Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love: Recipes to Unlock the Secrets of Your Pantry, Fridge, and Freezer: A Cookbook

I love Ottolenghi recipe books and don’t mind the harder ones - but when I read that this one was like SIMPLE, I ordered immediately for weeknight meals. I’ve flicked through several times now but these recipes aren’t exactly ‘store cupboard’ as suggested and call for all sorts of bizarre ingredients that aren’t in previous books, the lists of ingredients span the whole page, and some of the cooking times are hours long? As always the pictures are nice, but I’m not really motivated to cook any of it because they all just look like (expensive and arduous) plates of mush. The quickest ones take an hour to cook, and most of them are 2 hours, some even longer. It’s a lot of effort for what is essentially a dip. The book does have a useful-looking contents page which is designed to help you use up random ingredients from the cupboard (i.e. Tahini) but when you flick to the recipe, you’ll find that in order to cook it, you need a bunch of other random ingredients that you probably won’t just have lying about. I can see about 4 recipes out of the whole book that I could potentially be bothered to cook - and which look substantial enough for a meal - but I just don’t feel as enthusiastic about them as I have been with previous Ottolenghi books. Can’t see this book coming back off the shelf to be honest.

This is a different take on a recipe book, very much approaching it from the perspective of what do I have in the larder, freezer, fridge etc. This is evidenced straight away by having a fold out leaf inside the front cover which shows you which ingredients appear in in recipes and relevant pages, this has been further split into common themes, like tins and jars, pulses and grains etc. This will be extremely useful when you find a rogue ingredient in the cupboard which needs using, rather than chucking! There is another fold out flap at the back detailing the veggie, vegan, child friendly and even meal suggestions, which will be very usefulI really liked the different chapters and have to say I want to try everything in the “who does the dishes” section, which is based around one pot cooking.As ever there are tips I never knew, and this time on hummus, which I thought I had the definitive take….not so, some really good tips on how to make and what should differ when making from tinned vs dried.Recipes I want to try ASAP:Creamy dreamy hummus (tempted to make both ways tinned vs dried to do a comparison)Confit tandoori chickpeasZatar salmon and tahiniFig and orange soda breadBeef short ribs with butter beans and figsI will edit this review when I have tried some of the recipesJust tried the sticky sweet and sour plums with sausages (one pot cooking only 2 steps) big success! The gravy/sauce is created in the bottom of the pan as it cooks. We had with rocket salad and pomegranate seeds delicious.The sweet spiced mushroom and rice pilaf is excellent, this has been requested again for dinner, which is always a good sign. We added brie to the serving of this, sliced on top and therefore slightly oozy from the heat…really nice

Usually love Ottolenghi recipes, but I have to agree with some of the reviews on here. There is a lot of mush. Which is fine, but frankly I have been there, done that when weaning babies. And I want to continue eating solid food for as long as my teeth allow me to. I suspect the food stylist struggled with this book. How can you make a Mac&Cheese look sexy, even when it has 16 ingredients? The concept is nice; use up store cupboard things, but in practice it seems like a lazy excuse to publish a book under the brand. And there seems to be no general theme. One page has a random oatmeal cookie recipe, another some defrosted frozen berries mixed with bread or cream, another a Cobb salad. It's like someone said "okay, we have 200 or so pages to fill." I'm generally desperate to start chopping and cooking from a new cookbook straight away, but I have to admit that I am just not motivated to try recipes from this book. (I tried the Charred tomatoes with feta and pine nuts, which was nice, and intend to try the sesame crusted feta at some point. I feel like I *should* try the couscous cake, but am worried that it looks like a lot of effort for what looks like a squidgy brown nutless nut roast.) If you are new to Ottolenghi, purchase the wonderful Flavour or Simple instead. Or in fact, any of his other books.

A beautiful book with accessible and brilliant recipes. Every recipe I have made so far has been delicious, not quick, but not difficult- even a recipe that the author describes as almost too laborious to have included- was time consuming but not challenging, and worth the outcome. So far I have made the beans with preserves lemon chilli and garlic, the celebration lamb and chicken rice, the cauliflower filo pie and magical chicken soup- all have been huge hits and I look forward to making more.

It’s not another Ottolenghi book, if that’s what you’re comparing it to. I love anything from the man himself, but this book comes with a whole new format, feel and tone and provides plenty of approachable recipes for us mere mortals. Have made the confit tandoori chickpeas a million times, and made the zahter salmon which is 30 minutes start to finish! Great diverse range of recipes, the dessert section especially looks beautiful although I’m not much of a sweet tooth. I want to try the gnocchi with sumac onions, coconut cream cake, magical chicken soup, sesame feta and the chermoula pie. A really smart format from the team making familiar foods with pantry ingredients and such a diverse selection of recipes, this’ll definitely be a book I’ll use time and time again.