When the very first Ottolenghi book came out, I had no idea what this mysterious restaurant, or person, was. But I was immediately captivated by the spectacular salads, cakes, vegetables, flatbreads, and more piled up on tables at Ottolenghi. The pictures in the book had a vibrancy that I’d not seen in any other cookbook before; mounds of vibrant-green fresh herbs piled atop salads, charred…
I’m kind of a nitwit in social situations. Consider last spring (or was it summer?), when I was at a party in New York, I met Justin Chapple. A bunch of us chatted casually over cocktails in our friend’s backyard, but I found out later he is the Mad Genius over at Food & Wine and he’s on television and all that good stuff. After I found…
My life seems to have, as they say in modern-speak (or whatever you want to call it), a “long tail.” Which means that what I do today, or did in the past, will continue to have meaning. Fortunately, that’s not true for everything (I can think of a few incidents in the past that are better left back there…), but something that’s stayed with me…
The tone was set when I let my airport pick-up in Palermo know that the entire French rail and transit system was going to be on strike the day I was set to fly to Sicily, and she replied with something along the lines of, “It’s not a trip to Sicily without a little travel chaos.” And boy, was she right. On top of the…
I don’t make risotto nearly as much as I should. I never order it in a restaurant unless I’m absolutely sure they’re going to do it right because there’s nothing worse than a not-very-good risotto. But there’s nothing better than a good one. Especially a good one with bacon in it. One night, back when I was working at Chez Panisse, Paul Bertolli, one of…
“Risotto,” of course, means it’s made with rice. But “charred wheat stew” doesn’t sound as appetizing as it actually is. So with the creative culinary expression invokable by quotation marks, I’ll allying this recipe with it’s Italian cousin, risotto, because it’s made the exact same way. And for those who don’t have freekeh, and don’t want to scope it out, can make it the traditional…
Join me on my Spring 2026 book tour for my latest book, The Great Book of Chocolate
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