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| Food outdoors. It's so rustic and charming. |
A while back I received a very generous gift of two Ottolenghi cookbooks, Plenty and, in case that weren't enough, Plenty More. It's basically food porn thinly disguised as recipes.
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| Dammit, Yotam, real foods can never look like your foods. |
Plenty, in particular, has an entire section of eggplants, and the sequel has (you guessed it) plenty more. But unfortunately I haven't used these books extensively because almost every recipe contains random weird ingredients that I can't find anywhere.
Raise your hand if your pantry contains:
- scamorza affumicata
- barberries
- preserved lemons
- pandan leaves
- kaffir lime leaves
- curry leaves
- tamarind paste (phew, I have that)
- pomegranate molasses (phew, I have that)
- za'atar (phew, I have that)
- nigella seeds (ugh, I don't have those)
- membrillo (seriously, now? just stop)
Granted, I know roughly where I might buy these things, but special stores are all 20 miles away. So while I love drooling over the cookbooks, the recipes themselves are not always easy to pull together. Even a simple salad leaves a big carbon footprint when you have to commute for the pandan leaves.
That's why I was excited to discover the eggplant tricolore salad, complete with normal ingredients!
I think reproducing the recipe here might constitute some kind of copyright violation. Suffice it to say that roasted eggplants are topped with [REDACTED] tomatoes, peppers, capers, marinated in a light [REDACTED], topped with buffalo [REDACTED] and fresh [REDACTED].
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| RE-the-effin-DACTED |
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| Color me hungry. |
Update 7/18:
BREAKING NEWS
I made three more Ottolenghi recipes from these cookbooks and they all turned out great. So maybe take my complaints about weird ingredients with a grain of salt. (An expression that also evokes the over-specificity of his instructions... but really, I'm a fan. I'm finally convinced.)
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| More food outdoors! 2 of 3 new recipes I made. |
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| You oughta lenghi. |
1) beautiful; 2) looks awfully yummy; 3) you are so funny. I realize since I'm your (redacted) that compliment doesn't matter much, but keep in mind I formed my concept of funny on Twain, Waugh, Wodehouse, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you, you're very kind! Whoever you are. (Ha. Haha.)
ReplyDeleteI actually do agree that my banya link is among my shining comic moments. It's my first time linking to a specific moment in a YouTube video and this changes everything forever.
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