Yotam Ottolenghi Quotes

Buttermilk's palate-cleansing tartness is one reason it's used a lot in southern India, where meals often end with a small bowl of the stuff served with plain rice and pickles.

The cornerstone of every Persian meal is rice, or polo.

Like all Iranian kids, I grew up feeling strongly that the best part of dinner was tahdig, the crisp, golden crust that forms at the bottom of every pot of Persian rice - and sometimes other dishes, too.

Pomegranate molasses is ubiquitous in Arabic cooking: it's sweet, sour and adds depth.

Every morning when I woke up, my mother was already in the kitchen making breakfast. It was always the same: steamed rice, pickled vegetables, grilled fish and miso soup. Each day there was something different in the soup such as tofu or potatoes.

I like to make Arroz con Gandules, rice with pigeon peas. My husband loves it. It's a Puerto Rican dish my mother taught me.

Like all rice, black rice is great at absorbing flavours, but it's just as happy to act as a satiny bed for a poached egg, say, if you want to keep things simple.

I knew more about produce from the sea than any of my schoolmates, and my reports in school, from kindergarten on, amused and shocked my classmates and teachers. I told them how we ate with chopsticks, had rice and seaweed for breakfast, raw fish, octopus, and sea urchin eggs for supper, and cakes made from sharks.

I now understand how varied the world of cultivated rice is; that rice can play the lead or be a sidekick; that brown rice is as valuable as white; and that short-grain rice is the bee's knees.

I rarely cook traditional risotto, but I love other grains cooked similarly - barley, spelt or split wheat. I find they have more character than rice and absorb other flavours more wholeheartedly.

I have to admit that I can't take a whole fig and eat it on its own as I would a peach or mango. It's just too much.

For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.

When I think of flavours, I think colour, so lemon should be yellow and orange is orange.

Chinese sausage, which is widely available from Asian grocers and online, is sweet, rich, and enticingly smoky. I add it to steamed rice with strips of omelette and a few baby veg stir-fried with soy.

Rice and vermicelli is a common combination in Arab and Turkish cooking - it has a lighter texture than rice on its own.

I love to cook comfort food. I'll make fish and vegetables or meat and vegetables and potatoes or rice. The ritual of it is fun for me, and the creativity of it.

Before I turned vegetarian, I used to often cook seafood or my favourite breakfast of eggs and bacon. Now, I love making pulao or rice with lots of spices and vegetables.

I cook a very exotic Hyderabadi rice dish called Hyderabadi biryani, which takes an entire day to cook, and the last time I cooked it was multiple years ago, but someday I'll cook it again.

In Japanese, sushi does not mean raw fish. It means seasoned rice.

Good vinegars come in all shapes, sizes, strengths, and viscosities and are probably my most often used seasoning agent in the kitchen after the other major acids we use in solid form: sugar and salt.

I love cooking Japanese food at home. It's so easy to make an easy fry, a saute, or a quick braise and serve it over a bowl of rice with pickles and a side salad.

Quince may resemble pears and apples, but unlike their fruit brethren, raw quince are inedibly tannic and sour. This means you do have to cook them, but the transformation is dramatic, and well worth your efforts.

The last time I celebrated a special occasion, I hashed together a paella with some chicken, some frozen veg, long-grain rice, chilli and a shake of turmeric for colour - and it didn't disappoint.

I love rice and pasta.

My two essential ingredients are chilies, any kind, dried or fresh; and acid, whether it's citrus - lemon, lime, yuzu - or vinegars. Food has to pop.