Yotam Ottolenghi

Is that a cool name or what?  I distinctly remember when I first met Chris thinking that I couldn't marry him because his last name was Nelson and there was a girl in my high school with the same last name who was, how should I say, promiscuous, and you know how you get negative associations with names because of experiences?  Well, I got over it.

Anyway, Yotam Ottolenghi (super de-duper cool name) is a Jewish guy that's been living in London close to 20 years and he has written two cookbooks.  Both have been released with critical acclaim, oh, and because he probably is an over-achiever, he had restaurants before the cookbooks.

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Plenty, his first book I have owned for several years.  The focus on Plenty is vegetables which sounds so boring and unappetizing you can already hear your kids complaining.  But look inside the book and you will want to eat vegetables all the time based solely on the pictures, which was why I bought the book.  And here's the kicker- I have never used it.  Our basement flooded, things got shuffled and I forgot about it.  But then I saw his second book, Jerusalem, which caused me to remember the first.  So then I also ordered Jerusalem as well.  I know, I sound a little strange ordering a second cookbook when I haven't even used the first.  That is such a first world thing to do.

Jerusalem is done with a man named Sami Tamimi, another cool name.  Sami was raised on the Muslim eastern side of Jersusalem and Yotam was raised on the Western Jewish side of Jerusalem.  I am excited to see how the different cultures play out in the book. In the introduction he talks about how they both ate pretty similar things with just slight differences with their cultures.

To get a grip on myself for now having two cookbooks that I have not used, I am going to dedicate December to Yotam Ottolenghi month. When I am not using my amazingly, awesome freezer meals, which averages out to twice per week, then I will be cooking out of either Jerusalem or Plenty.  But not on weekends because weekends are too crazy to try and do something like that.  I figure this is a good way to actually use the cookbooks and then I can feel better about purchasing them.

 I did mention to Chris that it would have been so awesome if he had a last name like Ottolenghi, he didn't have much to say in return.  But it would probably make filling out forms a royal pain in the butt, so instead I will remind myself that Nelson is short and easy to spell.

Anyway, they are both around $20 on Amazon, and would make totally awesome Christmas presents for anyone that needs ideas.  Probably you should buy one of them just to say his name when people ask you where you got the recipe.  Something like "Oh, that old recipe?  It came out of Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbook".  Come on, admit it.  His name is really fun to say  :)