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

The flexibound edition is in metric. Kind of a pain to keep converting dimensions. This is the only warning you’ll get apparently.Update: The seller and Amazon made it extremely easy to return the book! I will end up buying the book in the appropriate edition. I do like the flexicover format. The last softcover cookbook (from a completely different publisher) I bought just disintegrated with use. But maybe this will be better. I'm a huge fan, so I'm looking forward to cooking from it. The polenta recipe from Plenty is a great example of a simple recipe with great ingredients making a memorable dish. I'm sure that I'll be using this book a lot.

I’m amazed by the variety and differentiation that goes into all of Ottolenghi’s cookbooks. I thought this one might be repetitive because I have all his others, and it’s being sold as a home cook version. Just because it’s focusing a simpler dishes you can make at home, doesn’t mean they’re less complex. I’ve made 2 things so far and am impressed on how different they were from other recipes of his that have similar ingredients. I am loving this cookbook, I just don’t understand why it’s not hardcover. I wish it was.

I buy dozens of cookbooks a year. And this is Top of the list for this year. I want try every recipe. It truly helps me use some unusual ingredients I manage to add to my pantry. I have made several thing, all came out as keep recipes, so far.

I love all the crazy, obscure ingredients he uses. I've always kept a massive herb/spice collection & well-stocked pantry. It's been fun trying stuff like black limes & barberry. Best of all, it's so many fresh ingredients. Yes, it's cleaning out the fridge & pantry but like all his cookbooks, vegetables are front & center. He makes cooking fun.

This book is amazing! There are so many recipes I can’t wait to try. I wish it were a hard cover. As you can see from my photo it came pretty banged up in the top and bottom left corners. I won’t send it back because I waited months for it. Just wanted to display it with the rest of my Ottolenghi collection. I wanted to give 5 stars.

While not glossy and full of mouth watering photos I find this book to be amazing. In the few days since I received it I already cooked several wonderful dishes without having to shop for special ingredients!

I have all of his other books, have gone to London to eat in his cafés and restaurant so am a fan. This is a sorry disappointment as most recipes look like unappetizing piles of glop. The ingredients are certainly not what you might have in your cupboard and the time to prepare is wildly understated. Oof!

I have all the Ottelenghi cookbooks, but this one might be my favorite!

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.

This isn’t your average cookbook; this is witty, charming and so fun to read - even outside the kitchen! The pictures are vibrant and the dishes are mouthwatering. Noor’s recipes are unique and downright tasty, and her book has been the best thing to come out of this pandemic. The concept of using what’s in your pantry (because weren’t we all stuck in lockdown at some point?) is absolutely genius. She has truly elevated your average vegetable casserole and transformed cooking for the average and not so average Joe into something phenomenal. As someone who’s tried her food first hand I am so excited to start cooking every single recipe in this beautiful book.This book belongs in every kitchen and household.

This version is excellently designed. For kitchen use you can keep the page open and it’ll not fold over. There’s an excellent menu maker designed for the main guests you’ll have. The string in binding helps you not lose your place. There’s also ,make it you own’ suggestions which mean you can deviate from the recipe based on what’s in the book. This is excellent as it makes it personalised to you. It gives margin to deviate and experiment. Most books are prescriptive (based on ratios). This books leans you outside this ,do it or your recipe will die’ mentality. It gives a budding chef ideas to be more creative. Ottolenghis kitchen concept is brilliant, it focuses on creativity in the kitchen. Buy it, and it’ll set you free