place that brought a memory or with the people that we were with, and then cooking those recipes with other people, so they kind of travel and taking on each other's comfort food. For example, there's a dish there, a cheese ball lemon rice that Yotam cooks for his kids. We made it for the book and I now cook it at home. We've just taken these things on.

Yotam Ottolenghi: When we were talking about different dishes, sometimes it felt like, Helen has these incredible Asian rice and noodle dishes that seem so particular to her, but I've traveled to Malaysia with Helen years ago, and I kind of feel that Malaysian food has become my comfort food as well. I can have a nasi goreng at any time. I think there is both a particularity but also a universality when it comes to comfort food. 

Verena Lochmuller: That actually is a really good point. Helen did this lovely congee for the book. I'd heard of congee and I'd maybe had it a couple of times but I think that's a perfect example of, I don't need to be from that part of the world or have traveled to that part of what to understand that it was inherently comforting when you eat it. It just is. There's no two ways about it. 

Yotam Ottolenghi: It's an emotional reaction. 

Verena Lochmuller: Yeah, it's an emotional reaction. Definitely.

Yotam Ottolenghi: A lot of people have this fixed idea about comfort where it has to be potato-y and stodgy or pasta-y, etc. It's none of the above. It's actually what triggers you and gives you the sense of happiness and comfort.

Evan Kleiman: For me, I often think it's something that's just so delicious that you turn to it again and again and it becomes comforting through sheer repetition.

Yotam Ottolenghi: It's so true, isn't it? I mean, one of the things that I think — the world has become so uncertain and so nerve-inducing. First of all, because of the situation in the world, and also because of how much we are glued to devices that direct... the kitchen is the only place that offers that grounding. The repetition is actually... I think of how people used to cook maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and I think people were really pushing themselves to try new cuisines, new ideas, and there's a lot of room for that still. But I also find that people now go to the kitchen as the place where they get reassurance. Rather than push themselves, they go back into something that is just easy and comforting and joyful. That's why we really wanted to bring that book out, because it celebrates that kind of certainty and rootedness.

Verena Lochmuller: Regardless of what's going on in the world around you, it's in the kitchen that you find that comfort and that control, right? You choose what to cook and when to cook it and who to eat it with, and that brings that reassurance and that sense of comfort

Evan Kleiman: So true, that combination of repetition and control. Let's talk about some of the specific recipes. Meatloaf, of course, is a diner favorite here in the States, and is synonymous with comfort. What's your take on this childhood classic and mom go-to?

Verena Lochmuller: It's a bit like the conversation you overheard at the beginning. We always try and think of how to present it and we present it in a skillet, rather than a loaf, which is the more well-known version. Then, we combined the flavors of a shawarma and added some bulgur wheat to bulk it up so it wasn't that meat-heavy and then all those delicious spices and then a lovely topping with pomegranate caramelized onions, which makes it very Moorish.

Yotam Ottolenghi: It's kind of got these Middle Eastern flavors, which take sweet spices and add something else that's a bit sweet, like the onion, and that stands up really well against the lamb. Also, what makes it special for me, is the skillet, like you mentioned. You just cut a wedge, like a slice of cake. 

Verena Lochmuller: It feels celebratory.

Evan Kleiman: I love that. I want to ask about a pasta cooking method I've noticed. There is a dead simple recipe for caramelized onion orecchiette with hazelnuts and crispy sage with a squeeze of lemon. I see myself making this dish a million times. I can't believe I've never combined hazelnuts and orecchiette before but the pasta is added to the saute pan in which you've done the sage and the onions, and then enough water is added for the pasta to cook and all the water to be absorbed. In years past, the recipe would have read "cook the pasta in abundant salted water, drain, then add to the pan." Talk to me about this change and why you decided to make the dish that way.

Verena Lochmuller: For simplicity. Well, two reasons. This was actually our colleague Chaya's initial recipe, which we took on. It uses one pan, which is great. Less washing up. And also, the starches will absorb all the flavors that were in the pan before you added the pasta and the water. So all those caramelized onions that have been cooking, the sage that was fried off in there first, it's silkier somehow, don't you agree, Yotam?

Yotam Ottolenghi: I agree.

Verena Lochmuller: The pasta has a silky texture and it is just so much more flavorful. It's really quite a game changer, I think. 

Yotam Ottolenghi: I've cooked a few recipes over the last few years in which the pasta is actually cooked with whatever flavors they are in, so it's not pre-cooked and then added. It doesn't work all the time. It depends on what you're making. But some sauces, especially if there's that separatedness of ingredients and the liquid is just absorbed by the pasta, I wouldn't, like traditional tomato sauce doesn't always necessarily work for that. I think it's hard to get this right, probably a bit more challenging. But in this particular case, it just works so nicely. You do get a different quality because of the emulsification that happens in the pan as everything is reduced and cooked together.

Verena Lochmuller: Like risotto, actually. It's not far off. It's stirring and it absorbs the liquid like a risotto would.

Evan Kleiman: Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. [Using] one's hands and bowls signifies a more relaxed style of eating that we often do when we're eating something we've eaten a million times before. Can you each share favorite recipes that call for either hands or bowls?

Verena Lochmuller: It's a no-brainer for me — anything with pastry. I love working with pie dough. For instance, the potato and chermoula hand pies. For me, there's something very soothing and grounding about rolling and touching and shaping dough that's just the right temperature. And with that dusting of flour, it feels like you're striking a horse's nose, if anyone's ever done that. For me, it's a very tactile and pleasurable thing. I love it so much.

Yotam Ottolenghi: I love eating with my hands. There is another pastry recipe for a breakfast that really takes me back to my childhood. We had in Jerusalem, when I was growing up, a lot of places where you would buy breakfast. Some of them, we would buy the breakfast already with a circular nest shape. It would be a coil, like a snake, and then you'd have a hard boiled egg on top. You'd buy them both together, peel the egg, and eat it with the cheesy breakfast. It's one of those incredibly satisfying experiences that really takes me back to childhood. It's a completely hand operation. It would look ridiculous if you tried to use any cutlery with that. I love that. A lot of the street foods in Jerusalem, and all over the world, are eaten by hand, and it just adds so much to the sense of comfort.

Verena Lochmuller: Yeah, licking your fingers at the end.

Evan Kleiman: It's just the best.