Ep 179: Yotam Ottolenghi

James, huge news from the world of off-menu and indeed the world of the world.

Yes.

Ever heard of the Royal Albert Hall?

I have.

We've done live shows there.

And guess what?

We're doing more live shows there next year.

Sure, a lot of them are sold out already.

But we thought, hey, throw these guys a bone.

Let's put on one final Royal Albert Hall show in that run.

The show will be on Monday, the 16th of March.

It's going to be a tasting menu, a returning guest coming back, receiving the menu of another previous guest.

Those shows have been a lot of fun.

We cannot wait to do them live.

Who will we pull out of our little magic bag?

You'll have to come along on the 16th of March to find out.

If I'm correct in thinking, presale tickets go on pre-sale on the 10th of September.

Pre-sale tickets are 10th of September at 10 a.m.

And then the general sale is 12th of September at 10 a.m.

So if you miss out on the pre-sale, don't forget general sale is only two days later.

The day in between is for reflecting.

Get your tickets from royalalberthall.com Hall.com or offmenupodcast.co.uk.

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Welcome to the Off-Menu Podcast, cracking open the coconut of conversation and pouring out the human milk from within.

Hello James.

Hello Ed Gamble.

My name is James Acaster.

Together we own a dream restaurant.

We invite a guest in every single week and we ask them their favourite ever starter main course dessert, side dish and drink.

Not in that order.

And this week, our guest is Yotam Otalengi.

Yotam Otterlengi, a wonderful chef.

Superstar chef.

General chef and foods superstar, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

He's got so many...

I mean, there are people who are massive Otterlengi fans who'd be very excited about this episode.

People really fascinated with.

Well,

how he comes up with recipes.

Like,

his restaurants are amazing as well.

I'm sure a lot of people want to hear about it.

His books?

Yeah.

I read them like books, James.

Like actual books.

Like a novel.

Like a novel.

Oh, my God.

The guy's fantastic.

Speaking of which, he's got a new book out.

He's got a new book out, of course, the Ottolengi Test Kitchen, Extra Good Things.

It's the second in the series of the Ottolengi Test Kitchen books.

This is really interesting.

I've had a look through it.

It's incredible recipes, like always, but then they've all got like a condiment or a little extra twist that you can then take and use on other things.

This is great, because

that gets you properly thinking like a chef, right?

Gets you thinking like a chef, like there's some like sprinkle stuff that you do, like an everything seasoning on one of the dishes.

Then you can take that and put it on eggs.

Great.

I've actually got some everything seasoning in the cupboard.

Right.

I don't know what to put it on.

I don't think the point of the book is going, you don't need to cook anything.

You just got it in your cupboard.

Huh?

I think he means you've got to do your own in the book.

Well, I've still loaded like tips on what to put the one that I've got on.

You can put them on eggs.

Is it the one from Halen Moin?

Yes.

Yeah, but I put it on some fried eggs.

It's fucking delicious.

Great.

I'm going to do that.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Ed.

But you should absolutely go and get Otholengi's new book.

It's the Otholenge Test Kitchen, so it's Yotam himself and Noamorad and the rest of the Test Kitchen super team.

And I mean, look, smoky sweet nuts spooned onto oven fries, then used to topped hummus the next day.

It's all great, sort of...

adaptable, flexible stuff.

And we'll definitely be asking Yotam more about the book in the episode as well.

But here's the thing.

He better get that promo in pretty early because if he says the secret ingredient an ingredient which we deem to be unacceptable we will throw yotam otilenghi out of the dream restaurant and this week the secret ingredient is mild cheddar cheddar what is the point i want to taste it if i'm look people know people have seen me flip my lid about cheese on here but that doesn't mean That I prefer mild cheeses to strong cheeses.

I actually prefer the strong ones.

You've got to you got to feel it.

Yeah, what's the point of eating cheese?

Yeah, if you can't even taste it then it's just the texture and that's it it's not like the texture of cheddar is the best thing about it is it come on cheese don't pet me on the cheek pull my trousers down and put your finger up my butt yes please that's all you want put your cheesy finger up my

well i i was gonna say cheesy bee but like

i don't think my bees that cheesy no the b's not cheesy the f is cheesy yes yeah finger yeah yeah yeah yeah we need to look confused and also devastated by that entire riff also if yotomatonengi does choose Miles Cheddar, I guess we will have to say, oh, what?

You don't want a cheesy finger up your B?

Yeah.

You're telling me, Yotam Matolengi, that you don't want a cheesy F up your cheesy B?

Yeah.

What is your problem?

See you later.

Gotam becomes Gotam.

Yeah.

Get out of here.

We will be forced to say that to him.

Yeah.

And I don't want to.

No.

But if he chooses Miles Cheddar.

More like not a Lengi.

That's good.

Gotam, not a Lengi.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I hope he does pick Miles Cheddar, no?

Yeah, and and we will have to say that.

And Gareth Edwards picked Miles Cheddar, and I completely agree with you, Gareth Edwards.

I think Gareth Edwards has chose ingredients in the past.

Yeah.

It's just that, you know, we haven't turned his name into a chant or anything because it's quite a normal name.

It's quite a normal name.

Gareth Edwards, I've heard that before.

Choose Gareth.

Yeah, yeah.

Nice name, though.

Yeah, lovely name.

World record breaker, Gareth Edwards?

Triple jump?

That's Jonathan Edwards.

Gareth Edwards is a rugby player, isn't he?

Oh,

no, I'm thinking of another one.

Maybe he broke a record or two that rugby player.

So without further ado, this is the off-menu menu of Yoachi.

Yotam Ottilegi.

Welcome, Yotam, to the Dream Restaurant.

Nice to be here.

Welcome, Yotam Ottilegi to the Dream Restaurant.

We've been detecting you for some time.

Here we are.

I just had lunch and my mouth doesn't work.

What did you have?

Have you heard of Farmer Jay Finsbury?

No.

Well.

So, got some farmer grains, some chicken, and some there's a little Hispie cabbage and Miso aubergine side that they do in a chickpea salad.

So I had that in a little bit.

All the nutrients you need.

Yeah, exactly.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, miso, aubergine.

Chickpeas, you said?

Yeah, yeah, chickpeas looking a little

with some peppers and tomatoes in there.

Sounds delicious.

Yeah, I know that.

We went light and healthy for lunch because on these long record days, if we go crazy at lunch, then you can always tell them the episode.

Yeah, no, actually, I was telling you about the the tour that i'm doing with noor and um and one of the stops i can't remember where it was i thought i decided i'm gonna we were gonna have we had this big ramen bowl and i just like it wasn't the same it was just not the same it's just really if you eat something you just it just kind of just brings the energy down or something it massively does and yeah and when you're touring around you want to try places you want to try new places but it's so hard it's hard to try it's hard because you arrive you're there like you do your sound check and all that you do the thing and then it's like 10 30 or 11.

yeah and who wants to eat then right like i have this thing i was i did a tour in america recently and i just went it's what i had a different interviewer in every city and i just asked them where to eat at breakfast so i kind of changed this before i left so like i'd show up like at nine o'clock in the morning in some obscure tackle place and they go like we hear they haven't just like scratching their eyes getting the place ready and here i come like ready because it says they open at 9 30 although nobody does that's a good thing to do in america though particularly the breakfast you know that you're gonna get some good stuff.

Yeah, and also a lot of like places where they've got like a communities, particular communities like, you know, like

all the South American and Mexican and all that, often those places do a great breakfast.

And that's where you kind of want to try.

So I managed to.

In the UK, you're playing with fire breakfast-wise, because you know, you can rock up for the best breakfast.

It's going to be one of those ones on a huge platter where it's been on the front page of the Daily Mail for

having 800,000 calories in it.

I find that the more that someone boasts about how good their full English is, the worse the full English is.

Really?

It's just about the size, right?

Yeah, if they go, oh, you must have heard about it.

They get a B and B or something, and they're like, our breakfast, our full English breakfast is the best, it's gonna be horrendous.

I mean, how, how good, I mean, unless you make your own, the beans always come from a can, no?

That's just like how good can it get?

I mean, unless you go like proper, like, you know, like you cook your own beans and do your own sourdough and stuff, but that's not an English breakfast anymore, is it?

No, exactly.

Then you're talking like posh breakfast.

Yeah, Yeah, that's pretentious.

So, I mean, there's a limit to how good it could get.

I'm going to get cancelled for this.

Yeah, that's it.

Well, I agree with you.

I'll come down with you because I agree.

I completely agree.

I was getting cancelled for saying

this show.

Your careers are over.

You're saying, like, light and healthy.

That's what I would associate with a lot of your restaurants.

And like,

whenever I like want something that makes me feel like I've just eaten a nice, healthy meal, but delicious, I go to a lot of your places.

Was that like one of your the things you set out to do when you started um opening restaurants no uh i i

great question joke good question

points for the question

uh no i guess this the thing is i mean i don't think i didn't set up to do set out to do anything in a sense things just happen in a particular way but then when you look back it all makes sense i mean People eat more vegetables now, right?

Like they want to eat more vegetables.

They feel like it's the right thing to do for them, for the environment, for a whole lot of reasons.

But for me, like when Sammy and I started Tolango, this is our, we're celebrating 20 years this year,

started in 2002.

Thank you.

It was just all about what we wanted, we knew looked great, tasted great, kept well

on the display, you know, like all these things that look good.

So it was a little bit opportunistic, but also what we ended up, we loved cooking and eating back home in Jerusalem when we were growing up.

It's a very vegetable focused kind of environment.

So it made a lot of sense.

You're both nodding at me like.

No, no, no, no, I'm loving it.

I'm there.

Yeah, yeah.

And also, I was thinking about, so Rovi's one of my favorite restaurants, just full stop.

I love going there

whenever I can.

And I was just thinking about the chewy carrots.

I don't know how much I love the chewy carrots.

I was like, oh, yeah, this makes sense.

This makes sense because the chewy carrots are great.

Yeah.

It's like the essence of carrots, isn't it?

Because, you know, they're cooked for a long time.

And I think what I try to do, and even subconsciously, is like try to really hone in on what makes that vegetable kind of come to life whether it's carrot or cauliflower even like things like sweet and turnip you know like they're hard nuts to crack aren't they yeah yeah and uh and when you kind of slow cook things obviously they kind of you distill the flavor but also they are on the opposite is also true i guess if you kind of quickly char grill and you leave everything inside and then you you come in with all your yeah uh little tricks you know your salsas and the marinades and the sprinkles and all that that also makes a huge difference and that's that sort of forms the heart of the new book, right, as well, is the little tricks.

Yeah, extra good things, which comes to the Ottolengites kitchen.

And it is about like wonderful condiments that you can add.

Well, actually, no, you extract them from cooking rather than.

So each recipe is a standalone, but it also has something a takeaway.

So you could have like a marinade or a sauce or a pickle or sprinkle.

And that you take it with you to your next meal.

So essentially you can, we say, Nor Murad, who's my co-author, we say you can autolenquify anything.

You can autolenquify a roast potato, you can autolenquify a plate of scrambled eggs by using all these condiments.

So that is kind of it.

And it kind of, I guess it came a little bit from lockdown where we were all like struggling to cook all the time.

And then the condiments became like kings of the fridge in the kitchen.

You get like, you get like those pickles and uh, you know, chili sauces and chili oils and things.

So essentially, you didn't need to cook a whole meal to get all that flavor.

And That's in a nutshell.

Have you always had a good instinct for what?

Because I always think I might have some sauces or some things left over from other dishes I've had.

And then I get a real bright idea that I'm going to put it with the thing I've just made.

And because I don't have very good instincts, there's pretty much always a bad combination.

Tell us about a few of them.

Yeah,

I'm going to need an example of this.

Well, I just, so what's a good example of stuff?

A lot of the time, it's if I get a takeaway

and I might like serve myself up whatever from the from the pot and I'll leave a lot of the sauce in there maybe from the if I've got all the chunks of chicken and some sauce there, but then I've left behind the curry sauce and then the next day I'm like, oh, I've got this, you know, this other thing I'm making.

I'm going to sort of chuck that curry sauce in the bolognese.

Let's see what that's like.

Real bad.

Yeah, I think enough's in, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think what, I don't think that's in the book, I'm fairly sure, having had a very quick look, very excited to cook from it, but it's not, you're not cooking a curry and then going strain the sauce out and pour it all over your pudding or whatever it's not which is maybe

actually that's very important

no i was immediately drawn to the the blooming leeks the blooming leeks yeah because i love i love blooming onion every time i go to the states i have a bloom blooming onion but blooming and the blooming onion just technically Nor was working on it for a while and it just didn't work.

And then I said to her, well, why don't you do the leeks?

They ended up looking like octopus, you know, like they're spread out like that.

And then with a batter, you fry them and they taste absolutely delicious.

No, I mean, so I guess the sauces or the takeouts are some things that, so we kind of spent quite a lot of time thinking what goes with what.

Do we go like, there's this, I'm actually

looking through the book.

So there's these sections at the beginning.

like with eggs you've got fresh chili sauce hot sauce um cortado on

you know karbi butter dukkha and all those things so there's a whole list of condiments that you can put on your egg so essentially once you've cooked the dish and you've got that that little jar on the side you can go to the those opening pages and decide what you want to use it for it's such a clever concept that i've not seen before i think it's like and it's rare to find a cookbook that's like a new an actual new concept i think we didn't really have a concept in the sense that we were looking for a long time to tell the story of the otter lengthes kitchen which we love being spending time in and all the dynamics of what's going on and the skills that we're developing And, and then the pandemic hit and we realized, actually, that's the, that's what we, that's the solution because all of a sudden it was about, you know, for the first test kitchen book was called Shelf Lav and it was about using up ingredients that you happen to have in your cupboards, you know, barley and chickpeas and polenta and all that stuff that just sits there and you never touch it until you go and buy yourself a fillet of

cod or something.

And this book is all about the condiments, how do you can create huge flavors for cooking that, as I said, save you from cooking from scratch every single day, which is kind of a nightmare, isn't it?

Yeah,

three times a day.

But that with that ingredient thing as well, like it's whenever I'll be like, I'm going to cook something, and then it might be polenta in the dish or a spice that I don't have.

I'm like, right, I'm going to go and do a big shop and buy all of these things.

And now I just know, I'm just like, right, I'm going to use that.

I'm going to put that up there.

Never using that again.

Yeah.

So

bye-bye forever.

See you at the back of your head.

Yeah.

And then weirdly, I'm going to make the decision to take you with me again.

Even though it's expired already, like three months ago, I mean, like, it's a little reason to.

I need a recipe that involves a lot of soy sauce.

Yeah.

Because, like, every time I get a takeaway sushi, which I do quite a bit, actually, there's not a box you can tick on the delivery room that says, please don't send it.

Well, I'll send it another pot of it.

First of all, I think you should bring it up with delivery room because I do agree there's too much soy sauce sometimes with all this.

Like every sushi delivery gets like, and you do get stuck stuck with quite a lot well also i but i worry that that's because i order so much sushi there assume there's maybe 10 to 12 people there and you're having like a sushi party because they also send like eight pairs of chopsticks and you're like no that was for me unfortunately she made it runs a sushi restaurant

i run a i run a sushi restaurant that makes no profit whatsoever because i just order it from another sushi restaurant so i think there's actually a solution to your all your little sushis all your little soy sauce bottles and that is that you can almost throw it into almost anything that needs long cook any stew or any even if you make like a pasta sauce a meaty pasta sauce like a bragu style you put some soy sauce in that and you get all that umami and you go you didn't throw it away and i think it's really it's a really kind of it's so basic you know like you people use sometimes they use stock cubes right to get all this kind of msg flavor umami soy does the same yeah then you just throw it in there and you'll you'll get the flavor great oh amazing well that's what i'll do there you go i'll do that for myself yeah yeah this is great i feel like you could studio.

Also, just because you were talking about leaks earlier, the leaks at Rovi with the Pecorino.

Oh, yeah.

Are one of my favorite things.

Last time I went there, it wasn't on the menu.

So if it could ever work.

You know, there is something about changing menus.

Chefs love to change menus and customers don't like changing menus, like where the wheels collide.

Like I go to the chefs in my restaurants and we have these conversations often about menus.

They go like, oh, this is on the menu for like three weeks already.

It's so boring.

I said, like, who goes into one restaurant more than twice in three weeks?

Like, you know, what are the chances that someone will

try that again?

And in reality, it is a bit of an issue because I think sometimes things that should stay longer and are kind of a classic in the customer's eye is not really for the chefs.

The chefs want to kind of push again.

And in my restaurant,

in our restaurant, I should say, the chefs have like...

creative freedom to do those things.

I mean, Rovi, Neil, does an amazing job and he loves to change the menu on this all the time.

And we had that, like when we just opened Rovi, which was

five years ago, we had these corn ribs on the menu.

You know what they are, right?

Like, so it's like, just for the, for the audience, for the listeners, you take a whole corn cob and you cut it in the lengthways through the core twice.

So if you get like quartered, but lengthways.

And then when you deep fry them, they kind of bend and they turn into what looks like a rib.

And we put it on our menu when we just started.

It had like some kind of seaweed butter.

It was, and neither knee nor I invented it.

I saw it from Momofuku.

They were doing it in New York at the time.

David Chang, not him, but one of his chefs.

So I just said, like, you know, let's do it.

And it became a huge hit.

And then later on in the year, it was like October and the corn was not that nice anymore.

So we took it off the menu.

And people just called to cancel their reservations.

They go like, we heard the corn is not on.

So, okay, so I'm going to cancel.

So my cookie goes like, this is mad.

Like,

you're literally not going to give us a chance just because we don't have it.

We don't believe you could do it again

with a different dish.

And now the corn ribs are everywhere, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I was making those all the way through lockdown at home.

Yeah.

I was just chopping up corn ribs.

It's hard, isn't it?

Yeah, well,

I was burning myself all the time.

Sure.

All the oil spitting all over me, but it was worth it every time.

But seriously, it has become phenomenally popular within a very short amount of time to the extent that I've seen it on Sainsbury's ads.

Yes, yeah.

Big stations.

You know, know, they've taken that, they always follow the trend and put the things on.

Like, you know,

you kind of, something has become completely commonplace once Saintsbury's is put on one of these big ads and train stations.

And they look beautiful as well.

They do look great.

They look great.

Would you say the Saleriak Schwarmer is one of those dishes now at Robie?

If you took that off, people would.

Yeah, Saleria Shawarma is definitely something that we can't take off.

Also, we've got like the Jerusalem mixed grill.

And I remember when we did the Seleriak Shawarma, we wanted to do do that when Neil was working in the test kitchen working on the menu.

And we thought like we need a, you know, it's a vegetable, really, it's a kind of a vegetable restaurant or at least mostly vegetables.

And we want to get that kind of these kind of intense flavors of the shawarma.

So each person kind of added something.

We cooked it slowly.

We added the spices and the kind of the killer ingredient was something called bakela, which is a North African Tunisian mostly condiment, which involves spinach or chard cooked for a very, very long time in olive oil.

Like I'm talking like hours until it becomes black and it becomes kind of like the essence of spinach.

And it's traditional, they used to have that like in jars on the side of the cooker, like that would be the condiment of choice.

So when we added that to the sour cream and the chili sauce, et cetera, it just kind of turned everything around.

We had like all the components that we needed.

And I'm just mentioning that because it's just this whole notion that it goes back to extra good things.

I'm not doing it to sell the book, but I'm just just saying cultures have a condiment, you know, like we have mayonnaise and ketchup that we have buy from Hellman's, but actually they used to have like homemade condiments that were always there, even before refrigeration.

Like that's like what Saar Kraut is all about or kimchi.

And that is the flavor of the culture, you know, that's the thing that they put in.

And it's like always there, it keeps and it's like so flavorsome.

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We always start with still or sparkling water.

Oh, I always have sparkling water.

I almost can't drink drink still water I do really but I love sparkling water I get it from my dad like in the old days so I'm in my 50s so you can imagine how far we go he used to have that that siphon thing like you know like with uh that with a little tap in it yeah with a little bot you get these tiny little metal uh siphon uh

bottles of gas and you'd put them on and then you like yeah like for whipped cream yeah yeah yeah yeah so we had that at home and my dad as well and i'm the same like he would only drink sparkling water he would rather like go to the desert no water parch but he left sparkling water it was just his thing and here you here i go get still water yeah

no we don't even offer it in real life in the studio

so even first thing in the morning and i don't drink first thing in the morning but i do love uh sparkling water yeah that's like just the thing it just feels alive i know some people say even on the your show people said oh it's got this kind of not a water flavor right like it doesn't taste like pure water i i don't have that problem i just i just like to drink fucking water.

What does still water taste like to you?

It's like, you know, before you get your first electric toothbrush and then you get your, and then you have to go back to manual toothbrush and it just doesn't do the thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the difference.

That's what it feels like.

Particularly potent for me because I went away for the weekend and I didn't take my electric, so I had to buy a manual.

How was that?

Well, it was like I was going back to still water.

Well, isn't it?

You just feel like you just haven't even cleaned your teeth before.

It wasn't that pointed.

So why doesn't my hand vibrate up and down?

Yeah, my mouth is bleeding.

It doesn't do the thing, does it?

No, it just doesn't do it.

You need the thing.

And I like that the electric toothbrush tells me when to move on to the next bit when it goes

time to move on.

That's good.

Yeah, no.

Well, then that makes sense now.

Maybe now that's it.

I'm just going to have sparks and water forever.

I just feel.

Well, you had a similar thing with Coke, of course.

I did have a similar thing with Coke.

What was it?

Well, I used to drink, you know coca-cola and whatnot and then now i i quit caffeine completely and for five years just didn't drink anything with any caffeine in it at all and then after those five years i started drinking diet coke and actually now because it's been so long since i've had a normal full fat coke diet coke just tastes like full fat coca-cola Perfect.

There you go.

Yeah.

Good story.

It's another good story from you.

It's a pretty good story for me.

Yeah.

You did need to take a long break, though.

Yeah, those were hard times, weren't they?

Yeah, I mean, I think if I was taking that break knowing that what I was trying to achieve was to make diet code taste like Coca-Cola, it would have been harder to do the five-year break.

But as it was, I was like, you know, I just want to stop drinking caffeine for a bit because it's staining my teeth too much.

That's what my dentist told me.

You did it for your teeth.

Yeah, yeah.

My dentist was like, you've got to stop this.

But also, I accidentally gave it up because we ran out of like coffee and tea in the house.

And I just like...

For five years.

For a month.

and I just didn't bother replacing it and then I realized oh I've gone a month without yeah having it so I thought in for a penny so you drinking so much coke that your dentist had to not coke it was cups of tea all right cups of tea all the time and and she was like so stop this and what about the red wine did you give up the red wine because that's supposed to

have that same effect right i don't really drink red wine that much so luckily it was that wasn't as much of a issue so whenever i did have that that was okay but you know also like yeah obviously curries we talk about the takeaway

big big old big old stainers oh man turmeric don't even get me started on turmeric man the other day i i was really giving myself a hard time being like you're so unhealthy james you need to start eating healthier and i was like i'm gonna go into this shop and get something healthy got a turmeric shot yeah great this is the new me i drank the turmeric shot all the way down yeah glug glug glug and i completely drained it and then i went to put the lid back on the turmeric shot bottle fumbled it yeah the empty bottle goes down bounces off the pavement, and all the excess turmeric sprays up my leg and completely stains my trousers yellow.

Yeah, and I look like a jackass.

So that's what you get for trying to do something bad.

That jumper used to be white.

Yeah, I'm wearing a yellow jumper for the turmeric.

I just say he's wearing a turmeric-coloured jumper.

Exactly.

What happened to you?

Your merc-proofed your jumper.

Yeah, yeah.

That's all we can wear now.

It's turmeric-coloured stuff so that I don't get punked again.

That's never trying to do a good thing.

That's going to be the worst stain, right?

Turmeric's got to be the most stained.

It doesn't come off.

Yeah, turmeric is bad i think uh well beetroot famously doesn't really come off and pomegranate like we we used to have pomegranates and i've told this story before but my mom would and i had a younger brother we she would make us go naked to the garden to eat our pomegranates i mean just imagine that ages like five and three we'd go out to the garden with pomegranates eat them come back to the house that's sensible that's just sensible that's a good sort of economy of staining but it's a good image isn't it yeah to be completely naked i feel i'd at least want to to buy some pomegranate pants yeah i'll be like just at least buy me some pomegranate coloured pants mum yeah so that i can have them for my pomegranate garden trips it would make you think twice about wanting a pomegranate as well though wouldn't it you'd be like i want a pomegranate but i want to keep my clothes on yeah i mean i mean these days you know often you buy pomegranate already like the seed sticking up in a little tub in the supermarket that's pretty safe yeah you can that'd be a good if anyone's you know wanting to like look for some sort of a new diet fad it might be good to be like the rule is every time you want to eat something you have have to eat it naked in the garden.

People would consider how much do I want this?

Yeah.

That actually is true.

And you don't always want to join them, do you?

Necessarily.

I mean, people would be eating you on their owns a lot.

Yeah.

I mean, most people.

Yeah.

Poppadums or bread.

Pop-doms or bread, Yotabotenki.

Pop-dums or bread.

I didn't know that was I was going to ask this question.

Of course, bread.

Who eats poppadums?

Well, a few people have chosen poppadums in the past.

They feel they're pretty popular, yeah.

Yeah, or just, you know, or sometimes just whatever.

You have to grow up in this country to choose papadums of bread.

So I guess it's maybe when bread was absolutely dreadful and anything like with a bit of texture that you could get would be papa dums then.

I'm really, that's the

second time I slag off the local cuisine.

I don't love it.

This is like,

oh, God.

No,

I get them, but they are just like something you have once in a while and you go for

to an Indian restaurant.

I mean, bread is just, there's such a range of options.

Yeah.

Would that be a dream bread you would have for your your dream meal?

Well I'm going to be very predictable.

I do love a really really good sourdough bread with all the thing and people have slagged it off recently and said oh sourdough is full of hole you can't you holes you can't put any spreads on it it's not practical and it's poncy and all the rest I think it just has so much flavor and like really really good ones I'll give a shout out to the dusty knuckle that we get our sourdough bread from and I just love how sour it is and I just love that sour flavor.

I guess it's so widespread now the the sourdough thing i think that's you know it's just the nature of success that you know people are going to start turning against it always some backlash yeah there's always backlash

i'm fine i mean you know we don't want too many tall poppies around i mean the sourdough has had its day now we can yeah yeah yeah take down a notch

also enjoy white bread yeah yeah yeah

white slice of mucket bread the dusty knuckle man they've got a van that they drive around that's right and enough people on your road have to ask them to come come to your road oh really and um they still they wouldn't come to our road Really?

Did you?

You asked.

A lot of people asked, but I think it might just be outside their area.

But yeah, there was a big chat on the Road WhatsApp group about it.

They're like, we've really been trying to get the Dusty Knuckle to come by.

Wow.

That's a very specific type of WhatsApp group.

Everyone's like, we really need to get the Dusty Knuckle together.

Yeah, it also tells a lot about the street.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, absolutely.

Most of our

street WhatsApp groups and stuff are like, guys, we need to sort out this problem to bin men.

It's

Is anyone else having problems with the music from the local pub at night?

It was too loud.

Guys, we haven't got enough sourdough being delivered straight into our doors, specifically from the Dusty Knuckle.

To be fair, most of the rest of the time, it's shots from people's ring doorbells going, like, were these the people who scratched the car?

Like, people get really angry about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's good.

Imagine if the Dusty Knuckle drove down and scratched all the cars.

Oh, my God.

That would be a problem, right?

Wouldn't it?

But it's good sourdough.

I mean, you want sourdough or you want nice cars?

I mean, it's like you go sourdough, right?

Some sourdough loaves you could scratch a bloody car with.

There we go.

Sourdough haters.

I love it.

I love it.

I love the stuff.

Do you want a lovely sourdough from Dusty Knuckle?

Would you like some butter with that?

Do you want some olive oil?

Yeah, butter or olive oil.

I prefer butter to spread on the bread, but then olive oils to cook with.

And I also love the combination of butter and olive oil.

So some things are just nice when you have both.

So you start off with olive oil.

And then when you get a little more body you add butter and it's like it's nice together.

You don't get it.

No, no, when cooking, when cooking.

Yes, but

for the dusty knuckle sourdough, I'll have butter.

Lovely.

With some salt in the butter?

Yes, salt and butter.

But not any of that whipped butter business.

No, no, no.

That is just so pointless in my eyes.

Yeah, yeah.

Whipped butter, I just don't get it.

Like, what's the point of like, when it's at room temperature, it's the perfect texture.

And when you whip it up, it's not the perfect texture for butter it's good for whipped cream but it's not good for butter it's

a bit of this maybe i've maybe i've been duped here because i i get excited when i see whipped butter i guess i couldn't tell you why so maybe i'm just uh i've been tricked i think if you'd given us a slice of sourdough your favourite bread right yeah yeah yeah with with whipped as opposed to just normal really good salted butter i i think like when you're blind tasting you'd prefer the proper normal butter i like just normal it's just thick yeah spread it on thick ed likes getting each bite He breaks the bread up into bits and he butters each individual bit and then he sits with that.

You want to make sure you don't butter the bread.

Yeah, yeah.

From every side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Everything needs to be covered in butter.

I just never understand it when, and most people do this, I think, at a restaurant, you get a big bit of bread and then they literally butter the whole thing and then eat it like a whole bit.

No, I want to break it up with my hands and put a little bit of butter on it.

You want to feel it.

You want to feel it.

I get that.

Yeah.

It's like everything is okay.

Hey, I'm not trying to get him in trouble here.

So why did you bring it up?

Your dream starter.

So yeah, I was actually thinking about that before I came here.

And

I went for my

grandmother.

My grandmother on my father's side, she was Italian.

She was actually, they came to Israel just before the Second World War, but they just felt like they've never left Italy.

You know, like they kept on eating and living that kind of life, even though it was really not the right environment for it.

And she used to make semolina gnocchi,

which is essentially is like cooked down semolina, and you kind of like cookies you cut circles with when you spread it out.

And then you put those slightly overlapping on a tray and you put butter on it and some cheese parmesan and maybe another cheese, slightly maybe bluish cheese, like a gorgonzola.

But essentially, it's parmesan, semolina, under the grill.

So it's like pure melted cheese sensation.

And she used to, she used to say, I can, you like the idea, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going somewhere.

I'm visualizing all of this and what's going on.

Yeah.

So, and I think maybe a grating of nutmeg, nutmeg as well.

And that's it, like cheese, nutmeg, semolina.

It's just so comforting.

It's like pure comforting.

There's no challenge in that dish.

It's like the opposite of sourdough, the spread car.

It's like so soft.

Soft and warming.

Yeah, and you don't need anything else.

So for a very long time, I tried to make it like she does.

And I really don't think I've managed.

In one of my books,

there is a recipe for it, which I think is pretty good, but it's just not as good as the way she used to do it.

What is that?

Because you would have thought you'd be able to capture all of the...

It sounds like relatively simple.

Yeah, it's celebratory and cheese and a bit of nutmeg.

It's super simple.

So you should be able to recreate it perfectly, but it's just whether it's the environment or the way you remember it tasting or just i think your mind plays tricks on you right like so it's like having something on holiday and then coming home and say i'm gonna make that yeah i'm gonna that it's just gonna be so good and then it's just it's just never really that good is it or even buying a bottle of booze from holiday like you have a wine you know or all these araks and rakis and stuff and you have them like in in turkey and then you come back and it's just like awful it's like you have to have it with all the oily food and everything and like the whole environment needs to be specific Then you have it here and you go, I'll have a little shot and it's just like, oh, it just burns your throat.

Because also you're just not relaxed like you are on holiday.

You're not sitting in the sun and then you taste it at home in winter in the UK.

Like, God, it's so sad.

Yeah.

Also, I think if anyone, I often find if someone tells me, this dish is amazing.

You've got to have this.

It's so good.

Yeah.

I try not to say that to people about things that I like.

I might order the dish that I think is the best on the menu, but I'll try my best not to tell them this is the best.

So you keep like a poker face.

They don't know what you're feeling, whether you're hating it or loving it.

Yeah, well,

I just don't want them.

I want them to really enjoy the dish as much as I do.

But I don't want, I feel like if I amp it up and go, this is so amazing.

You've got to have this.

It's so good.

Then they might be like, that's all right.

It's pretty good.

But you got me ready for the best thing in my life.

But you know, you do that on this podcast every single week to millions of people.

Yes, and I worry, that gives me anxiety.

Yeah.

I worry that everyone's going to these places going, ah, so even today you've mentioned about three dishes at Roe v.

Yeah, so I'm worried people are going to go to Rovi now and go.

That's what gives me anxiety.

Yeah, exactly.

No, you're worried about it.

I mean, you can build up expectations.

And I often think it's like with everything, like with books and films and all that, you build up the experience.

You want to build enough expectations to get people to go and watch it or try it, but not too much so they are bound to be disappointed.

I mean, it's just

food at the end of the day.

I mean, it's not, it's not like...

And that's coming from me, but you can build up your expectations so much that you're going to kind of go like, oh, really?

There's a dish that I want Ed to try somewhere in the country.

But you're not even going to give me any details about where.

No.

But

go find it.

Go find it.

So it's all in the country, right?

And I will sort it out one day that Ed will try it.

Okay.

And I know in my mind, he will love it.

It'll become his new favourite thing.

But

you don't want to have to not ramp it up.

Yeah.

Yeah, because that would be huge if you told me this is your new favourite thing.

This is your new favourite thing.

And what if you just said it's you.

What if you do the reverse psychology psychology and just tell him it's just awful?

Then I'd worry that I'd go to, I'd be too good at that and that I'd get it in his head that it's disgusting.

Yeah, and then he'll.

No, Ed, it was delicious, please.

But also, I'm quite contrary, so I'd probably eat that and go, you're wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So it might work.

Yeah, it could work.

Do you want to narrow it down geographically for me?

North.

Okay, cool.

I'm going to the north.

North of where?

Yeah, north of the river.

Thames.

North of the river Thames.

North of the River Thames.

North of a few rivers.

Is it Manchester?

Yes.

Is it the French?

Yes.

Yes.

He's obsessed with this place.

You've probably even told me about the dish before.

Yeah, it was my phone background for a while.

He would have seen it.

So what is it?

What was the dish?

Come on, you can tell us.

Yeah.

Amongst friends.

Okay.

Benito, you got to edit this out?

No.

This is a big moment.

You can't edit out you recommending a dish on a food podcast.

Well, it's because it will...

I think it's going to blow up the spot.

The listeners...

It won't blow up the spot, but the listeners will be like, this makes no sense with the man we we know.

Oh, it's cheese-based.

Yes.

It's the cheese course at the French.

It's one of my favourite dishes in the entire world.

Oh, my goodness.

It's the cheese course.

So it's just cheese.

It's cheese selected.

It's between, it's going from the savouries to the desserts.

It's where it sits in the menu.

And it's a drunken prune.

Uh-huh.

Slice of St.

James's cheese on top of that, a walnut cracker, and a scoop of honeycomb.

It's this bite.

Wow.

And it's incredible.

I don't don't think that's surprising.

I don't think listeners will be annoyed about that.

That sounds like the way you should be consuming cheese.

Yeah, yeah.

A scoop of honeycomb.

A scoop of honeycomb on top of that.

Because you're famous for not liking cheese.

Yeah, he gets angry if people pick cheese.

Let's use a cheese board.

I'll quickly adjust my

selection.

I like cheese, but not for a dessert.

When people say a cheese board for dessert, I flip my lid.

No, I get that because you're so cheated if you get a cheese board for dessert, because dessert is dessert.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I enjoy it.

Now and again, I'll get the cheese board.

But but then this would have been

to have dessert well yeah quite often i will also have dessert but if i'm eating dinner with james and i feel like annoying him i'll get a cheese board instead of dessert but i went back to the french and they did that cause but they said that they switched the prune for something else i think it was like a jam kind of thing a jelly and they switched the cheese for a different type of cheese but it was still still good amazing so that's why i want to get ed there to have that that bite because i'm pretty sure it'd be up in the street but now i picked it up he knows about it.

And now

I dread.

I'll love it still.

Yeah, I think if he'll love it.

Yeah, I think from the way you describe it, I think it's good enough to stand even that terrible test of you picking it up, him dreaming about it all night, waking in the morning, making the train he doesn't want to take to Manchester, going there, eating it, and loving it.

Yeah, yeah.

I went out for dinner the other night at Rules.

James wasn't there, but I had cheese for dessert.

Oh, yeah.

I had a Stilton.

They bring the big Stilton.

Oh, yeah.

Scoop it out.

And there's a picture of me while they're scooping the Stilton out.

And I look like a little child getting a favorite toy.

So excited.

That's what you do.

Yeah.

Well, that's like a lovely starter.

A ratatouille starter.

Back to the childhood.

Yes.

Yeah, no, that it's very child.

It's back to childhood.

I actually, I went for, I went for childhood things because I thought in some ways, like, because I'm constantly surrounded by food, you know, with the restaurants and the book, I feel like I've got, I've touched, I've touched on so many things that I don't want to choose from any of those.

I want to go back to before like the initial old experience of food, like before it's been like before it was a profession.

Is your main course also from a similar?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My main course is also from a similar.

Do you want me to reveal it?

I would love it.

Also, one of my favorite main courses I've ever had, another shout out to you.

I was on Sunday brunch.

Oh, yeah.

And one of your chefs was there via Zoom.

So it wasn't like, I can't remember her name, so it was quite a few years ago.

Easter?

It might have been.

It was a lasagna, but with prawns in it.

I think it might have been Easter.

Yeah.

Incredible.

Definitely the best thing I've ever eaten on Sunday brunch.

Yeah.

I'll tell you that much.

So you were there.

I was there in the studio, and we got to try this prawn lasagna.

And

I completely, normally you just have a bite and then you move on to the next thing.

I completely finished it and then polished off anyone else's who hadn't finished their prawn lasagna because I was like, that was one of the best things I've ever had.

It's a really good sign when people keep on eating and coming back.

Do you know the exact dish I'm talking about?

Yes, I do know it.

I do know it.

Where can I get that?

You know, you could make it if you...

I think...

No.

You should have told me I would have brought it.

Yeah, I've brought a problem as you're in your book.

Just in your book,

through Borrow Market, with my problem lasagna.

Which book is it in?

I don't think it's in a book.

I think it's in one of my Guardian columns.

i'll have to have a look at it i'm sure we can i'm sure we can dig out already we can dig it out so good yeah we can dig it out my my word i'll make i'll make it for you thank you ed i want to do some cooking yeah yeah you you can cook the the porn the zagna yeah and okay well we'll get simon rimmer and um tim lovejoy to stand there as well no that i feel some back in some necklunch no i'd like a nice relaxing meal please

the dream main core so the main core so i went for something again it's not a restaurant food it's it's a shoarma in pita, which I love, you know.

So I need to explain it a little bit.

So, you know, there's so many versions of the, you know, the donor kebab and the shawarmas and stuff.

And they're all, for me, they're all good.

But they rely, it has to be, the real thing that is really important is the side dish, my side dish, and that's the chips.

So when I was growing up in Jerusalem, we used to go to, there was a bunch of places, and what they all had in common is these big shawarmas,

rotisserie things, and you'd have a lamb one and a chicken or turkey one so that would depend and they were full of fat like kind of literally as you cut through there's all this extra fat added there and they'd put it in a fluffy pizza for you and you'd get like those kind of really thinly shaved you know you can get like they saw it off like really really thinly and expertly and then you get a layer of that and you get salad you can get some fried aubergines on top as well uh tahini and um and some and pickles is is a kind of you can go for pickle or not but i always love some pickles like cucumbers or you know those turnip that are pickled in beetroot liquid so there's these purple ones and then lots of fries like chips inside and extra tahini oh my god that is just the best thing in the world and it at the bottom of the pita if it stays if it doesn't go all over you know seeps through to your shoes uh which is a kind of uh professional hazard

yeah

it's you've got all these juices there and they're just so good.

You know, the fat, the tahini, the salad juices, et cetera.

And then it hits the bread.

It's so good.

I mean, it's difficult to argue with that being the best.

That is just so up my streak.

Yeah,

because we all want to eat these kind of things, right?

Like, this is just...

And to be honest, I'm not so picky.

So, for instance, in Turkey, the donor would not have tahini, but we have would have some kind of yogurt-based sauce or yogurt garlic-based sauce.

That's also fine.

You know, there's a, I'm not a purist when it comes to these things.

And I do prefer prefer the chicken one with all the extra fat to the lamb slash beef one because it's kind of it's not that dominant and all the other things can come through but i'm very happy with the lamb one as well so yeah you can just

you can yeah you can pick but the spicing is important so the the showarma spice mix for me has to have some kind of a combination a balance of the kind of more savory spices obviously cumin some heat and then a bit of sweet like that what comes from allspice or cinnamon or maybe no cardamom, I wouldn't necessarily put there, but some of those more sweet spices.

And often it would have fenugreek as well.

So you get that kind of wonderful balanced spices there as well.

I'm glad you considered cardamom and then got rid of it.

You don't like cardamom?

I hate that stuff.

I love cardamom, but not for that.

So you wouldn't have it in any.

No, I'd probably have it if it was like part of a spice mix or it wasn't a dominant flavor, but as a dominant flavour.

So you we never get those like uh buns this

i was in copenhagen this weekend okay and i always try because i know they're so popular so i've flown into copenhagen in the morning my wife was already there because we were going to a wedding that day and i flew in early in the morning arrived in copenhagen had a nap in the hotel then i woke up after 20 minutes into my nap and she was eating a cardamom bun and i went

just bring it here had a big bite out of it went no still hate it and went back to sleep again

i'm a great guy too

about being asleep in his,

being on tour, his tour manager driving him, him being asleep in the car, him waking up, and the tour manager going, this is my hometown we're driving through now.

And I went, absolute shitholes.

And I went to sleep.

Maybe they're like fun.

Do they eat cardamom in those?

Yeah, yeah.

It's a very sort of Scandinavian town in North Wales.

Yeah, cardamom, I don't know what it is.

It's just the flavour.

It's just the best.

And I like the most things.

And those buns are everywhere.

you have the gin so arabic coffee almost all often has cardamom infused or round with the coffee ground so you have that sweetness coffee flavor and i just think that is just absolutely delicious but if someone tells you they hate that flavor what can you do about it nothing i know this i'm reading a book at the minute about coffee what about the monk of mocha it's called And it's a, it's.

Have you heard of this book, Yoto?

No, but I'm curious.

It's a Dave Eggers book.

It's based on a real man's

real man's life.

Oh, cool.

And he tried to get a coffee business off the ground.

And where does the cardamom come in?

So you read about this track practice.

So loads of the book is just about coffee.

So yeah, I think there's so far, I think I've got 2% storyline and 98% the history of coffee and how coffee.

Which is great, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, how much I've actually retained.

Please don't test me on any of it.

Actually, no, but you did retain the cardamom.

Yeah, so I remember that.

But now I'm thinking to myself, what country does the book even take place in?

Because I know he starts off in San Francisco and then he goes somewhere else.

And I'm thinking...

Yeah, do share.

He goes.

I think.

For the rest of us?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think.

He goes to...

Uzbekistan.

Did we start suggesting country?

Yes.

Yeah.

Is it a sort of coffee place?

Yeah, big coffee place.

Colombia, Guatemala.

Ethiopia.

The problem with it is that

coffee was almost invented there, but then they've fallen behind, and he wants to bring them back into the coffee game because

people have forgotten that some of the best coffee originally came from that country.

It's an island?

Is it like Caribbean Island?

It's sort of off the coast of Africa.

No, no.

James, this is not good stuff, man.

This is not good stuff.

This is great.

We're playing a guessing game about the book I'm reading.

This is good.

we will uh uh we will it will actually push the readers to go and read it because they will want to know the answers so you know listeners would go like well i'll google it on my phone no no no no no no we won't we'll just leave it no this is really important yeah google it on your phone because number one i've got all the

it's certainly very important to yotab that you you find i want to know what that country is because i want to add it to my repertoire of anecdotes yeah

have you heard of the yemen oh yeah the yemen i have heard of the Yemen.

Yeah, that actually, that is a really good point because Yemen does have a history of coffee.

I know that a little bit.

Maybe they used to add cardamom because Yemen is in the Middle East.

Yeah.

Kind of.

Yeah, we'll have to find that out.

Yes, I think that

something big is about to happen in the book.

It feels like you're obviously very engaged.

It's about to

spill a coffee.

You might spill a coffee.

Maybe.

Maybe you will spill a coffee in the book.

I actually think this book sounds good.

I'm going to...

It sounds funny.

Well, I'm going to, I'll tell you what I'll do, yeah, Tam.

I'll buy the book and then I'll pop it on my pile of books and then I'll never read it.

There's so many books to read, isn't there?

It's such a problem.

It's just a lot.

I've got a lot of books that I want to read.

And people ask, what are you reading?

And essentially, there's so many books that you just end up reading.

Reading none of them, yeah.

That's the problem.

Apart from the cookbooks.

Am I right?

Apart from the cookbooks.

I genuinely read cookbooks like novels, though.

Do you?

I will, when I get a new cookbook, I will just sort of sit and read.

So you don't read like half a teaspoon of salt.

No, no, no.

But I mean, mean like i you know when i say read i look at the i look at the page

come on man i read this yet i haven't got to that bit yet

how do you even measure half a teaspoon oh don't get me started on that people want to know how much of everything i all i have recipes with an eighth of a teaspoon i just let you know here just i'm what i'm i'm saying it i'm getting it out there yeah yes even an eighth of a teaspoon is a thing a quarter is a lot it makes all the difference no there is there is a i have there is a reason why we write those things down because often we do have conversations like in the test kitchen.

There's a lot of long-winded conversations.

Often we can't decide between a quarter and because a pinch means nothing.

So, you know, whether you want a little bit less than a quarter, but it still needs a little bit of extra salt.

So the eighth comes to the end of the conversation.

And I always say to people, like, why do you give me so much detail?

And they're like, you don't need to follow the recipe exactly, but I want people to get as close as possible to what happened in the room if they follow it like a set of instructions like they were robots i know most people don't cook like that but at least there's something it's like it's like the newspaper of record like everything is there it's there and you can follow it or not and some people love that idea and they go like these are no no it's foolproof recipes because i followed it and i created an amazing meal so it works for some but then yeah you do that the first that's what i would do the first time and then if i did it again like yeah you sort of got the basis of it and you sort of like add things or take things away and it's also true about like sometimes i think like as a culture we love to kind of almost try new things all the time almost too much and people come and say often say to me like you know I find it quite stressful because I haven't yet mastered Burmese cuisine you know like something like but I'm really making my way through Thai and you know and I find it could be quite people get themselves into a rut over like having like this incredible repertoires but Nigela always says, talks about the repetition, right?

Like the repetition is so important because it's comforting.

When you cook something over and over again it's comforting and we don't want to take the comfort away from cooking do we we don't want to bring all that stress in because especially in the last few years i found so much comfort in cooking because there's so little comfort out there right now with all the horrible things that are happening especially the repetition of cooking the same thing over and over again in the last few years well you're the king of it chorizo broccoli pasta shout out chorizo broccoli pasta chorizo broccoli pasta that's my the dish i've made the most of my lifetime and made it all exclusively during lockdown over and over again did you find comfort in it Beyond what you can possibly imagine.

The highest levels of comfort.

It's my happy place all the time every time I think of it.

And still, you still make it now, right?

Well, made it a couple of times since the lockdowns of uh everything's opened up and uh it feels weird.

Oh really?

It feels weird to me.

What kind of choriza do you use?

Do you use a soft choriza or or no not soft?

The cooked chorizo, the slices the salami style.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Well not the salami style.

No no no.

You use the whole.

Yeah it's it's in the sausage.

Yeah yeah yeah.

But I chop it up.

Yeah yeah yeah.

I chop chop it up still.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's hot.

It's not like...

And no one was suggesting you drop the whole sausage into some pasta.

You chop it out.

Tell us how you make it.

I mean, maybe you're going to have it on the show already.

Chop up the chorizo.

Chop up the broccoli stems, but not the heads.

The heads don't go in.

So that's what we originally we did it because we were like having broccoli in the house and we'd have the stems left over.

The stems are so good.

So we were like, we need to use these stems for something.

We learnt this recipe, use the stems, and now we're buying broccoli to make that.

So now we, it used to be, we don't know what to do with the stems.

Now we're like, we don't know what to do with the heads.

Oh my goodness, that is a brain

fuck.

Chop the stems up.

Chop up some garlic, some chili.

Garlic, chili.

Yeah.

Put the chorizo in for a bit on its own.

After a few minutes,

add the stems, add the chili, add the garlic, put some pasta on, the ones that look like little ears.

Orichetti.

Yes.

And then

add some capers as well.

Ah, nice.

Nice touch.

Then get a cup of the pasta water, put that in with everything.

Dump the pasta in with it all.

Mix it all together.

Add some black pepper while you're mixing.

Then bung a load of parmesan as well.

How many tablespoons?

Huh?

Six.

An eighth.

Always an eighth.

And then

a load of parmesan.

Then you're ready to go.

Yeah.

But it sounds delicious.

It's a Tom Carridge recipe.

I'll just say that.

We added the capers.

Fair enough.

But yeah, you can't train Mark a recipe, so you're good.

You're good.

You didn't even have to do it.

We got the Capers.

Yeah, we corn-ribbed him.

Yeah, he's absolutely corn-ribbed that guy.

Yeah, yeah.

He absolutely corn-ribbed Kerridge.

I have a question about the Schwarma.

Yeah, cool.

Do you want the Avengers with you while you eat it?

The Avengers?

Yes, the superheroes, the Avengers.

All of them?

They like Schwarmer.

I think it was.

That's the original one, right?

The original film.

To be honest, no, I don't want people with me.

Black widow and

are they people, though?

Well, this is it.

You don't want anyone, you want to be alone.

For this particular, I don't, I'm actually not, don't like being alone.

I'm terrified of being alone normally.

I love people around me.

But for this particular dish, I love to be alone because it's quite embarrassing.

You know, it's very animalistic the way you kind of tuck into it and you let your whole face is in there.

May I suggest that you pop into the garden and get your clothes off?

Pop them off?

It's a very good good idea.

You're going at the bottom of the garden.

The problem is you get it

in the show armor shop.

Yeah.

And to get to the garden is quite a schlep.

So you need to get in the car, drive, get your clothes off.

It's cold by the way.

All the fats have coagulated.

It's like the whole fun is gone.

Yeah.

Just checking.

That's why, you know, maybe you should open a trauma shop with

a little private garden in there.

With a bunch of naked people just to do the show armor.

Let's just imagine that for a second.

That sounds so delicious.

Yes.

The fluffy pitter as well.

I think I've had some pretty bad pitters in my time.

Yep.

The worst pitter you can get is the one you can get like a normal pita in a supermarket.

I think it's a disgrace.

It's so dry.

I mean, I never get that.

So obviously it's nice to make your own, but you could get in some Jewish bakeries in North London, you can get nice fluffy pitas.

And I mean, it's just, it's just something completely different.

Yeah.

I am Donna.

And Harrowgut.

It's the best pitter

that I've had.

Yeah.

For a kebab.

Like, just really fluffy.

I could eat on its own that pitter and it would be just like that.

I mean, that is the test, isn't it?

You need to enjoy it on its own before you start loading it with stuff.

I mean, that's like the true test.

Yeah.

But for me, this is like, for me, this is like really kind of like basic.

It's like the beyond restaurant experience going out and eating street food like that.

Like the stuff that's just like uninhibitedly delicious and nobody cares.

And tahini as well.

Yeah.

Tahini on everything, guys.

Tahini or you could do like a tahini outlet, a garlic sauce or yogurt garlic.

So good.

I mentioned I am Donna recently.

Nish was there, our friend Nish Kumar, and I said to her, whoever it was I was recommending it to, I said, Nish loves them.

Your favourite kebabs, right?

And Nish very moodily said, no, they're not.

And then corrected me on what his favourite kebabs are.

Can you guess which ones he's favorite?

Palmyra?

No, not Palmyra.

That would have been my second yes.

Kebab Kid, yes.

Kebab kid yeah no no kebab kid's the best

kebab kids on new kings road parsons green yeah it's been there for like 30 40 years i think yeah yeah yeah and those are the best kebabs they're very good kebabs yeah and and nish used to live opposite kebab kid okay those were some dangerous days yeah nish used i mean nish used to get one a day sometimes i think yeah yeah

he's no longer with us

but we like to live stories about him just

yeah no that's and he didn't go naked in the garden to use his capacity.

No, we were in a flat, unfortunately, so it was just they just used to hang it all out the window.

Instant arrest.

Yeah.

Is there anywhere, like in London?

I mean, I'm saying it for the listener, but for myself, that you can get a really good schwarma like a schwarma?

I can't say that I know.

I haven't, but I haven't done a proper search for that.

It's just for me, it's just

something that I have left back from my time in Israel.

And when I do go there, I go.

And there's also these days in Tel Aviv, which has got great food, there is this kind of posh kebab places, and but they didn't change everything, anything fundamentally.

It's just the components are a little bit better, like better sourced, et cetera.

But the whole essence of it is like super fresh, off the skewer, with all the condiments as they should be.

But they also

are a bit more like professorial about it.

You know, they got like kind of the measure exactly how much they put in each layer.

So every bite has got like equal quantities of everything, and you see how they do it.

And they do have that, like there is an um, there is a bunch of dishes that like go in a pita like that uh which like you know there is another one which i absolutely love that's involved like in aubergine hard-boiled egg and a kind of fenugreek mangoe sauce with the with then the salad and also the french fries sometimes or not and that's called sabikh and it's the same thing so again they put a layer of the aubergines a layer of the salad a little bit of the french fries and an egg it's just oh my gosh and so your dream side dish is the chips my dream side dish is the chips because I, but actually it goes in, but I mentioned it as a side dish because you don't want anything else on the side, right?

Like, so it's like you could have it on the side.

And

if you insist that I have a side dish that is actually on the side, that I'll just stuff it.

I didn't know how formal you guys are.

Oh, like, well, it's your dream meal.

It's your dream meal.

I mean, look, you can have that.

It's all in the shawarma.

There could be a few extra chips on the side.

Yeah, that is, yeah.

Let's just do that.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's do that.

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Your dream drink then?

So this is where I kind of was, so I was thinking like when I was growing up, we had this malt drink, like fizzy malt drink.

So in Israel, people don't drink a lot of alcohol.

So the beer, it was called black beer, which is like non-alcoholic beer.

And it was like here we have like,

what's it called?

The

Maltese.

super malt yeah so it's a bit like super malt it's slightly different like in the flavor it's a bit more caramelli it's darker but it's like those kind of flavors and we used to have that with our and i thought i'd ask for that because it will take me back and i'll get the whole experience but then i also really love campari but not with that i just love campari so i thought like if you want to hear what i'd have next to that that will be that and if you want more i love campari but you could have you know we could have campari as a little sort of pre-dinner i think that's what we should do yeah we could add that yeah we should have campari on ice with a bit of orange and that's just as it is with not not with sparkling water or anything like that not in this case no would you normally have it at the start of a meal before yeah so um yeah i i don't drink it all all the time but when we we often go on holiday uh to greece um so we this is a kind of a tradition that goes back about 10 years when we go to greece with a bunch of friends when we're at the house my sister comes with her kids and other people come along and we have this kind of wonderful week of just like cooking and swimming and we don't do anything but but kind of that and we always start the evening before we start cooking with campari on ice with orange and it's for me that it's just like holiday it's just such a good thing the great benito just went on holiday to greece did you he hated it

he had the worst he had a wake in hell he said it was awake in hell he's a bustling boy he needs um roller coasters he loves roller coasters yeah well you don't go to greece for that

i do i look a good roller coaster myself.

Roller coaster.

Fair enough, yeah.

I was about to tell you about the best one I've been on, but

I can't tell you because the great Benito doesn't like spoilers when it comes to roller coasters.

And this is one he hasn't been on.

So I literally am not allowed to describe it to people in front of him because

he will leave the room.

Okay, and we need him.

We need him.

We do need him.

And so you also are a big roller coaster fan?

No, not really, but I just had a very good roller coaster

recently where I was like, oh, yeah, this is why people love roller coasters.

I get it.

Because

they can't.

Don't build it up too much for him.

Yeah, he's like, yeah,

that's a good point, actually.

I can't do that.

He'll go on and go, what was James going on about this for?

But, you know, at their best, Benito,

they make you experience life in a whole new way, right?

It makes you feel the way you've never felt before.

A good roller coaster.

Wow, you're really building this up though.

Yeah, that's how it felt.

He's going to be sat on there with the cheese dish from the French, just having an awful time.

time.

This should be the best day of my life.

Now, the malt drink sounds very intriguing as well.

Yeah.

So that's, it's just really, it's a dark malt, like fizzy malt.

It's sweet.

It's sweet and really, really dark and it's really malty.

So it's it's refreshing.

And you give it to kids because obviously they don't drink beer.

And as I said, people are not like huge alcohol drinkers back home.

Maybe now they're more are, but historically it wasn't like.

But that is something you have with your dinner.

Yeah.

And it's really good with all this stuff because it's just like in the same way that wine doesn't work with street food most of the time, right?

Like it's just too delicate and sharp and kind of it just doesn't work.

So that those were if you're not going to drink proper beer.

How big is the bottle?

The bottles are pretty big.

They're like they're like a liter or three quarters of a liter.

You don't finish it.

The lime you're doing for it all the time is huge.

So I was like,

maybe I was smaller.

Maybe.

I guess it's because you're a kid as well.

But yeah, but you don't finish it.

Like, you have it at the table and everybody shares.

It's not like you don't get an individual bottle.

Yeah.

It's funny when you're a kid, isn't it?

We were talking about this, me and my wife, the other day.

How big food is.

How big food is.

Yeah.

I get it.

Like

we saw a baby with a cookie and the baby was literally like looking at this thing like, I don't think I'm ever going to get through this.

Bigger than my face.

But they do.

Yeah.

Actually, they do get through.

They do, but it takes like gumming away at a cookie for ages.

It goes on the floor.

I have two young boys right and they're not that young anymore, so they're seven years old and nine years old.

And they can eat cookies.

I mean they can eat so much

cookies.

Do you think like as a chef with kids, are you like trying to push them a certain way with food or are you thinking if I just let them do whatever they want they can get this out their system and when they're older maybe they'll make better decisions.

Well I am

not the latter.

No, I'm not so cool like that.

Like I let them kind of like uh eat things but i put a limit to how many like sour skittles they can have and i sure and i and i also make sure that they are exposed to nice food so even if they don't want to eat it and to be honest they haven't been like the best like people would always say oh the tolengi kids they probably eat like olives and you know and like when since they're born and in actual fact they they've gone through quite like finicky stages but this summer we went to paris for the first time and they ate snails like they loves eating snails and i I thought like that is super cool.

Now I can, they're finally kind of, they're finally there.

Yeah.

But we've gone through like a period where they wouldn't eat anything that's green.

Like it's got green bits in it and all the rest.

So that it's tough sometimes.

Because you must be gusty.

There's so much effort that goes into food and the rejection with kids is just so extreme.

You know, there's no niceties.

You know, they don't moderate their behavior for you.

They don't go like, that's okay and put it to the side.

They go like, that's disgusting.

Or they go go like that is just not as good as we get at school.

That is crushing.

That is crushing.

Yeah, yeah, that is right.

That is very bad.

Solaria at Schwarmer at school is so much better.

I know, yeah, I think

this doesn't even have the essence of spinach.

So you're talking about

going back to the kid with a cookie as big as his head.

I'm pretty sure, am I right in thinking that your wife started that conversation?

Yes, of course.

Just making sure that I knew.

So what did you say?

Like, how can the kids possibly finish this?

Yeah, no, it wasn't even that.

It was like,

food is so big when you're a child.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a very...

Then the things if she started their conversation with anyone else, there would be like five minutes where they're going, what are you talking about?

That's such a weird thing to say.

But I'm now obviously so in tune with what she means.

I'm like, yeah, I know, let's have this chat.

Yeah,

I have a memory like that.

So when I was a child, when I was around like seven or eight, we went to live in California for one year because my dad had a job there.

And we lived outside San Francisco.

And I remember one of of my first experiences, like the most memorable one, was how big the food was.

There was one time we went to this restaurant and someone ordered a salad and it was just like a pyramid of like ingredients.

It was so big.

And on top, there were like three like cocktail umbrellas.

And I was looking at it, like, how can, and I'm sure it wasn't because I was small.

I'm sure it was like massive.

America.

It's just America.

And I was just like, how could that be true and real?

I mean, that salad.

I'll never forget that.

Like,

still to that day, I'm traumatized.

It's crazy.

Like, I've spent a bit of time in America.

And if you're like, well, I'm going to have a healthy day, I'll just order a salad.

I ordered like a cob salad once.

And it was on like a dinner plate, a serving plate for one person.

And then just like a line of chicken.

There must have been about three chicken breasts, a block of blue cheese,

egg, like eight eggs.

And you're like, this was me trying to be healthy.

Yeah.

And then you pour the dressing on the top.

well i ate the whole thing yeah yeah of course yeah but the whole thing it is mad delicious but the trouble is is that it's quantity over quality isn't it it's like there's so much but actually it doesn't it normally often doesn't taste very much either so you kind of just like try to get to the flavor but it never comes this will blow your mind go on my first meal that i had in disney world on my on my recent holiday starter snails main course Cobb salad.

What the hell is going on?

Wow.

This is one conversation.

And you guys are...

You're snails at Disney World.

Yeah.

Who serves snails at Disney World?

Brown's Derby diner.

I went to Brown's Derby.

How do you remember that as well?

I mean, was it so recent?

It's recent, but the main thing I was obsessed with was making sure we had good food all week because we're there for a week at Disney World.

So he doesn't have kids.

What a night.

I don't have kids.

And so...

A week?

Yeah, it's just me and my girlfriend.

One of the best holidays I've ever had.

So it's just absolutely brilliant.

So you wake up in the morning and you go like, I'm going to spend spend the day in Disney World.

And then the next day you wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to spend my day in Disney World.

Yes.

But what you've got to bear in mind is

there's four different parks.

So you're not going to the same park every day.

And there's also Disney Springs.

And you just get to take your time a little bit.

We were basically there for, well, we ended up being there for six days because we had a whole palava with our flights.

Oh my God, you missed the seventh day.

We missed the first day.

Oh, the first day.

But yes.

But basically, they basically did.

But it was great.

And And I was really obsessed.

My girlfriend was on top of everything, but I was obsessed with food and what we're going to eat because I didn't want to eat bad Disney food all week.

So the first meal we had.

James is a gourmand, you know.

So this week in Disney World.

I'm starting not to believe that.

What is like, why would the gourmand go to Disney World?

I guess there's really good restaurants in Disney World.

I've never eaten it.

I wasn't going for the food, obviously, but I was like, we're going to have to eat while we're there.

I don't want to just eat like the worst theme park food ever for a week.

It's going be depressing so I've got to find what the best food at Disney World is so I can make sure that like it's good and I like it and Brown's Derby was our first meal that we had when we got there so we've had like a day and a half living in an airport so our flight got delayed cancelled and all sorts so we get there and I'd just been thinking about Browns Derby for ages I've been looking on the app in the airport and going of what am I going to order when I get to Brown's Derby man because that's my first meal when I get there I was like I'm going to get the snails I'm going to get I'm going to get that Cob salad it's the world famous cob salad and I'm gonna get

it's what it says on the list

on the menu it calls well famous cob salad they don't even call them menus yeah and uh and then I was like dessert I'm gonna get the 50th anniversary baked Alaska and that's exactly what I did and it was delicious you're gonna get the cheese course

not at brown's derby not at brown's derby not tempted to open a restaurant in Disney World well now that you say it if you if you've got some such gourmands coming to Disney World then I would probably just that would be the next stop.

There's a gap in the market there because actually what we ended up doing is we had locked dinner reservations and we cancelled all of them because actually a lot of the restaurants we found by day two, we're like, do you know what?

These restaurants aren't very good, but the snacks that we're getting along the way in Disney are great.

So we've cancelled all our dinner reservations and just snacked our way around the park.

That's my top tip.

So what were the snacks, like some highlight snacks?

Oh, let me tell you.

Cheeseburger spring rolls.

Oh, wow.

I dream of them still to this day.

Do you?

Yeah.

The cheeseburger, spring rolls.

In the spring roll, you get the burger and the cheese, or you also get the bun.

No bun.

Burger and cheese.

James, this is disgraceful.

Maybe some pickles.

You've got Yoto Muffaleni on the podcast.

You need to balance it's yin and yang.

You know, you've got Yota.

If you please.

This is so embarrassing.

And

a burger sauce dip.

So you get two spring rolls, two cheeseburger, spring rolls, burger sauce dip, and you eat them while you're going over the bridge.

And it is a wonderful start to the day.

And then you chuck yourself off the bridge because they make you feel so sad.

If the river was full of spring rolls, I would chuck myself off the bridge.

If it was full of cheeseburger spring rolls, I'd chuck myself off the bridge immediately.

Happily.

But yeah, cheeseburger, spring rolls are my top recommendation.

I love them.

And how was the roller coaster?

I still can't tell about it.

The roller coaster.

Oh, yeah.

The roller coaster was the food.

What roll cheeseburger was it?

It was Cosmic Rewind.

Garners of Galaxy Cosmic Rewind.

It's the best roller coaster I've ever been on in my life.

No spoilers.

We arrive at your dream dessert.

Okay, so my dream dessert is a tiramisu.

And I hope

I'm not like a lot of people on the show have already went on for this.

I don't know.

Not as much as I would think.

Yeah, because it's obviously a very problematic.

It's something that I've been exposed to from also quite a young age.

Like my mom used to make tiramisu, and then I've made it myself.

And I just, I just, for me, it's just like the ultimate dessert.

It's got like, it's creamy, it's spongy, it's got like coffee and alcohol, and it's just a bit of chocolate on top if you want to.

I mean, it's just so good.

And I don't know.

I can't say much more about it.

I just love a tiramisu.

It's one of those ones where I think my dad told me when I was a kid that this is the best dessert in the world.

And because I just believed everything my dad said, I thought that was official.

So I still think of it now.

Well, it's the best dessert in the world.

It's the best dessert in the world as tiramisu.

Yeah, that's right.

It is the best dessert in the world.

And I think it's like, it's a, it's a, it's kind of, it's got this perfection.

It's subtle.

It's not like, I do like, I like lots of desserts, but I, this one is sophisticated.

It's a grown-up.

It's a grown-up dessert.

Yeah, but it's not a so grown-up

that it's great.

I mean, I often think about it as like, so Italians have tiramisu and Brits have trifle.

I actually like trifle too, but trifle can go wrong in so many ways.

And tiramisu doesn't really go wrong.

So in trifle, if you get the fruit aspect too much, it really disposes that when the moment where the fruit touches the cream, it all becomes a bit like the liquidity.

Yeah, that's bad.

So a good trifle needs to prevent that from happening.

So it's much easier to get a bad trifle.

But a tiramisu, that hardly ever happens.

It's kind of all soft and it all comes together at the end.

Nothing wrong, really bad can happen.

So in Superbad, they make tiramisu

in cookery class near the beginning of the film.

And they've messed it up and they just say, just crate loads of chocolate on it and it'll be fine.

And they're doing that.

So I think Superbad knows what it's on about.

Yeah.

But it agrees with you that you can't really mess up a Timam Masu.

I think I only started to like Tiramisu recently because it does feel like more of a grown-up dessert.

And a lot of my dessert love comes from when I was a kid.

It feels nostalgic.

Like I really like chocolate, so anything really chocolatey I'm into.

But now eating tiramisu, it feels as a kid I was not into it because it's like heavy coffee.

Well, yeah, it's not just for the, but you can adjust it for kids.

Like you could, it doesn't have to have as much coffee and you can, you can actually,

you can kind of do it like a nice syrup, like a sugar mapley syrup or something like that.

And then you dip them and it's fine.

You don't have to have coffee.

Have you had, because you must like go to loads of different other chef's restaurants and try all that stuff.

And like weird like versions of things deconstructed have you had like weird versions of tiramisu where they've done it completely differently tried to reinvent it i'm trying to think i'm sure i have i mean and the thing is that like when you go to italian restaurants and they sit there in the refrigerator refrigerated cover the cupboard that you can actually see through because it's like

it's a glass it's a glass fridge you always think that that is probably sat there for too long and it's not going to be nice all those cakes and desserts that sit in that but they always surprise you when you go to a good italian restaurant because all the fruit all the rest comes from the fridge kitchen but those things have sat and you think like oh I want something fresh that's been played different but tiramisu actually really benefits from that I'm trying to think if I had a deconstructed tiramisu no I don't like nothing comes to mind the classics the best right I think because it needs to sit I think you don't eat tiramisu as soon as you made it you need to really let it settle then you can cut yeah then you can cut it

but also it comes together like so many other foods it's kind of like yeah it needs to

the ingredients need to have a little time together to settle to play to get to know each other still find it impossible every time people talk about timin massu i mention it not to think of milton jones's joke that his daughter wrote for him go on oh ask me if i want a tim and bassu do you want to turn him a soul don't mind if i to him a double

Lovely.

His daughter said it wants to him at the table and then he just put it in his show.

Didn't even tell the audience his daughter said it.

He just went, Tim and Basu, don't mind if I took him a due.

Big laugh every night.

Yeah.

I'm going to read your menu back to you now, see how you feel about it.

You would like campari on ice with some orange before the meal begins.

That's right.

Then sparkling water.

You would like some sourdough from the dusty knuckle with salted butter.

Starter, your grandmother's semolina knocky with cheese and nutmeg.

Main course, chicken shawarma in pitter with salad, tahini, pickles, side fish, chips, which you want in the pitter.

Drink, the black beer, the fizzy malt.

Dessert, turmasu.

That's a very clean menu as well.

That's very like

in a yeah, because things are familiar, kind of you know what we know what we're talking about.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's yeah, I love that.

Are you going to serve it to me?

Yes, right now.

Absolutely.

Get in the garden.

Get in there.

Peace of pleasure over there.

Yotam, thanks so much, Scott.

It's the dreamer.

It was a pleasure.

What a wonderful, wonderful menu.

It was always going to be delicious.

We knew it.

But it was great to hear it.

Great to hear the recipes, the techniques broken down sometimes as well.

Real top-notch stuff.

And not any mile cheddar in sight.

No.

And a lovely man who dealt with us very well, I think.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think he found us charming.

Yeah.

At no point before we interviewed Yotam Osolengi did I think he'd have to sit through so much roller coaster chat.

Yeah, and you know, sat through it.

He did.

Yeah.

But we appreciate it, Yotam.

And anytime you want to talk about Disney World again, you know, I'll happily recommend all the snacks.

Yeah.

Hopefully one day, Yotam Atalengi is going to try cheeseburger spring rolls from the spring roll cart.

I'm not sure, man.

I was looking at his face all the way through that.

He looked absolutely disgusted by it.

I don't know.

Do go and buy Otolengi Test Kitchen Extra Good Things by Yotam and by Normurad and the rest of the Otolengi Test Kitchen.

I've had a bigger read now.

I'm very excited to cook some stuff from it.

It is out now and it's published by Ebrey Press.

When I die, bury me with Ebery Pray.

Yes.

Also, go onto my website because I'm coming to Australia soon.

See you in Australia.

For gigs.

I'm not on holiday.

I'm not plugging my holiday.

No.

Keep that hush.

Get on my website.

Check it out.

I'm going to hit up some Australian cities and some New Zealand cities.

Eberry, eberry, eberry press.

I read a little book and then I say, yeah, yes.

Thank you very much for listening.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

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Hello, I'm Carrie Add.

I'm Sarah.

And we are the Weirdos Book Club podcast.

We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival.

The date is Thursday, 11th of September.

The time is 7pm.

And our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies.

Tickets from kingsplace.co.uk.

Single ladies is coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September at the London Podcast Festival.

The rumours are true Saturday the 13th of September at King's Place.

Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet.