After a long day at work, even Yotam Ottolenghi sometimes reaches for a can of tomato sauce.
The famed British-Israeli chef based in London, England, has 13 delis and restaurants across the United Kingdom and Europe, as well as more than a dozen cookbooks. His style is rooted in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern traditions, and he previously worked with Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi.
Still, Ottolenghi is not above taking a shortcut when he’s tired and the kids are hungry.
He is currently on his North American book tour for “Simple Too” — his newest cookbook of easy recipes that can be ready in less than 30 minutes, available in Canada on Oct. 6.
Ottolenghi spoke with the Star ahead of his stop at Roy Thomson Hall on Oct. 4 to talk about simple cooking, his advice for tired cooks and the politics of what we eat.
You have thousands of recipes by now. What’s different about the ones in “Simple Too”?
My co-author Verena Lochmuller and I tried to create recipes that are easy for home cooks.
For example, there is a recipe called “The One Sauce,” which involves roasting tomatoes with olive oil, garlic and herbs, then letting it cook. You can squeeze out all the wonderful garlic and it enriches the sauce. There are similar recipes that call for just three ingredients.
The book is full of those solutions for the day-to-day — something you can put in and forget about until it’s ready.
What’s your best advice for people who are too tired to cook?
Do not aim too high. Use shortcuts like a jar of beans, spice mixes, marinades, or chili crisp … Things that do the hard work for you. Then, all you have to do is grill your fish or roast your vegetables. Aiming lower is better than not cooking at all.
Do you take cooking shortcuts in your everyday life as a professional chef?
Yes, totally. When I come home from work and the kids are hungry, I am very happy to get a can of tomato sauce from my cupboard. I would rather make everything from scratch, but I do not always have the inclination.
So was it challenging or more natural to come up with simple recipes?
Increasingly, I find it less and less challenging. Sometimes you want to add and add, but the great challenge is peeling away the layers and still having something interesting in the mouth. I’m happy to find those solutions for people, because I also use them myself.
What’s your go-to recipe after a long day?
I do a take on baked rice most often. As soon as I come home, I soak some rice then cook it with some aromatics, like a cinnamon stick. Sometimes I add vegetables. It’s a wonderful base on which you can do anything.
You mentioned rice as one of your go-to foods. Are there any foods you particularly associate with Canada?
I’m not going to be original, but maple syrup. It’s an ingredient I use so much. Otherwise, Canada has wonderful ingredients. Every time I come, depending on where I am, I have great seafood. Great beef, too. You’ve got this amazing food culture, and I love it.
There’s been a push to buy local and eat local in Canada because of the tariff situation with the United States. How can food and recipes serve as symbols of national pride?
I always try to find what’s particular to a region. What grows in that specific area, what immigrants often cook there … I always find the most incredible things. I do not look at food so much on a national level, because I realize how diverse that is.
Food has always been political, but especially Israeli and Palestinian food. One of your most popular books, “Jerusalem,” written with Tamimi, explores cuisine from your shared hometown. You’ve said before that food is borderless. Is that still your understanding?
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, food is a very touchy subject. I try to be sensitive and understand what each side has to say. I would not say it’s borderless in the sense that it does not matter, but I think food is borderless in that it travels between regions. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes as part of a conflict.
If I come across a dish or cooking technique that I don’t know of, I try to understand it and tell its story.
Ahead of your Toronto event, what’s your favourite part of these public discussions about food?
Everybody knows what it feels like to burn something, feel the stress of putting together a dinner party and feel rejected when someone does not want to eat your food. These are wonderful commonalities, so I love to explore those.
When I travel, sometimes I collect “kitchen confessions” where people send me some story of when they cheated in cooking or something embarrassing happened in the kitchen. As soon as that’s on the table, you can talk about anything.
What’s your most embarrassing kitchen confession?
I have so many. I wanted to impress a potential investor and I went with a dish based on a Greek meal called shrimp saganaki, where you put shrimp in a tomato and feta sauce to cook. I prepared the sauce with all the spices, and I put in the feta and the herbs, et cetera. Then I opened the fridge, and I couldn’t find the shrimp!
Three weeks later, I discovered them in my car. I could never get the smell out. So that is my kitchen confession.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
