November 22, 2025 • 18 mins
Yotam Ottolenghi is one of the biggest names in food around the world, and he's set to bring his insights to our shores next year.
After 11 cookbooks, Ottolenghi's built a name for himself in the world of food, and his distinctive way of cooking has earned him praise and critical acclaim.
He says these tours are often 'hectic' and 'intense' - and it's hard for him to juggle the experience of taking in a city on these schedules.
"I'm quite flexible with the way I eat, so I'm just happy to eat whatever's around...cooking on stage is really just about sharing some basic techniques that I've developed over time."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yottam Ottolini is one of the biggest names in food
around the world. After eleven cookbooks, Ottling has become not
just a name, but an adjective for a distinctive way
of cooking. Yotam is heading here next year with his
live tour and Evening with Yotum ottlingy and Yochtam joins
me now from the UK. Good morning, Thank you so
much for your time.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thank you. Thanks Francesca.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
As someone who loves food, how do you handle these
whirlwind tours because you are doing I think twenty one
events in under a month.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I ask myself this question every day. I enjoy the
tours very much, but they're hectic, they're intense, and I
have so, you know, I visit effectively. I'm doing a
city a day, really, really, that's what I do. So
the timing is not great because it means I arrived somewhere,
you know, just lunch, and then I go into a
(01:08):
room with a lot of great people, and then I
get out and I don't want to have dinner, so
I snack. I have breakfast if I can, and if
I want to taste it, you know, the taste of
the flavor of a city. I ask people where is
the best place to go for breakfast, and then I
try to get my breakfast before I fly over to
the next place. So it's it's about juggling. But I
(01:29):
do make sure that I have a good meal, at
least one in every city that I go to.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I did wonder, Yachtum, whether this is why in your
tour you include a live cooking demonstration on stage so
that you actually have some dinner.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The last thing I want to eat is on tour
is my own food, I have to say. But yes,
I mean, I tour on statu and I'm quite flexible
with the way I eat. So I'm just happy to
eat whee others around, whether whatever I have around. And yeah,
I mean, cooking on stage is just about sharing some prints,
(02:08):
some basic great techniques that I've kind of develop over
time to show people how to expand their how they
cook and what they cook, but without all the half
much effort and hassle. So I've noticed over the years
(02:30):
that some people, not everybody, find cooking a little bit taxing,
like they're intimidating. Some people think that love cooking, but
they don't know how to expand expand their repertoire. So
what I do when I cook on stage and don't
I don't cook a lot, and I cook a couple
of things is try to demonstrate that actually there is
(02:51):
It's not so easy. The entry point to cooking can
be quite low, and you still get something very delicious
at the end of it.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I think we all go through periods, don't we, of
experiencing all those things, or just sort of suddenly losing inspiration,
feeling like you've been cooking the same thing over and over.
It's nice to heaven input of some fresh ideas, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yes? And you know it also happens to me. You know,
you you spend the whole day at work doing one
thing or another, and then you come home and you
open the fridge and you're just not feeling inspired, and
and it's yeah, it happens to everyone, And there is
I think what there is some you could use You
(03:35):
could give yourself a break effectively, That's what I want
to say. You can cook with things that you can
reheat something you had the night before, and then juge
it up with something else you could. There's all sorts
of little shortcuts of flavor that I use a lot.
Like f For me, one of the best things that
I can do when I get home and if I
don't need to feed the crowd, is to put on
(03:56):
a pot of rice and I and that takes a
very little time if I don't soak the rice for
too long. And whilst I do that, I grate some cheese.
Maybe I find a nice chili oil or chili crisp
that I have in my friend. I've put that all together,
(04:17):
maybe some fried onion that I've had again, like all
like shop bought, And as soon as the ruce is ready,
I grate some cheese into it, put some black pepper,
put the chili sauce on top. And it's kind of
a quick fix, a quick meal. But it's just something
that you do almost automatically and you don't need to
think too much. It's not special, but it's just so delicious.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Do we overthink cooking in food? Sometimes?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
My feeling is that we have had we're kind of
overcompensating for something that has happened over I don't know,
the last twenty or thirty years, so if you look back.
I mean, again, I don't want to be too nostalgic
about it, but I think when I was growing up,
cooking was so much part of what of what day
to day looked like. You know, it was just ingrained
(05:04):
in my parents' and then we went through the seventies
and the eighties and I show my age, and then
it was all about like fixes, quick fixes. You know,
you could get something ready from the freezer, you can
get something this. We got a little bit addictive to takeaways,
et cetera, and we lost the instinct for cooking. And
(05:29):
what happened is that then all sorts of things happen
in the world, and especially with COVID, people just found
themselves being disconnected food from food and thought like, oh,
I've got to relearn that skill. I've got to be
a good cook again. And it's okay. I mean, I
think it's a really good instinct. I think it's the
right thing to do. But I think we do overthink
(05:50):
it sometimes because there are a lot of solution solutions
out there. There's things you can buy too, so not
every time you go into the kitchen you need to
start from scratch. You can start one thing from scratch.
And then the other thing you can buy great quality
things that sits there in the shelf of this market
is a sauce, you know, like a pasto, and then
(06:10):
you're augmented with other things or or a quick piece
of fish, and then the rest of it is ready
cooked rise that is also there. So I think we
should be a little bit more flexible and not and
like you say, not over overthinking.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It's you know, I know that as you're talking, you know,
you're talking here about sort of making cooking more relaxing
and less stressful. I know that that's important to you
and sort of a focus of the show. So how
do we kind of remove those barriers maybe to cooking
when it does feel a little bit hard.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
This is what Yeah, this is what I'm I'm going
to do during my show. First of all, show tell
people that they shouldn't be so hard on themselves. That
should they should give themselves a break sometimes. And you know,
and it's okay to like I said, now, to half
cook a meal and the other half, to to use
things that are already there, to use things that from cans,
from tins, from jars. You know, there's such a great
(07:04):
variety of options around, and then there is a couple
of basic skills that are really really great, and I
kind of go over them. I don't know what. I
don't want to give away the whole show, but I'll
give a couple of little examples. I mean, if you
can get yourself to make a great roast chicken or
roasted celaria, or if you can make a really delicious
(07:28):
vinegrette or two, those are some basic skills that you
have there, and then the rest is stuff that you
pick here and there. So for example, when you think
of a vinegret, you think a salad or maybe cruded taste,
but actually a really good vinegret. And there's like there's citrus,
bass or vinegar, vinegar bases. Some would have a bit
of nuts, some have charottes, some garlic. I mean, they
(07:51):
are they vary. But if you have one that you
really love and you're very good at doing, then that's
like half your job done. Because then you take a
tray of vegetables, whether it's root vegetables or rassicas you know, cabbages,
et cetera. You put in the oven with a bit
of already roasted. As soon as it comes out, you
drizzle with a vinegred and you have something so delicious
(08:13):
and so quick and easy. So those basic things that
you have at your hand are a way to kind
of mitigate that stress that some people feel or feeling
a bit jaded.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
You described before, that feeling of coming home and opening
the fridge and looking at what's inside and trying to
think what you're going to whip up. There are now
AI apps that you can use whereby you put a
group of ingredients in and they give you a recipe.
Would you ever use one of those apps?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I would, Yeah, definitely. I mean I don't know if
the recipe is going to be great because I haven't
tried it. No, But as for ideas, yeah, why not.
I mean I have I'm in a very fortunate position
where I've got, you know this, like behind me, I've
got like a normal I haven't countered. I think like
(09:02):
well over two thousand recipes that I've published over the years,
and I think they cover most combinations of recipes. So
sometimes I have a confession. Sometimes I go online on
Google and I go like autolgy, you know, LAMB shoulder,
and I kind a couple of other recipes ingredients and
(09:23):
I google it and then all of a sudden a
lot of ideas come so, oh, yes, I remember that dish.
So I do I myself use the you know, use
use use a computer to come up with the ideas
or to really re imagine like what I did before.
And it's actually very useful. But I think none of
that is takes away the joy of actually learning how
(09:46):
to cook properly. And I think, again, that's another thing
that I really want to emphasize two people. The skill
of cooking is something that you can't really learn or
or have just by kind of googling recipes or looking
at an ai B that tells you, you know, put all
(10:07):
these things together. It's just these are kind of basic things,
instinctive things that you feel with your hands as you cook.
And I think it's a wonderful thing to learn and
to know how to do. And again, you don't need
to be a master chef, but you can be a
really kind of a good cook really just by knowing
a few basic things that take you a long way.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
How has the way you cook changed or evolved over
the years, So.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
I've been through stages. You know. When I started cooking,
I wanted to throw everything at every dish that I
used to cook. And I look at old recipes that
I've published, and I say to and say, oh, what
were you thinking? Was it really necessary to have so
many things? And you know, people do make fun of
and still do make fun of me if you're saying,
like autol angy recipes, you know, it's never less than
(10:59):
sixteen ingreedy ingredients and they had to be obscure. And
I kind of take the shame a little bit and think, like, Okay,
well I did. There are some old recipes or not
that old recipes that feel a little bit over the top,
but I've never done that just in order to challenge people.
It's I've always felt that there is added value, excuse me,
(11:21):
by putting all these things together in a bowl or
in a pot. These days, I think a little bit
more on what can be taken away, and I spend
quite a lot of time to think what is essential,
you know, what is essential in this dish? Because I
think about myself, how long am I going to spend
in the kitchen? Is it going to be worth my while?
(11:42):
And what is the real DNA of a dish? And
what is just unnecessary? Also because I've had. I have
kids there are like in nearly teenagers now, but they
were young not that long ago, and I realized that
I need to think a lot about like the practicality
of cooking for a family. And I think that's another
thing that I haven't spent much time thinking at the
(12:04):
beginning of my career. So I'm much more forgiving and
practical these days. But I still love to create a feast,
you know, to make something from scratch that has a
lot of layers of flavor, But I just don't do
it every single day.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Do you take a lot of pride in how the
Ottling way of cooking has changed how people cook and
eat around the world because you have been hugely influential
in that respect.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I take a lot of pride in that. Yeah, that's
the one thing that I've never I never undermine, you know.
I always think people say to me, what is your
greatest achievement, and I think, oh, I just don't think
in those terms. But then when I do think deeply
about it, My greatest achievement for me is when someone
(12:50):
comes to me and says, oh, you know, I've cooked
your green beans with hazel nuts and orange from their
first cookbook. I've been cooking it for like the last
decade or two, and my family cooks it. It's become
part of our repertoire. And for me, this is something huge, huge,
because it's not you know, recipes come and go, and
books come and go, and even news articles, but something
(13:13):
that stays in people's minds, like a way of cook
a dish, a particular dish that stays with them, or
an idea is really it goes really deep and they
might pass it on to the next generation. And that
really is like the biggest gift that people can give me,
just telling me that it's part of their lives, of
(13:34):
how they cook, of how they get together around the table.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I have been making your cheesecake. One of your cheesecakes
probably for about I don't know, twenty twenty five years.
It was one that had it had this incredible topping.
It was like a toffee caramelized topping. Yeah yeah, and
it was quite extravagant, and it was the first time
that I went, oh, hang on, I can be ambitious.
(13:59):
I can make something quite extraordinary. But that cheesecake itself,
the baked cheesecake has been used as I've done a
million things with it, you know, put a million different
topics on it, and I'm still making it. I still
just trust that one. It works every time, so I
and it's passed on and my daughter now does it.
So there we go. There's an example of that very much.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, I totally. First of all, I'm so glad that
you're telling me this. But then again, I think what
you just said is so important because you've you've cooked
that recipe, and I take a lot of pride in,
you know, and producing recipes that work, and I'm thoroughly tested,
et cetera. But then you've you often you make it
your own. And that's the message that I'm trying to
(14:43):
pass on to people and say, like, yes, there's all
these great recipes out there, you know, and you can
go on an AI search engine, or you can search
on Google or wherever you get your recipes. But actually
there's all the things that you could do yourself. So
once you've acquired that skill and making a cheesecake or
a baked rice or whatever it is that you're making,
(15:05):
then you can just be very playful. And that's a
basic joy, the joy of cooking, not the joy of
following a recipe, which is another great joy which I
often do, but the joy of knowing what you're doing,
getting in the kitchen and working on autopilot, not thinking, relaxing,
listening to music, and cooking something that you're super proud of.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
How do you feel about food and eating trends? Do
you pay attention to them at all?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
To trends?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yes, yes, food trends and you know we're eating this
these days, or this is the produce you need to eat.
Do you pay much attention to that? Or do you
just stick with seasonal produce and what you like and
quite traditional about it.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
I have to pay attention to everything that's happening because
it's part of my professional obligation, you know, to know
what's going on, to go out to try things. But
I don't like food trends only because I feel that
there's something a bit compulsive about those ideas. I think
(16:07):
they come and go. I think their function is for
journalists and not for people. You know, they are there
to tell a story. But in a way, the trends
come and go, but certain things never go, and I
think it's more important to focus on what is timeless.
And then again, you know, I'm not completely ignoring the
(16:33):
fact that people do think in such a way that
people get inspired from social media, you know, Instagram and TikTok,
and that does become a trend, and that's also totally legit,
but I just question the longevity of that, Like how
long that would last? I think certain things. So one
of the things that I say in the show is
that like tries to think a little bit about what
(16:57):
you know and how you grew up eating and try
to connect to that rather than what you see on
a screen, because that would it's more likely to sustain
you over time. You know, it's more likely to any
even if you didn't grow up in a foody house.
I mean, think of things that you've been exposed to
and are meaningful to you, rather than trying to conquer
(17:19):
the net cuisine or the next ingredient, because in some
ways it's it's okay, but it's quite it's it's transient
often and it doesn't really stick course for the long term.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yachtam, thank you so much for your time today. So
appreciate it and very excited that you're heading back to
New Zealand in the new year. We look forward to
seeing you.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Then, Oh, I can't wait to be back in New
Zealand and eat all the delicious food and try your
seafood that I miss so much. So yeah, thank you
for the interview and back I can't wait to be back.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And Evening with Yottum Ottolini is in Auckland and February
next year. Tickets are on sale now.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudgin, listen
live the News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on I Hard Radio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yottam Ottolini is one of the biggest names in food
around the world. After eleven cookbooks, Ottling has become not
just a name, but an adjective for a distinctive way
of cooking. Yotam is heading here next year with his
live tour and Evening with Yotum ottlingy and Yochtam joins
me now from the UK. Good morning, Thank you so
much for your time.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thank you. Thanks Francesca.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
As someone who loves food, how do you handle these
whirlwind tours because you are doing I think twenty one
events in under a month.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I ask myself this question every day. I enjoy the
tours very much, but they're hectic, they're intense, and I
have so, you know, I visit effectively. I'm doing a
city a day, really, really, that's what I do. So
the timing is not great because it means I arrived somewhere,
you know, just lunch, and then I go into a
(01:08):
room with a lot of great people, and then I
get out and I don't want to have dinner, so
I snack. I have breakfast if I can, and if
I want to taste it, you know, the taste of
the flavor of a city. I ask people where is
the best place to go for breakfast, and then I
try to get my breakfast before I fly over to
the next place. So it's it's about juggling. But I
(01:29):
do make sure that I have a good meal, at
least one in every city that I go to.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I did wonder, Yachtum, whether this is why in your
tour you include a live cooking demonstration on stage so
that you actually have some dinner.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The last thing I want to eat is on tour
is my own food, I have to say. But yes,
I mean, I tour on statu and I'm quite flexible
with the way I eat. So I'm just happy to
eat whee others around, whether whatever I have around. And yeah,
I mean, cooking on stage is just about sharing some prints,
(02:08):
some basic great techniques that I've kind of develop over
time to show people how to expand their how they
cook and what they cook, but without all the half
much effort and hassle. So I've noticed over the years
(02:30):
that some people, not everybody, find cooking a little bit taxing,
like they're intimidating. Some people think that love cooking, but
they don't know how to expand expand their repertoire. So
what I do when I cook on stage and don't
I don't cook a lot, and I cook a couple
of things is try to demonstrate that actually there is
(02:51):
It's not so easy. The entry point to cooking can
be quite low, and you still get something very delicious
at the end of it.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I think we all go through periods, don't we, of
experiencing all those things, or just sort of suddenly losing inspiration,
feeling like you've been cooking the same thing over and over.
It's nice to heaven input of some fresh ideas, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yes? And you know it also happens to me. You know,
you you spend the whole day at work doing one
thing or another, and then you come home and you
open the fridge and you're just not feeling inspired, and
and it's yeah, it happens to everyone, And there is
I think what there is some you could use You
(03:35):
could give yourself a break effectively, That's what I want
to say. You can cook with things that you can
reheat something you had the night before, and then juge
it up with something else you could. There's all sorts
of little shortcuts of flavor that I use a lot.
Like f For me, one of the best things that
I can do when I get home and if I
don't need to feed the crowd, is to put on
(03:56):
a pot of rice and I and that takes a
very little time if I don't soak the rice for
too long. And whilst I do that, I grate some cheese.
Maybe I find a nice chili oil or chili crisp
that I have in my friend. I've put that all together,
(04:17):
maybe some fried onion that I've had again, like all
like shop bought, And as soon as the ruce is ready,
I grate some cheese into it, put some black pepper,
put the chili sauce on top. And it's kind of
a quick fix, a quick meal. But it's just something
that you do almost automatically and you don't need to
think too much. It's not special, but it's just so delicious.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Do we overthink cooking in food? Sometimes?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
My feeling is that we have had we're kind of
overcompensating for something that has happened over I don't know,
the last twenty or thirty years, so if you look back.
I mean, again, I don't want to be too nostalgic
about it, but I think when I was growing up,
cooking was so much part of what of what day
to day looked like. You know, it was just ingrained
(05:04):
in my parents' and then we went through the seventies
and the eighties and I show my age, and then
it was all about like fixes, quick fixes. You know,
you could get something ready from the freezer, you can
get something this. We got a little bit addictive to takeaways,
et cetera, and we lost the instinct for cooking. And
(05:29):
what happened is that then all sorts of things happen
in the world, and especially with COVID, people just found
themselves being disconnected food from food and thought like, oh,
I've got to relearn that skill. I've got to be
a good cook again. And it's okay. I mean, I
think it's a really good instinct. I think it's the
right thing to do. But I think we do overthink
(05:50):
it sometimes because there are a lot of solution solutions
out there. There's things you can buy too, so not
every time you go into the kitchen you need to
start from scratch. You can start one thing from scratch.
And then the other thing you can buy great quality
things that sits there in the shelf of this market
is a sauce, you know, like a pasto, and then
(06:10):
you're augmented with other things or or a quick piece
of fish, and then the rest of it is ready
cooked rise that is also there. So I think we
should be a little bit more flexible and not and
like you say, not over overthinking.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It's you know, I know that as you're talking, you know,
you're talking here about sort of making cooking more relaxing
and less stressful. I know that that's important to you
and sort of a focus of the show. So how
do we kind of remove those barriers maybe to cooking
when it does feel a little bit hard.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
This is what Yeah, this is what I'm I'm going
to do during my show. First of all, show tell
people that they shouldn't be so hard on themselves. That
should they should give themselves a break sometimes. And you know,
and it's okay to like I said, now, to half
cook a meal and the other half, to to use
things that are already there, to use things that from cans,
from tins, from jars. You know, there's such a great
(07:04):
variety of options around, and then there is a couple
of basic skills that are really really great, and I
kind of go over them. I don't know what. I
don't want to give away the whole show, but I'll
give a couple of little examples. I mean, if you
can get yourself to make a great roast chicken or
roasted celaria, or if you can make a really delicious
(07:28):
vinegrette or two, those are some basic skills that you
have there, and then the rest is stuff that you
pick here and there. So for example, when you think
of a vinegret, you think a salad or maybe cruded taste,
but actually a really good vinegret. And there's like there's citrus,
bass or vinegar, vinegar bases. Some would have a bit
of nuts, some have charottes, some garlic. I mean, they
(07:51):
are they vary. But if you have one that you
really love and you're very good at doing, then that's
like half your job done. Because then you take a
tray of vegetables, whether it's root vegetables or rassicas you know, cabbages,
et cetera. You put in the oven with a bit
of already roasted. As soon as it comes out, you
drizzle with a vinegred and you have something so delicious
(08:13):
and so quick and easy. So those basic things that
you have at your hand are a way to kind
of mitigate that stress that some people feel or feeling
a bit jaded.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
You described before, that feeling of coming home and opening
the fridge and looking at what's inside and trying to
think what you're going to whip up. There are now
AI apps that you can use whereby you put a
group of ingredients in and they give you a recipe.
Would you ever use one of those apps?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I would, Yeah, definitely. I mean I don't know if
the recipe is going to be great because I haven't
tried it. No, But as for ideas, yeah, why not.
I mean I have I'm in a very fortunate position
where I've got, you know this, like behind me, I've
got like a normal I haven't countered. I think like
(09:02):
well over two thousand recipes that I've published over the years,
and I think they cover most combinations of recipes. So
sometimes I have a confession. Sometimes I go online on
Google and I go like autolgy, you know, LAMB shoulder,
and I kind a couple of other recipes ingredients and
(09:23):
I google it and then all of a sudden a
lot of ideas come so, oh, yes, I remember that dish.
So I do I myself use the you know, use
use use a computer to come up with the ideas
or to really re imagine like what I did before.
And it's actually very useful. But I think none of
that is takes away the joy of actually learning how
(09:46):
to cook properly. And I think, again, that's another thing
that I really want to emphasize two people. The skill
of cooking is something that you can't really learn or
or have just by kind of googling recipes or looking
at an ai B that tells you, you know, put all
(10:07):
these things together. It's just these are kind of basic things,
instinctive things that you feel with your hands as you cook.
And I think it's a wonderful thing to learn and
to know how to do. And again, you don't need
to be a master chef, but you can be a
really kind of a good cook really just by knowing
a few basic things that take you a long way.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
How has the way you cook changed or evolved over
the years, So.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
I've been through stages. You know. When I started cooking,
I wanted to throw everything at every dish that I
used to cook. And I look at old recipes that
I've published, and I say to and say, oh, what
were you thinking? Was it really necessary to have so
many things? And you know, people do make fun of
and still do make fun of me if you're saying,
like autol angy recipes, you know, it's never less than
(10:59):
sixteen ingreedy ingredients and they had to be obscure. And
I kind of take the shame a little bit and think, like, Okay,
well I did. There are some old recipes or not
that old recipes that feel a little bit over the top,
but I've never done that just in order to challenge people.
It's I've always felt that there is added value, excuse me,
(11:21):
by putting all these things together in a bowl or
in a pot. These days, I think a little bit
more on what can be taken away, and I spend
quite a lot of time to think what is essential,
you know, what is essential in this dish? Because I
think about myself, how long am I going to spend
in the kitchen? Is it going to be worth my while?
(11:42):
And what is the real DNA of a dish? And
what is just unnecessary? Also because I've had. I have
kids there are like in nearly teenagers now, but they
were young not that long ago, and I realized that
I need to think a lot about like the practicality
of cooking for a family. And I think that's another
thing that I haven't spent much time thinking at the
(12:04):
beginning of my career. So I'm much more forgiving and
practical these days. But I still love to create a feast,
you know, to make something from scratch that has a
lot of layers of flavor, But I just don't do
it every single day.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Do you take a lot of pride in how the
Ottling way of cooking has changed how people cook and
eat around the world because you have been hugely influential
in that respect.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I take a lot of pride in that. Yeah, that's
the one thing that I've never I never undermine, you know.
I always think people say to me, what is your
greatest achievement, and I think, oh, I just don't think
in those terms. But then when I do think deeply
about it, My greatest achievement for me is when someone
(12:50):
comes to me and says, oh, you know, I've cooked
your green beans with hazel nuts and orange from their
first cookbook. I've been cooking it for like the last
decade or two, and my family cooks it. It's become
part of our repertoire. And for me, this is something huge, huge,
because it's not you know, recipes come and go, and
books come and go, and even news articles, but something
(13:13):
that stays in people's minds, like a way of cook
a dish, a particular dish that stays with them, or
an idea is really it goes really deep and they
might pass it on to the next generation. And that
really is like the biggest gift that people can give me,
just telling me that it's part of their lives, of
(13:34):
how they cook, of how they get together around the table.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I have been making your cheesecake. One of your cheesecakes
probably for about I don't know, twenty twenty five years.
It was one that had it had this incredible topping.
It was like a toffee caramelized topping. Yeah yeah, and
it was quite extravagant, and it was the first time
that I went, oh, hang on, I can be ambitious.
(13:59):
I can make something quite extraordinary. But that cheesecake itself,
the baked cheesecake has been used as I've done a
million things with it, you know, put a million different
topics on it, and I'm still making it. I still
just trust that one. It works every time, so I
and it's passed on and my daughter now does it.
So there we go. There's an example of that very much.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, I totally. First of all, I'm so glad that
you're telling me this. But then again, I think what
you just said is so important because you've you've cooked
that recipe, and I take a lot of pride in,
you know, and producing recipes that work, and I'm thoroughly tested,
et cetera. But then you've you often you make it
your own. And that's the message that I'm trying to
(14:43):
pass on to people and say, like, yes, there's all
these great recipes out there, you know, and you can
go on an AI search engine, or you can search
on Google or wherever you get your recipes. But actually
there's all the things that you could do yourself. So
once you've acquired that skill and making a cheesecake or
a baked rice or whatever it is that you're making,
(15:05):
then you can just be very playful. And that's a
basic joy, the joy of cooking, not the joy of
following a recipe, which is another great joy which I
often do, but the joy of knowing what you're doing,
getting in the kitchen and working on autopilot, not thinking, relaxing,
listening to music, and cooking something that you're super proud of.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
How do you feel about food and eating trends? Do
you pay attention to them at all?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
To trends?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yes, yes, food trends and you know we're eating this
these days, or this is the produce you need to eat.
Do you pay much attention to that? Or do you
just stick with seasonal produce and what you like and
quite traditional about it.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
I have to pay attention to everything that's happening because
it's part of my professional obligation, you know, to know
what's going on, to go out to try things. But
I don't like food trends only because I feel that
there's something a bit compulsive about those ideas. I think
(16:07):
they come and go. I think their function is for
journalists and not for people. You know, they are there
to tell a story. But in a way, the trends
come and go, but certain things never go, and I
think it's more important to focus on what is timeless.
And then again, you know, I'm not completely ignoring the
(16:33):
fact that people do think in such a way that
people get inspired from social media, you know, Instagram and TikTok,
and that does become a trend, and that's also totally legit,
but I just question the longevity of that, Like how
long that would last? I think certain things. So one
of the things that I say in the show is
that like tries to think a little bit about what
(16:57):
you know and how you grew up eating and try
to connect to that rather than what you see on
a screen, because that would it's more likely to sustain
you over time. You know, it's more likely to any
even if you didn't grow up in a foody house.
I mean, think of things that you've been exposed to
and are meaningful to you, rather than trying to conquer
(17:19):
the net cuisine or the next ingredient, because in some
ways it's it's okay, but it's quite it's it's transient
often and it doesn't really stick course for the long term.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yachtam, thank you so much for your time today. So
appreciate it and very excited that you're heading back to
New Zealand in the new year. We look forward to
seeing you.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Then, Oh, I can't wait to be back in New
Zealand and eat all the delicious food and try your
seafood that I miss so much. So yeah, thank you
for the interview and back I can't wait to be back.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And Evening with Yottum Ottolini is in Auckland and February
next year. Tickets are on sale now.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudgin, listen
live the News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on I Hard Radio
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