Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 31 October
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Yotam Ottolenghi is one of those chefs. The ones whose names sell millions of cookbooks around the world, and headline restaurants.
He’s known and loved for books like Jerusalem – a richly evocative celebration of the culinary DNA of his homeland (with chef Sami Tamimi) – and for the vegetarian classic Plenty, a book that the Guardian hailed for its vegetarian recipes ‘that even meat eaters want to eat’.
His path to the world of food was unconventional. After completing a Master’s degree in philosophy and literature while working on the news desk of an Israeli daily, he moved to London and worked as an assistant pastry chef – leading to his own chain of restaurants and food shops, and to his bestselling books.
Plenty changed the way people cook and eat. Its focus on vegetable dishes, with the emphasis on flavour, original spicing and freshness of ingredients, caused a world revolution in eating – and a revelation that vegetarian food can be fresh and exciting; it doesn’t need to be dour.
His new book, Plenty More, picks up where Plenty left off, with 120 more dazzling dishes. This is a tantalising opportunity to hear from one of the world’s most sizzling culinary stars, in the worlds of both cooking and food writing. Come hear Yotam Ottolenghi on his philosophy and approach to food.
Hosted by Karen Martini.
Featuring
Yotam Ottolenghi
Yotam Ottolenghi’s path to the world of cooking and baking has been anything but straightforward. Having completed a Masters degree in philosophy and literature while working on the news desk of an Israeli daily, he made a radical shift on coming to London in 1997.
He started as an assistant pastry chef at the Capital and then worked at Kensington Place, Launceston Place, Maison Blanc and Baker and Spice, before starting his own eponymous group of restaurants/food shops, with branches in Notting Hill, Islington, Belgravia and Kensington.
Karen Martini
Melbourne chef, restaurateur and food writer Karen Martini has been cooking professionally for more than 20 years. She trained at top restaurant Tansy’s in the early 1990s and has headed restaurant kitchens including the iconic Melbourne Wine Room, white-hot Icebergs Dining Room in Sydney and her current artisan pizza restaurant Mr Wolf, winning countless chefs hats and other plaudits along the way.
Karen’s kitchen career has been balanced by media commitments, cookbooks and much-loved recipe columns, including a role as food editor of Sunday Life magazine, with the Sunday Age and Sun-Herald newspapers.
Since Karen became a mother in 2006 her love of relaxed cooking with fresh, healthy, seasonal produce has intensified. ‘I’m always thinking about what I am going to eat next, how I might cook it, how I could do it differently,’ she says. ‘When I’m helping people to cook and eat and get the same pleasure from it that I do, then I’m happy. My recipes are an extension of me.’