Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam Ottolenghi is an interesting guy.  He moved from Israeli journalist to London restauranteur--an unusual career trajectory, but maybe his profound professional flexibility is the key.  This cookbook he wrote a couple of years ago is really a gorgeous coffee table worthy book.  It is so beautiful that I have really failed to appreciate fully how wonderful it is in terms of recipes and its ability to be inspirational.

I went to  dinner at The Lincoln Cafe, in Mount Vernon, Iowa (a real gem--if you are driving across Iowa on I-80, you need to make a special detour to experience the magic that chef Matt Steigerwald can create in a small Iowa town).  It is a favorite local restaurant and we managed to get our extended clan to accompany us to a dinner that he did inspired by this cookbook.

So I went home, took the cookbook off my shelf and looked at it again.  I had given his newer cookbook, 'Jerusalem', to a friend of mine and she subsequently served me an eggplant dish that looks similar to the eggplant on the cover of this book--stunning to look at and sublime to eat.  At the dinner I went to we had an eggplant salad, which consisted of relatively large pieces of cooked eggplant, greens, and pomegranite seeds in a pomegrantie molasses dressing.  It was simple, sweet, crunchy, tangy, and the eggpant has a wonderful mouth feel that is hard to get with any other vegetable.

The cookbook is arranged by main ingredient, and the recipes, while often a bit long on the ingredient list, are easy to follow, and the pictures of how the food should look when you are done with it abound.  I like that reassurance that I am indeed on the right track wehn I am cooking.  I highly recommend this book, especially if you want to expand your elegant and flavorful vegetable side dish repertoir.