Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 179: Yotam Ottolenghi

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Another dream guest in the Dream Restaurant. World renowned chef, restaurateur and author Yotam Ottolenghi has a table booked this week. And James just wants to talk about Disney World food. ‘Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Extra Good Things’, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad, is out now, published by Ebury Press. Buy it here. Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive. Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations). Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy, now. Please? 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. Start a main course dessert, side dish and drink. Not in that order. And this week, I guess, is... Yotam Otolenghi. Yotam Otolenghi, a wonderful chef and just... Superstar chef. General chef and food superstar, right?

Yeah, absolutely. He's got so many... I mean, there are people who are massive Otolenghi fans who are very excited about this episode. People are really fascinated with how he comes up with recipes. Like, his restaurants are amazing as well. I'm sure a lot of people want to hear about that. His books? Yeah. I read them like... 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, of course. He's got a new book out, of course. The Otolenghi Test Kitchen, Extra Good Things. It's the second in the series of the Otolenghi 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 probably thinking like a chef, right? It 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. Yeah. 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, 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 still would like tips on what to put the one that

I've got on. You can put them on eggs. Is it the one from Haley and Moen? 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 Otolenghi's new book. It's the Otolenghi Test Kitchen, so it's Yotam himself and Noor Morad and the rest of the Test Kitchen super team. Wow. I mean, look, it's smoky sweetened up, spooned onto oven fries and used to top home as the next day. It's all great, sort of adaptable, flexible stuff. I will definitely be asking Yotam Morad 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 Otolenghi out of the Dream Restaurant. And this week, the secret ingredient is mild 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 feel it. Yeah. What's the point of eating cheese 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 on my butt. Yes, please. That's all you want. Put your cheesy finger up my, well, I was

going to say cheesy B, but like, I don't think my B's that cheesy. No. The B's not cheesy. The F is cheesy. Yes. Yeah. Finger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to look confused and also devastated by that entire riff. Also, if Yotam Otolenghi does choose mild cheddar, I guess we will have to say, oh, what? You want a cheesy finger up your B? Yeah. You're telling me Yotam Otolenghi that you don't want a cheesy F up your cheesy B? Yeah. What is your problem? See you later. Yotam 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 he chooses mild cheddar. More like notolenghi. That's good. Gotam notolenghi. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope he does pick mild cheddar now. Yeah. And we will have to say that.

And Gareth Edwards picked mild cheddar and I completely agree with you, Gareth Edwards. I think Gareth Edwards has chosen 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. Gareth Edwards, I've heard that before. Cheers, Gareth. Yeah. Nice name though. Yeah, lovely name. World record breaker, Gareth Edwards. Triple jump. Gareth Edwards said rugby player, isn't he? Oh, maybe, maybe, maybe broke a record or two. So without further ado, this is the off-menu menu of Yotam Otolenghi. Welcome, Yotam, to the dream restaurant. Nice to be here. Welcome, Yotam Otolenghi to the dream restaurant. We've been

expecting 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 J. Finsbury? No. Well, so got some farmer grains, some chicken, and some, there's a little Hispy cabbage and miso aubergine side that they do in a chickpea salad. So I had that in a little tray. All the nutrients you need. Yeah, yeah, miso, aubergine, you know. Chickpeas you said. Yeah, yeah, chickpeas, looking a little... What else do you need? With some peppers and tomatoes in there. Sounds delicious. Yeah, I'd have 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 tour that I'm doing with Noor, and one of the stops, I can't remember where it was, I thought I'd said, 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, it just brings the energy down or something. Oh, it massively does. And yeah, 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, because you arrive, you're there, you do your sound check and all that, you do the thing, and then it's like 10, 30 or 11, and who wants to eat then, right? I have this thing, I did a tour in America

recently, and I had a different interviewer in every city, and I just asked them where to eat at breakfast, so I kind of changed it before I left, so I'd show up at 9 o'clock in the morning in some obscure tackle place, and they go like, they haven't done, they're just scratching their eyes and getting their plates ready, and here I come like ready, because it says they opened at 9.30, although nobody does. That's a good thing to do in America, though, particularly the breakfast, you know, that you're going to get some good stuff. Yeah, and also a lot of places where they've got like communities, particular communities like, you know, like all the South American and Mexican and all that, they're often those places do a great breakfast, and that's where you kind of

want to try some. In the UK, you're playing with fire breakfast wise, because, you know, you're going to 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. Yeah, 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, they've got a B&B or something, and they're like, our breakfast, our full English breakfast is the best, it's going to be horrendous. I mean, 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, as you go like proper, like, you know, like you cook your own beans and do your own salad, but that's not an English breakfast anymore, exactly. Then you're talking like posh brunch places. 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. I'll come down with you, because I agree, I completely agree. 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 one of your, the things you set out to do

when you started opening restaurants? No. Great question, Joe. Points for the question. No, I guess the thing is, I mean, I don't think I didn't set out to do anything. In a sense, things just happen in a particular way. But then when you look back at all my extents, 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, and like when Sammy and I started to link, this is our, we're celebrating 20 years this year, starting in 2002. Thank you. It was just all about what we wanted. When you looked great, tasted great, kept well on the on the on the display, you know, like all these things that

look good. So it was a little bit opportunistic. But also what we ended, 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, I'm loving it. I'm there. Yeah. Yeah. I also, I was thinking about, so if he's one of my favorite restaurants, this full stop, I love going there, whatever I can. And I was just thinking about the chewy carrots. What's your, how much of the chewy carrots? Yeah. It's like the essence of carrots, isn't it? Because, you know, that cooks 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, or even like things like sweet and turnip, you know, like the hard nuts to crack. And when you kind of slow cook things, obviously they kind of distill the flavor. But also on the opposite, it's also true, I guess, if you kind of quickly chargrill and you leave everything inside and then you come in with all your little tricks, you know, your salsas and the marinades and the sprinkles and all that, that also makes a huge difference. And that sort of forms the heart of the new book, right, as well as the little tricks. Yeah. Extra good things, which comes to the

Otolenghi Test Kitchen. And it's, 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 to take away. So you could have like a marinade or a sauce or a pickle or or sprinkle. And that you take it with you to your next meal. So essentially you can, we say Noor Murad, who is my co-author, we say you can Otolenghi-fy anything. You can Otolenghi-fy roast potato. You can Otolenghi-fy plate of scrambled eggs by using all these condiments. So that is kind of it. And it's 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 and the kitchen. You get like, you get like those pickles and, 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. 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 it was a good example. A lot of the time it's, if I get a takeaway,

and I might like, serve myself up, whatever, from the pot. And I'll leave a lot of the sauce in there maybe from the, if I 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 how that, let's see what that's like, real bad. Yeah, I think enough said, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think, well, 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,

you know, actually that's very important. I was immediately drawn to the blooming leeks. The blooming leeks, yeah. Because I love blooming onion. Every time I go to the States, I have a 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, we kind of spent quite a lot of time thinking what goes with what. So 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, cortado on, you know, Calbi 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 little jar on the side, you can go to 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, 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 auto-languages 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 then the pandemic hit and we realized actually that's the solution because all of a sudden it was about, you know, for the first test kitchen book was called Shell Flav 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 little 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? Three times a day. But 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'll be 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. I'm never using that again. Bye-bye forever. See you at the back of the house. 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, it's there's no 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 delivery that says, please don't send another pot. First of all, I think you should bring it up with delivery room because I do agree. There's too much so sometimes it's like every sushi delivery gets like, and you do get stuck with quite a lot. Well, also, I worry that that's because I order so much sushi. They 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.

They assume I'd run some sushi restaurants. 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 earlier little sushi's, all your little soy sauce bottles. And that is that you can almost throw it into almost anything that needs any stew or any, even if you make like a pasta sauce and meaty pasta sauce, like a bragu style, you put some soy sauce in that you get all that umami and you got, you didn't throw it away. And I think it's really, it's a really kind of, it's so basic, you know, people use sometimes they use stock cubes, right, to get all this kind of MSG flavor

umami. So he does the same. Then you just throw it in there and you'll get the flavor. Great. Amazing. Well, that's what I'll do. I'll do that before back. Yeah. Yeah. This is great. Also, just because you were talking about leaks earlier, the leaks, uh, uh, Roe v with the Pecorino. Oh yeah. One of my favorite things last time I went there, wasn't on the menu. So if you could have a word. You know, there is something about changing menus, like chefs love to change venues and customers don't like changing menus, like where the wills collide. Like I go to the chefs in my restaurants, 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, we'll try that again. And in reality, it is a bit of an issue because I think sometimes things that are should be, should stay longer and are kind of a classic in a, in a customer's eye is not really for the chefs. The chef want to kind of push again. And in my restaurants, um, in our restaurant, I should say the chefs have like creative freedom to do those things. I mean, Roe v, 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 Roe v, which was, um, 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 a some kind of seaweed butter. It was, and um, neither Neil or I invented it. I saw it. And for Momofuku, they were doing it in New York at the time at 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, um, 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 call to cancel their

reservations. They go like, we heard the corn is not on. Okay. So I'm going to cancel some of my bookings. I got like, this is mad. Like you're, you're literally not going to give us a chance. We don't believe you could do it again with a different dip. 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. It's hard, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I burned myself all the time. Sure. All the oil spilt all over me, but it was worth it every time. But seriously, that it has become phenomenally popular within a very short amount of time to the extent that I've seen it on Sainsbury's ads, big stations, you 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 Sainsbury's is put on one of these big ads in train stations. And they look beautiful as well. They do look great. They look great. Would you say the Celeriac shawarma is one of those dishes now at Roby? If you took that off, people would. Yeah. Celeriac shawarma is definitely something that we can't take off. There is also that we've got like the Jerusalem mix grill. And I remember when we did the Celeriac shawarma, we wanted to do that when Neil was working in the desk 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 shawarma. So each person kind of added something. We slowed, we cooked it slowly. We added the spices and the kind of the killer ingredient was something called bacala, which is a North African Tunisian, mostly condiment, which involves spinach or charred 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, I 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 goes back to extra good things. I'm not doing it to sell the book, but I'm just saying cultures have a condiment, you know, like we have mayonnaise and ketchup that we have by from Hellmans, but actually they used to have like homemade condiments that were always there even before refrigeration. Like that's like what's our crowd 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. We always start with still of sparkling water. Oh, I always have sparkling water. I almost can't drink still water. I do, but I love sparkling water. I get it from my dad,

like in the old days. So I'm in my fifties. So you can imagine how far we go. He used to have that siphon thing, like, you know, like with the little tap on it. Yeah, with a little bottle, you get these tiny little metal siphon bottles of gas and you'd put them on and then you put the cream. 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 park, but he'd have sparkling water was just his thing. And here I go, get still water. Yeah, we don't even offer it in real life in the studio. So even first thing in the morning. I don't drink first thing in the morning, but I do love sparkling water. Yeah, it's just a thing. It just feels alive. I know some people say,

even on the show, people said, oh, it's got this kind of not a water flavor, right? Like, it doesn't taste like pure water. I don't have that problem. I just, I just like to drink sparkling water. What is still water taste like to you? It's like, 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. 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, it was like I was going back to still water. Well, isn't it? You just feel like you just have an even cleaner teeth. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 the, the electric toothbrush tells me when to move on to the next bit, when it goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Time to move on. That's good. Yeah, no. Well, then that makes sense now. Maybe no, that's it. I'm just going to have to spark some water forever. I'll just, I'll 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 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. Good story. It's another good story for me. It's a pretty good story for me. Yeah. You didn't need to take a long break though. 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 Coke 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.

So 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 run 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 got a month for about having it. So I thought, in for a penny. So you're drinking so much Coke that your dentist had to stop? Not Coke. It was coffee and tea. Oh, right. Cup of tea all the time. And she was like, 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 haven't been drinking

red wine that much. So luckily, that wasn't as much of an issue. So whenever I did have that, that was okay. But you know, also like, you know, obviously, curries, we talked about the turmeric, I guess. Oh, man. Turmeric. Don't even get me started on turmeric, man. The other day, 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 going to go into this shop and get something healthy. I got 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. The empty bottle goes down, bounces off the

pavement and all the excess turmeric sprays up my leg and completely stains my trousers yellow. And I look like a jackass. So that's what you get for trying to do something good. That jumper used to be white. Yeah, I might have a yellow jumper for the list of you. I just say he's wearing a turmeric color jumper. Exactly. That's what happened to me. You turmeric-proofed your jumper. Yeah, yeah. That's all I can wear now, is turmeric colored stuff so that I don't get punked again. Never try to do a good thing. That's going to be the worst stain, right? Turmeric's got to be the most staining spice. Yeah. Turmeric is bad, I think. Well, beetroot famously doesn't really come off and pomegranate.

We used to have pomegranates and I've told this story before, but my mom would, and I had a younger brother, 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. It's sensible. That's just sensible. That's a good sort of economy of stain. But it's a good image, isn't it? Yeah, to be completely naked. I think I'd at least want to buy some pomegranate pants. Yeah. I'd be like, just at least buy me some pomegranate colored pants, Mum. Yeah. So I can have them for my pomegranate garden trips. It would make you think twice about wanting a pomegranate as well, wouldn't it? You'd be like,

I want a pomegranate, but I want to keep my clothes on. Yeah. I mean, these days, you know, often you buy pomegranate already, like the seeds taken out in a little tub in the supermarket, that's pretty safe. Yeah. That'd be good. If anyone's wanting to look for some sort of a new diet fat, it might be good to be like, the rule is every time you want to eat something, you have to eat naked in the garden. People would consider how much do I want this food. It actually is true, and you don't always want to join them, do you? No. necessarily. I mean, people would be eating on their own a lot. Yeah, in the garden naked alone. Yeah. Poppadobs or bread? Poppadobs or bread? Yo, it's a bottle of Enki. Poppadobs or bread?

I didn't know that while I was going to ask this question. Of course, bread. Who eats poppadobs? Well, a few people have chosen poppadobs in the poppadobs. Yeah, I feel pretty popular. Yeah. Or just, you know, or sometimes just whatever. You have to grow up in this country to choose poppadobs. I guess so. I guess it's, yeah. Maybe when a bread was absolutely dreadful and all, anything like with a bit of texture that you could get would be poppadobs then. Yeah. I'm really, that's in the second time I slag off the local cuisine. I don't know if this is like... Oh, God. No, I get them, but they are just like something you have once in a while and you go to an Indian restaurant. Bread is just, there's such a range of options.

Yeah. Would that be a dream bread you would have for 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 whole. You hold, you can't put any spreads on it. It's not practical and it's poncy and all that. I think it just has so much flavour 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 flavour. I guess it's so widespread now, 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. Or 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 take it down. Take it down. Take it down. But it's also still enjoying it. Bring me the white bread. The white slice of market 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 to your road. Oh, really? And they still, they wouldn't come to our road. Really? Did you ask?

A lot of people ask, but I think it might just be outside their area. So, but yeah, there was a big chat on the, 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 down. It also tells a lot about the streets. Yeah, absolutely. Most of them are like, you know, street WhatsApp groups and stuff like, guys, we need to sort out this problem with the bin men.

Is anyone else having problems with the music for the local pub at night? It's too loud. Guys, we haven't got enough salad. I've been 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, was, were these the people who scratched the car? Like people get really angry about it. It's good. Imagine if the Dusty Knuckle drove down and scratched all the cars. 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 lives you could scratch a bloody car with. Yeah. There we go. Sourdough haters, again. 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 oil to cook with. And I also love the combination of butter and olive oil. So if you, some things are just nice when you have both. So you start off with olive oil, and then we get a little more body-add butter. And it's like, it's nice together. You don't have to choose. No, no, when cooking, when cooking, when cooking. Yes. But for the, for the, for the Dusty Knuckle sourdough, I'll have, I'll have butter. Lovely. With some salt in the butter? Yes. Salt and butter. But not any of that whipped butter business.

Is that, it's just so pointless in my eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I whipped butter. I just don't get it. Like, what's the point of like, when it's 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. Maybe I'll fall for this. Maybe I've, maybe I've been duped here, because I get excited when I see whipped butter. I guess I couldn't tell you why. So maybe I'm just, I've been tricked.

I think if you'd given us a slice of sourdough, your favorite bread, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. With, with whipped as opposed to just normal, really good salt and butter. I think like, when you're blind tasting, you'd prefer the proper normal butter. I like just normal, just thick. Yeah. Spread it on thick. Ed likes getting each bite. He, he breaks the bread up into bits

and he butters each individual bit and then eats it. You want to make sure you have enough butter. 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. Yeah, you want to feel it. You want to feel it. I get that. Yeah, it's fine. 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, I will, I went for my, my grandmother, my grandmother on my father's side.

She was Italian. She was actually, they came to, to Israel just before the Second World War, but they just felt like they've never left Italy, you know, like she, 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 simolina gnocchi, which is essentially is like cooked down simolina. And then 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 simolina under the grill. So it's like pure melted cheese sensation.

And she used to, she used to, you like the idea, right? I'm going somewhere. I'm visualizing all of this and just going along. Yeah. So, and I think maybe a great thing of nutmeg, nutmeg as well. And that's it, like cheese, nutmeg, simolina. It's just so comforting. It's like pure comforting. There's no challenge in that dish. It's like the opposite of sourdough. It's like so soft and warm. Yeah. And you don't need anything else. And so for a very long time, I tried to, to make it like she does. And I really don't think I've managed. In one of my books, there is, there is a recipe for it, which I think is pretty good, but it's, it's just not, not as good as the way she used to do it.

What is that when, you know, because you would have thought you'd be able to capture all of the, it sounds like relatively simple, like, yeah. It's technically super simple. So you should, 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 your right leg. So it's like having something on holiday and then coming home and say, I'm going to make that. It's just going to be so good. And then it's just, it's just never really good. Or even buying a bottle of booze from holiday, like you have a wine, you know, or all these Arax and Rockies and stuff that you have them like in, in Turkey. And then you come back and it's

just like awful. 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're going to 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. And like, guys, this is so sad. Yeah. Also, I think if anyone, I've been finding, if someone tells me, this dish is amazing, you've got to have this, it's so good. Yeah. And 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. Because then I

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. Their name might be like, that's all right. It's pretty good. But like, 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. I worry that everyone's going to these places going out. So even today, you've mentioned about three dishes at Roe v. Yeah. So I'm worried people are going to go Roe v now and go. That gives me anxiety. You're worried about it. I mean,

that you can build up expectations. And I often think it's like, 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 that's coming for 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. Go find it. And I was sorted out one day that Ed will try it. Okay. And I know in my mind, he will love it. It'll become his new favorite thing.

But I had to not ramp it up. Yeah, because that would be huge if you told me this is your new favorite thing. And what if you just said, what if you do the reverse psychology and just tell me it's just awful? Then I'd worry that I'd go to, I'll be too good at that. And I'd get it in his head that it's disgusting. And then you'll think, 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. 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 soon. North of where? Yeah. North of the river. Thames. North of the river Thames. North of a few rivers. Is it in Manchester? Yes.

Is it in the French? Yes. Yes. He's obsessed with this place. You've probably even told me about the dish before. Yeah, it was my fine background for a while. He would have seen it. So what is it? What was the dish? Come on, you can tell us amongst friends. Okay, Benito, you've got to edit this out. No. This is a big moment. You can't edit out the You Recommending a Dish on a Food podcast. Well, it's because it will... Do you think it's going to blow out the spot? The listeners won't blow out the spot, but the listeners will be like, this makes no sense with the man 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 a cheese selection? So it's between... It's going from the savories to the desserts is where it sits in the menu. And it's a drunken prune. Slice of St. James's cheese on top of that, a walnut cracker, and a scoop of honeycomb. It's his bite. Wow. And it's incredible. I don't know that surprise. I don't know the listeners will be annoyed about that. That sounds like the way you should be consuming cheese with a scoop of honeycomb on top of it. Because you're famous for not liking cheese.

Yeah, he gets angry if people pick cheese. Because he's a cheese board. I'll quickly adjust my... 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, isn't it? Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Well, I enjoy it. Now and again, I'll get the cheese board. But then you have 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. But basically, 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 good. Amazing. So that's why I want to get Ed there, to have that bite, because I'm pretty sure it'd be up his 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, here, 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 training doesn't want to take to Manchester, going there, eating it and loving it. Yeah, I went out for dinner the other night at rules. James wasn't there, but I had cheese for dessert. I had Stilton. They bring the big Stilton.

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 favourite toy. So excited. It's about you, Duke. Yeah. Well, that's like a lovely starter, a Ratatouille starter. Back to the childhood. Yes. Yeah, I know that. It's back to childhood. I actually, I went for childhood things, because I thought, in some ways, because I'm constantly surrounded by food,

with the restaurants and the book, I feel like I've touched on so many things that I don't want to choose from any of those. I want to go back to the initial old experience of food 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 favourite main courses I've ever had, another shout out to you. I was on Sunday brunch, and one of your chefs was there via Zoom,

so it wasn't like, I can't remember her name, quite a few years ago. Easter? It might have been. She did, 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 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. So good. I do know it.

Where could I get that? You know, you could make it if you, I think, no. You should have told me, I would have brought the prawn lasagna. In my bag, through Borough Market, with my prawn lasagna. Which book is it? I'll make it. I don't think it's in a book. I think it's in one of my garden columns. Right. I'll have to have a look at that.

I'm sure we can dig out a recipe. We can dig it out. Yeah. So good. Yeah. We can dig it out. My word. I'll make it for you.

Thank you, Ed. I want to do some cooking. Yeah, yeah. You can cook the prawn lasagna, and we'll get Simon, Tim, you'll have Joy to stand there as well. No. Because I feel like I'm back in Sunday Punch. No. I'd like a nice relaxing meal, please. The Dream Main course.

The main course. So I went for something. Again, it's not a restaurant food. It's a shawarma 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 that, you know, the Donner kebab and the shawarmas and stuff. And they're all, for me, they're all good.

But they rely, well, 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 literally, as you cut through, there's all this extra fat added there. And they'd put it in a fluffy pita 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. You get salad.

You can get some fried aubergines on top as well, tahini. And pickles is 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 at the bottom of the pita, if it stays, it doesn't go all over, you know, seeps through to your shoes, which is a kind of professional hazard. It just happens, 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, it's just,

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 street. 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 Donner would not have tahini, but we would have some kind of yogurt-based sauce

or yogurt-garlic-based sauce. That's also fine. You know, I'm not a purist when it comes to these things. And I do 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 pick.

But the spicing is important. So the shawarma 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 what comes from allspice or cinnamon, or maybe 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, because... You don't like cardamom. I hate that stuff. No, I love cardamom, but not for that. So you wouldn't have it in any... No, I'd probably have it if it was part of a spice mix

or it wasn't a dominant flavor, but as a dominant flavor. So you would never get those like buns this distance. I was in Copenhagen this weekend, 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. No, still hate it and went back to sleep again. He told me a story earlier about being asleep in his... Being on tour, his tour manager driving him, him being asleep in the car. He'd woken up, and the tour manager going, this is my hometown, we're driving through now,

and I went, absolute shithole, and then I went to sleep. Maybe they eat cardamom in those... Yeah, yeah, this is a Scandinavian town in North Wales. Yeah, cardamom, I don't know what it is. It's just the flavor. It's just that I like the most things, and those buns are everywhere. You have the gym. So Arabic coffee almost all often has cardamom infused or round with the coffee grounds,

so you have that sweetness, coffee flavor, and I just think that is just absolutely delicious, but if someone tells you they'd hate that flavor, then 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... Have you heard of this book, Yota?

No, but I'm curious. The Dave Eggers book, it's based on a 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 crack practice. Yeah, so there's 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 is made. Which is great, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, how much have actually retained? Please don't test me on any of it. Actually, no, but you did retain the cardamom. Yes, 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, I do share. He goes... I think... For the rest of us? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think...

He goes to... Uzbekistan. Who starts suggesting country? Yes. Yeah. Is it a sort of coffee place? Yeah, big coffee place, but then... Columbia.

Guatemala. Ethiopia. The problem with it is that their big coffee... Like, coffee was almost invented there, but then they've fallen behind, and he wants to bring them back into the coffee game. Oh, I see. 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. This... James, this is not good stuff, man. Huh?

This is not good stuff. This is great! No, no, it's not good. It's an empty one. And we're playing a guessing game about the book I made. This is good. We will... We'll 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 otherwise... I've got all day. It's certainly very important to go to them that you find yourself... No, I want to know what that country is because I want to add it to my repertoire of anecdotes. Have you heard of the Yemen? Oh, yeah, the Yemen.

I have heard of the Yemen. Yeah, 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. 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... It's easy to spill a coffee. The problem is, you might spill a coffee. Maybe. Maybe you will spill a coffee in the book.

Actually, this book sounds good. I'm going to... You're going to eat something. Well, I'm going to tell you what I'll do. 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.

Too many. 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 none of them. 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? When I get a new cookbook, I will just sort of sit and... But do you don't read, like, half a teaspoon of salt? No, no, no.

But I mean, like, you know, when I say read, I look at the page. Come on, Matt. I've read this, yeah? Haven't got to that bit yet. Half a teaspoon of salt with it. 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 have recipes with an eighth of a teaspoon. I'll just let you know here. 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 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 you still need a little bit of extra salt. So the eighth comes into the conversation. And I always say to people, like,

why do you give me so much detail? 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 the newspaper of record. Like everything is there, it's there, and you can follow it or not. And some people love that idea. They go like, these are foolproof recipes because I followed it and I created an amazing meal. So it works for some. But then, yeah, you do that.

That's what I would do the first time. And then if I did it again, like you've got the basis of it and you sort of 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 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 their selves into a rut over like having like this incredible repertoire.

But Nijella 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 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. Teresa Broccoli Pasta.

Shout out. Teresa Broccoli Pasta. Teresa Broccoli Pasta. That's my... That is your... 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...

Everything's opened up and it feels weird. Oh, really? It feels weird to me. What kind of chorizo do you use? Do you use a soft chorizo or...? No, not soft. The cooked chorizo, the slices, the salami style. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. We're not the salamis. No, no, no. You use the whole... Yeah, it's in the sausage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I chop it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I chop it up still. But it's hot. It's not like... I know I'm suggesting you drop the whole sausage into some pasta. You chop it up. Tell us how you make it. I mean, maybe you've spoken about it on the show already.

No, this is good. 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. They're so sweet. So we were like, we need to use these stems for something. We learned this recipe, use the stems, and now we're buying broccoli to make that.

So now, 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 the 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. Oriceti. 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?

An eighth. Carol. 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 Ryan a recipe, so you're good. You didn't even have to do that. We got it now.

Yeah, we corn-ribbed him. Yeah, he's absolutely corn-ribbed that guy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely corn-ribbed carrot. I have a question about the shawarma. Do you want the Avengers with you while you eat it? The Avengers. Yes, the superheroes, the Avengers. All of them?

They like shawarma. Um, I think it was... It was the original one, right? The original film. To be honest, no, I don't want people with me. Thor, Black Widow, and Hulk. 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 actually don't like being alone. I'm terrified of being alone. Normally, I'd love people around me. But for this particular dish, I'd 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, like, your whole face is in there. Then may I suggest that you pop into the garden and get your clothes off? Pop them off! That's a very good idea. Pop your pants off, you're going to have to pop them in the garden. The problem is, you get it in the shawarma shop,

and to get to the garden is quite a slip, so you need to kind of get in the car, drive, get your clothes off, it's cold by then. All the fats have crackulated, it's like the whole fun is gone. That's why, you know, maybe you should open a shawarma shop with a little garden, a little private garden in the back.

I think with a bunch of naked people just to see the shawarma. Let's just imagine that for a second. That sounds so delicious. Yes. The fluffy pita as well. I think I've had some pretty bad pita's in my time. Yep. The worst pita 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 pita's. And, I mean, it's just something completely different.

Yeah. I am Donna in Harrogate. It's the best pita that I've had, yeah, for a kebab. Like, just really fluffy. I could eat it on its own, that pita, wouldn't it be? Yeah. 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 really kind of like basic. It's like the beyond restaurant experience going out and eating street food like that, like stuff that's just like uninhibitably delicious and nobody cares.

And tahini as well. Yeah. Tahini on everything, please. Tahini, or you could do like a tahini or a garlic sauce or a yogurt garlic. So good. I mentioned I am Donna recently. Nish was there after Nish Kumar.

And I said to whoever it was, I was recommending it to her. I said, Nish loves them. Your favorite kebabs, right? And Nish very moodily said, no, no, they're not. And then corrected me on what is favorite kebabs. I'll give you a guess which one. Palmyra. No, not Palmyra.

That would have been my second guess. Kebab kid, yes. Kebab kid, yeah. No, no, kebab kid's the best. And then you walk away. Kebab kid's on New Kings Road in Carson Screen. Yeah, it's been there for like 30, 40 years. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. And those are the best kebabs. They're very good kebabs, yeah. And Nish used to live opposite kebab kid. Okay. Those were some dangerous days. Yeah. Nish used to, I mean, Nish used to get one a day sometimes, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's no longer with us. But we like to live stories about him. Just remember our friend. Yeah. No, and he didn't go naked in the garden to eat his kebabs.

No, we're in the flat, unfortunately. He's just there. He 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 like a really good shawarma like that.

Shawarma? I can't say that I know, but I haven't done a proper search of 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. 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 it should be. But they also, they are a bit more like professorial about it. They got 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 a bunch of dishes

that go in a pita like that, 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 ki mangoy sauce with it, then the salad. And also the french fries sometimes or not. And that's called sabiq. And it's the same thing. So again, they put a layer of the aubergine, a layer of the salad, a layer of the french fries and egg.

It's just, oh my God. And so your dream side dish is the chips. My dream side dish is the chips because, but actually it goes in, but I mentioned is 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, then I'll just stuff it. I didn't know how formal you guys are.

Oh, well, it's your dream meal. It's your dream meal. I mean, look, you can have that. It's all in the shawarma. If there could be a few extra chips on the side. Yeah, that is, yeah. Let's just do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's do that. So your dream drink then. So this is where I kind of, I 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 would, it was called black beer, which is like non-alcoholic beer. And it was like here we have like, what's it called?

A smelt malty. Super malt. Super malt, yeah. So it's a bit like super malt. It's slightly different. Like in the flavor, it's a bit more caramel-y. 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 have next to that, there will be that. And if you want, 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 have. We should have Campari on ice with a bit of orange and that's just as it is with not with sparkling water or anything like that. Not in this case, no. Would you normally have it at the start of a meal? Yeah, so yeah, I don't drink it all the time,

but when we often go on holiday to Greece, so 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 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 waking hell. He said it was a waking hell. It's a bustling boy. He needs roller coasters. He loves roller coasters. Yeah, well, you don't go to Greece for that. I look like a good roller coaster myself. Roller coaster, fair enough.

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 when 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. And we need him. We need him, man.

And so you also are a big roller coaster fan. No, not really. But I just had a very good roller coaster experience 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.

That's a good point, actually. I can't do that. He'll go on. They go, what was James going on about this one? You know, at the 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've really built 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 it all full time. This should be the best day of my life. Now, the malt drink sounds very intriguing as well. Yeah. So it's just really, it's a dark malt, like fizzy malt.

It's sweet and really, really dark and it's really malty. So 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. Maybe now there more are, but historically it wasn't like, but that is something you have with your dinner. 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 those were, if you're not going to drink proper beer. How big is the bottle? The bottles are pretty big. They're like a litre or three quarters of a litre. You don't finish it.

I'm going to say the wine you're doing for it all the time is huge. Maybe I was smaller. 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. But it takes it like gumming away at a cookie for ages. Mine goes on the floor. I have two young boys. 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 feel 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, I can get this out of 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 eat things, but I put a limit to how many like self-skittles they can have. 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, they are Tolengi kids. They probably eat like olives and, you know, and like when since they're born. And in actual fact, they have gone through quite like finicky stages. But this summer we went to Paris for the first time and they ate snails. Like they love eating snails.

And I thought like that is super cool. Now I can, they're finally kind of, they're finally there. But we've gone through like a period where they last like wouldn't eat anything that's green. Like it's got green bits in it and all the rest of that. It's tough sometimes because you make, there's so much effort that goes into food. And their 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. Oh, they go like, that is just not as good as we get at school. That is crushing. Oh, wow.

That is crushing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is very bad. The salariat shawarma at school is so much better. I know you are making. This doesn't even have the essence of spinach. 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 word did she say? Like, how can the kids possibly finish this? Yeah, no, it wasn't even that. It was like, isn't food is so big when you're a child?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a very... And 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, let's have this chat.

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 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 ingredients. It was so big. And on top of that, there were like three 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 mass America. It's just America, yeah.

And I was just like, how could that be true and real? I mean, that's salad. I'll never forget that. Like I still do that there. I'm traumatized. It's crazy. Like I've spent a bit of time in America. And if you're like, well, I'm gonna have a healthy day

or just order a salad. I ordered like a cob salad ones. And it was on like a dinner plate, like a serving plate for one person. And then just like a line of chicken. There must be about three chicken breasts, a block of blue cheese, egg, like eight eggs. And you're like, this was me trying to be healthy.

And then you pour the dressing on the top. But I ate the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, but the whole thing is bad. Delicious. But the trouble is, is that it's quantity over quality, isn't it? That's like, there's so much.

But actually, 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 is a blow your mind. Cool. My first meal that I had in Disney World on my recent holiday. Starter snails. Main course, cob 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? Browns Darby Diner.

I mean, to Browns Darby. 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 for weeks. We're there for a week at Disney World. So- He doesn't have kids.

What a nightmare. 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 this is absolutely brilliant. So you wake up in the morning and you go like,

I'm going to 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 got to bear in mind is- Yes. 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 plaza 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 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.

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 been so- Well, 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 the worst theme park food ever for a week. It's going to be depressing. So I've got to find what the best food at Disney World is so I can make sure that it's good and I like it. And Browns Derby was our first meal that we had when we got there. So we've had a day and a half living in an airport because 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, what am I going to order when I get to Browns 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 that Cobb salad. It's the world famous Cobb salad.

And I'm going to get- The famous Cobb salad. It's what it says on the list, on the menu. They call it the world famous Cobb salad. They don't even call them menus. Yeah. And then I was like, does that- I'm going to get the 50th anniversary baked Alaska.

And that's exactly what I did. And it was delicious. Are you going to get the cheese course? Not at Browns Derby. Not at Browns Derby. Not tempted to open a restaurant in Disney World? Well, now that you say it, if you 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 a lot dinner reservations and we canceled all of them because actually a lot of the restaurants we found by day two, we were like, Joe, what these restaurants aren't very good,

but the snacks that we're getting along the way in Disney are great. So we canceled 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 in it. Got your time off a little late in the podcast. You need to balance it. It's Ying and Yang. From Disney World. You know, you've got- If you please.

This is so embarrassing, your time off. 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's the roller coaster? Great. I can't tell you about it. No, no, no. Oh yeah, the roller coaster was the food. What roller coaster was it? It was Cosmic Rewind. Garden of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind

is the best roller coaster I've ever been on in my life. No spoilers. We arrived 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. It's not come up as often as you might think. Yeah, it's obviously a very popular dessert.

Something that I've been exposed to from also quite a young age. Like my mum used to make tiramisu and then I've made it myself. And 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 it 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 that-

What's the best dessert in the world? Well, the best dessert in the world is tiramisu. Yeah, that's right. It is the best dessert in the world. And I think it's like, 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 this one is sophisticated.

It's a grown-up, it's a grown-up dessert. Yeah, but it's not 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,

can it really dispose of that? When the moment where the fruit touches the cream and all becomes a bit like- That liquid, yeah, yeah, 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 super bad, they make tiramisu in cookery class near the beginning of the film. And they've messed it up and they just say, just create loads of chocolate on it and it'll be fine. And they're doing that. So I think super bad knows what it's on about.

Yeah, it agrees with you that you can't really mess up a tiramisu. 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 that 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 and- Well, yeah, it's not just for the- But you can adjust it for kids. Like it doesn't have to have as much coffee and you can actually- Now, yeah.

And you can kind of do it like a nice syrup, like a sugar maple syrup or something like that. And then you dip them and it's fine. You don't have to have it. Have you had- Because you must like go to loads of different- Of a 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, trying 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 cupboard,

the cupboard that you can actually see through because it's like 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 are sitting that, but they always surprise you when you go to a good Italian restaurant because all the rest comes from the kitchen,

but those things have sat. And you think like, oh, I want something fresh that's been plated for me, 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 classic's 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. So then you can cut the- And then you can cut it the fridger. And 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 tiramisu. I mentioned not to think of Milton Jones's joke that his daughter wrote for him. Go on. Ask me if I want a tiramisu. Do you want a tiramisu?

Don't mind if I tiramadu. Lovely. His daughter said it wants to be on the table and then he just put it in his shirt. I didn't even tell the audience of daughters that it- He just went, tiramisu, don't mind if I tiramadu. Big laugh every night. Yeah.

I'm on a regimen you're back to 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 gnocchi with cheese and nutmeg. Main course, chicken shawarma in pitta with salad, tahini, pickles, side dish chips, which you want to eat in the pitta. Drink, the black beer, the fizzy malt. Dessert, tiramisu. That's right. That's a very clean menu as well.

That's very like- That was delicious. 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 the garden. Get in the garden. Get in the garden. Put your clothes over there.

Yo, Tom, thanks so much for coming to the Dream Restaurant. It was a pleasure. What a wonderful, wonderful menu. It was always going to be delicious. We know it, but it was great to hear it. Great to hear the recipes, the techniques, broken down sometimes as well. Real Tom Notch stuff and not any mild cheddar inside.

No. And a lovely man who dealt with us very well, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you found us charming. Yeah. At no point, before we interviewed Yotam Otolenghi, did I think he'd have to sit through so much roller coaster chat?

Yeah. And you know, tap 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 Otolenghi is going to try cheeseburger spring rolls from the spring roll cart at Disney World. He's not sure, man. I was looking his face all the way through that. He looked absolutely disgusted by it. Hmm. I don't know.

Do go and buy Otolenghi Test Kitchen Extra Good Things by Yotam and by Norm Orad and the rest of the Otolenghi 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 Ibrie Press. When I die, bury me with Ibrie 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. Ibrie, Ibrie, Ibrie Press. I read a little book and then I say, yes. Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye. Goodbye. Hello.

It's me, Amy Gladhill. You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato, and our relationship's never been the same since. And I am joined by me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil in case.

Get him on, James and Ed. But we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the new stories that we've missed out from the north, because look, we're two Northerners. Sure, but we've been living in London for a long time.

The new stories are funny. Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off. And that's a new podcast called Northern News we'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glittle's mum on every episode. That's Northern News.

When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy. Is it? Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late.