Until very recently, I'd never actually eaten Yotam Ottolenghi's food. I'd certainly cooked a lot of it, but I had never been to one of his London restaurants. I knew the Israeli-born chef strictly from his two cookbooks, but that was enough for me to admire how he can take seemingly ordinary ingredients and make them add up to something more vivid than you'd ever imagine from reading through a recipe. His cooking has a clarity and authenticity unusual in a world where chefs work harder and harder to amaze with daring technique and surprising ingredients.
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