WEBVTT - Yotam Ottolenghi 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.840 Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:05.480 Adami's Studios. 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.240 Last night, after dinner in the River Cafe, I sat 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:16.680 with the chefs. Usually we talk about the evening service, 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.000 what happened, who came, what we cooked. But this time, 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.480 knowing he was coming to the kitchen today, we spoke 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:30.200 about our guest, Yotam Ottolenghi. They've all the chef's read 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.879 his books, they've all eaten in his restaurants, and like me, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:39.600 love his food. In short, they were thrilled he was coming. 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:44.000 Yatama and I were introduced years ago by a mutual friend, 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.200 Ari Shapiro Ruthie. He said, you've got to meet this guy. 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.080 You think the same way, and you will adore him. 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.160 Yatim and I share a lot. Most of all, we 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.960 believe in the people we work with, valuing them and 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:03.600 their creativity. We also share a kind of geography. Mine 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:07.000 is an Italian landscape with cities of the Renaissance. His 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:11.880 is further east, desert mountains and biblical We both live 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.520 and work in culture is far from where we were born. 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.440 Today we will talk about separation and connection, Eastern and 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:26.080 Western family and friends. Would you like to read a 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:30.280 recipe uniquely, I would say, not from one of our cookbooks, 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:31.640 but from one of yours. 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.200 I was looking forward to reading a recipe from one 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:38.520 of your cookbooks because they're just so much shorter. Famously, 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.039 al Telengy recipes are very long, so I worked hard 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:46.000 to find a short recipe in the minutes. Yeah right, 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.120 and it's only going to have like twelve ingredients and 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.480 not like twenty four. But this is from one of 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:55.240 my most recent books, called The Alto Lengthy Test Kitchen 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.440 Shelf Love. It's a butterbean recipe, so it's called one 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.880 jar of butter beans with preserves, lemon, chili and herb oil. 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.880 Five garlic cloves, finely chopped, two mild red chilies, finely chopped, 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:11.840 seeds in all, two tablespoons coriander seeds finely crushed with 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.680 a pestable mortar. Three preserved lemons, inner parts discarded and 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.720 skin finally sliced. One and a half tablespoons roughly chopped 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.480 thyme leaves, four rosemary sprigs, one tablespoon to milo paste, 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.560 one hundred and seventy meals olive oil. One jar of 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:34.880 butter beans seven hundred grams. Two large vine tomatoes roughly 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:39.080 grated and skin discarded, flaked sea salt, and black pepper. 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.440 Put the first eight ingredients and one quarter teaspoons of 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.840 flaked salt into a medium saute pan on a medium 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.520 low heat and steer everything together. Heat gently for twenty 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:54.239 five minutes until very fragrant but not at all brown. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.320 If the oil gets too hot to turn the heat 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.440 down too low. Stir in the butter beans. Then turn 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.120 the heat, eat up to medium and cook for ten minutes. 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:04.760 Remove from the heat and leave to infuse for at 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:10.079 least an hour or longer if time allows. Meanwhile, mix 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.200 the greater tomatoes with a third of a teaspoon of 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.000 flakes sea salt and a good grind of pepper to 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:18.880 serve poor the butter beans. Mixture into a shallow bowl 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:23.840 and spoon over the greater tomatoes. Mixing it in places. 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:26.480 Sounds like a recipe that I would definitely want to make. 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:28.160 It sounds a bit like a river feb I. 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.600 Actually I did read that. Your first word was was 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.240 it Therali word for Hebrew word for soup. 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.320 Well, it is the kind of the little dumplings that 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:41.280 go into the soup, so it has the word soup 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.760 in it. Yeah, it was it something I think my 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:46.080 mum used to spread on the table while we were 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:48.080 waiting for the food and I just used to kind 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.160 of grab them and eat them. 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.440 And So going back then, starting at the very very beginning, 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.800 tell me about your early childhood in terms of food 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:57.480 as well. 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.839 What you know. Yeah, so I grew up in Jerusalem 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.080 and the food in Jerusalem. 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:05.400 At that point, can I just ask you were your 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.440 parents born in. 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:10.840 Israel or My parents were born in Europe just before 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:16.400 the Second World War and they immigrated with their parents 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.800 as little kids just before the war in nineteen thirty nine. 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.640 My mother was from a German family, so they were 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.640 German Jews, and my father were they were an Italian 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:27.800 family from Florence. 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:28.440 Really. 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.120 Yeah, so my dad was born in Florence and they 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.600 met in Israel and they so, yeah, they met in 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:40.359 Israel years later, yeah, yeah, and Jerusalem was so I 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.400 grew up in a very kind of a non traditional 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:47.880 Jewish home, very secular food wise, Like we had pork, 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:51.000 which nobody was unheard of. You know. My mom had 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.120 that butcher in Jerusalem, the one and only one that 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:55.400 sold pork, but it was under the counter and the 0:04:55.520 --> 0:05:00.800 brown bag. Yes, she used to come in by a 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:04.359 ham and we used to get ham sandwiches for school. 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.640 But you know, we were not allowed to say what's 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:08.440 in our sandwiches and we were not allowed to share 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.400 it with friends. So the cover story was that it 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.760 was Turkey, where it was a very pink Turkey. 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.839 Great woman, very woman to come from Germany. She was 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.040 from Germany, so she probably had pork in Germany. I 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:23.240 was not going to give that up. 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:27.080 Yeah, yeah, there were various secular you know, and so 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.279 she just had to have four. But it was you know, 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.839 the stories about these things they sound quite you know, inocus, 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:35.880 but actually it was quite. It was a big deal. 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.719 So that butcher, and when people found out that he 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.120 was selling pork, you know, his shop was vandalized and 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.240 you'd have like people would like like glue in his locks, 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.040 so he couldn't open the shop the next day, et cetera. 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.680 It was in Jerusalem. Food is not a neutral stance, 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.400 you know, like all those decisions, all those things that happened, 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.400 those political implications, what. 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:00.360 Year with this have been? 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.479 So this was so I was born in sixty eight, 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:06.120 so we're talking about the seventies and eighties. 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:06.560 So late as that. 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:10.159 Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So the food culture of the 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.159 city was the food of the immigrants from wherever they came, 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.800 the Jewish immigrants, but also the Palestinian population, which was 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:20.919 so had such a rich, wonderful culinary history. And I 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:22.880 feel that I grew up in this world in which 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.680 we ate very European food. At home, my father was 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.240 cooking traditionally Italian dishes, and my mom was kind of 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:34.440 an international cook, but with a very Germanic approach to cooking. 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:38.000 But outside, you know, when we went out, we used 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:41.520 to have Palestinian food, Arabic food, and that's the mix 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:43.600 that I grew up having, and I always thought that 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.039 I was quite lucky to have had been exposed to 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.520 all those kind of foods from quite a young age. 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:52.200 Could your father find ingredients that he wanted for Italian. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.760 Cooking, Yeah he could, so, first of all, they've had 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:59.200 they used to have food, like like I remember my grandparents, 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:02.680 because they couldn't really separate themselves from their Italian background, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:04.440 so they used to have food sent to them, so 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:06.839 we had to. We used to get like anchovy paste 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:12.360 and olive oil and biscuits and cookies and things, so 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.440 they always get these packages of Italian produce that arrived 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.280 in Parmesan. So they lived about an hour from where 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:21.400 we lived in Jerusalem. They lived in the suburb of 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:23.520 Tel Aviv, and I used to come to their house 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.480 as a kid with my dad and the smell was 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.679 just completely different. It smelled of Italy in so many ways. 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.680 So they kept the Italian connection going on. And they 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:35.360 used to travel in the summer because they had a 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.920 house in the hills outside Florence that we used to 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.120 go to when I was growing up, So we had 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.680 a lot of a lot of that. So in between 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.280 the Italian and the Palestinian and the German influences, I've 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:49.160 had all that. 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.480 Because I often think that I often say that in 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.400 my history as as an interviewer, that many of the people, 0:07:56.560 --> 0:08:01.160 especially immigrants, talk more about their grandparents food than their parents. 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.920 That if you've moved from your culture to another culture, 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:07.760 the mother is probably tried and adapt So if you 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.040 have a family from Ghana coming from Ghana to London, 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.400 the mother would try and kind of still remember her 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:17.480 food she grew up with, but would try to adapt, 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:20.880 and the children completely adapted and would have the food 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:23.600 of their friends, but the grandparents, when he went to 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.080 their house, they would cook the Danaan food or the 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.880 Italian food. And my mother in law left Italy for 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:35.520 London pre war, and her father, who's kind of Florentine 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:40.280 site aristocrat, would send her candied oranges every month. You 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.880 know that she craved those kind of Italian the Italian 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:45.880 food of your culture totally. 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.080 And the only difference is that in Israel at the time, 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.360 there wasn't like a cuisine as such. It was because 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:54.960 it was just so early on and it was just 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.400 so new and so young, so a national cuisine has 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.679 not evolved. There was a place Senian, the Palestinian food 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:05.800 was extremely evolved, but what people would call Israeli food 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.920 is something that evolved later. But when I was growing up, 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.400 there was the food that Polish Jews would would have cooked, 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:16.120 or Russian Jews, or Libyan Jews, or Moroccan Jews or 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:19.440 Iraqi Jews. Those each one had their own cuisine. But 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:21.120 I always like to say, like in Jerusalem was like 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:23.640 survival of the fittest, you know, like the best food 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.760 from every culture would surface and we have yeah, that's 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:28.240 really great. 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:30.280 So you would have the Sephardic and you would. 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.880 Have so you'd have a Sephardics, you know, salads and 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.480 like and messies, and you'd have like the bubkas that 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.360 would come from the Ashkenazi food and and in some 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.040 ways like some restaurants in Jerusalem these days, that then 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.280 when you go, that's what's featured, you know, like the 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:48.480 best of every culture that makes up the city. 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.400 Because in America, definitely my family where they were Hungarian 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.440 and Russian Jews, and my hunger and grandmother was a 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.119 great pastry cook, you know, she made all the strudles 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:03.319 and all that, but I remember not really liking all 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:07.880 that sort of can filter fish and multi course that 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.120 that meat they cooked for hours, and I'm going to 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:12.079 get in trouble for this. 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:17.040 I always you're in good company. It's fine, the Eastern 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.360 European food. I always say, like, you know, there is 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:23.760 this Israeli chef called Aras Komorowski. He's a baker and 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.920 he's become quite well known because he's outspoken. He's one 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.000 of the founders of the modern way of cooking. And 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.920 he always says in Israeli, only you filter fish if 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:34.240 your grandmother is still alive. 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.040 That's funny, and I guess they are, but those grandmothers 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:43.160 might not be here for very long now. 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.040 Yeah, But I also think there's good things you can 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:51.240 do with and I always say there's no bad cuisines. 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.600 It's just about how people cook those foods. And there's 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:56.960 when I go and people say, oh, how could you 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.440 would you like about British cooking, I said, like, there's 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.280 so many things here, and the desserts are like some 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:04.360 of the best desserts in the world, and you know that, 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:06.960 And I think it's it really is about what you 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:08.880 do with it, not I agree. 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:11.560 So going back again, it seems like you had a 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.640 household where food was really important, but your father and 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:15.400 your mother cooked. 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.120 Yeah, both my parents cooked. My father because of this 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.200 Italian sensibilities, he used to cook in a way that 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:25.679 doesn't remind me of the way I cook now. So 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:32.160 it was quite minimal, great ingredients, cooked with care and attention. 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:35.840 And he used to make polenta and he's just to 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:38.040 stand there and stir it, you know, for forty five 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.160 minutes or an hour until it was just right, and 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.000 at the cheese, but everything very kind of moderately and 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:49.880 with a lot of attention, and was so different from 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:52.719 the way I ended up cooking, which is this kind 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.320 of quite a maximalist way of cooking, quite a lot 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.559 of ingredients more in I think, more keen to maybe 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:02.760 how they cook in North Africa or in Asia, South 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:05.280 Asia or Southeast Asia, in the sense that quite a 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.080 lot of spices, cook them down, create something, which is 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.080 kind of a base for sauce. He didn't cook like that. 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:13.960 He cooked much more the Italian way, but he was 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.760 a professor of chemistry at the university, so he had 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:20.000 a really kind of a deep understanding of ingredients. Intuitive. 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:23.120 But I would say that a recipe, I don't know 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:25.920 if you agree, is part science and part poetry. Yes, 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.400 you know, everybody likes the image of the Italian that 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:30.760 throws something in and does something there and does something that. 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.280 But actually they're very precise, I think. 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:35.840 Very precise. But he loved food. But there's certain things 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:41.199 he just like all Italians, he loved his foods the most, 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.280 and he just looked like there are certain combinations that 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.280 he would just not have, Like he said, sweet in 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:50.960 savory food. No, because he was from northern Italy, you 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.080 know that's maybe in Sicily you'd find there. Pulia but 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.760 not in the North. So if you'd have like something Moroccan, 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.640 you know, like a tagine with prunes or whatever, I 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:01.480 wouldn't touch that. 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:04.440 And your mother did she cook German sy Then. 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:06.640 My mom cooked German food. She was more of an 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:11.160 international cook, you know. She had these international cookbooks of 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:13.200 the fifties, you know, and she would try like a 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:18.840 Malaysian curry or delicious caspachio. But she also was a 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:22.960 food in the sense that for her food was very important. 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:24.800 The most important meal of the day in our house 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.000 was breakfast, and we had this kind of spread of food. Again, 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.079 not very tally. You went to school mostly on the weekend, 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.200 but even before I went to school, there was like 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:38.640 freshly sliced vegetables, fresh vegetables and some cheese and brine, 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:42.080 you know, like feta style and fresh bread and egg. 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.040 And this is still what I do for my kids, 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.520 Like before they go to school, I give them this 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:49.560 massive breastfast and Carl, my husband, looks at me and says, like, 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:52.880 is that really breakfast? You know, but they love it. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.959 It really is delicious. But the whole concept of breakfast 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:58.280 is like people different cultures do it very different. 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.880 My grandchildren have Chinese and they have chicken soup for 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.920 breakfast service. They can think of nothing nicer than having 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:07.360 a bowl of soup. You know, I agree, and why not? 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:08.520 You know, it doesn't matter. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.800 When I came here and I saw that grilled tomato 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.239 and beans and sausage, I thought like, what, I'm an abomination. 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.679 I do like it now? You okay? 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.120 And so growing up in your do you have brothers 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:21.760 and sisters? 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:23.440 I have one sister. 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.840 Yeah, And so the family meal would be sitting. Did 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:28.000 your mother work yeah? 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:29.640 Yeah, my mom was a teacher. 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.880 Yeah, so you would sit down to breakfast, fantastic breakfast, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.600 and then most dinners, would you have dinner together? 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:39.720 Yeah? We would also have dinner together. Yeah. Breakfast was 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.640 the main time you could trust that everybody would be there. 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.200 My parents worked a lot of dinner, not always, but 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:46.960 we also had dinners together. 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:48.560 Do you have memories of the kitchen? 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:51.320 Yeah? We So we had. The kitchen I was growing 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:54.880 up with was a long, kind of gally kitchen with 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:57.880 a dining table and chair at the very end. It 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.960 wasn't fancy at all. It was very particle, but there's 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.960 always cooking going on, and it was Yeah, I remember 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:09.360 I remember a cupboard where everything was was stored. And 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:11.080 I remember that I was alway used to climb up 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.960 the counter. I couldn't reach to get chocolate. There was 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:15.680 a box and she didn't mind. I don't know. She 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:17.560 always she never told us off, but we was. We 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.160 just come and had that cooking children. 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:34.520 When we need to start in the morning, they do 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:36.440 all the fish hungary and all the butchery. 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:38.720 So we start off with the meat and fish. While 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:39.560 I'm writing the menu. 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:42.080 Watch the level of butchery, like we get a we 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:43.640 get a whole pig or. 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:48.280 Yeah, yeah, or a whole you know, being saloon on 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:52.280 the bone or yeah, the legs of lamb and all 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:55.480 and the whole fish fully scale with all the scales 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.480 and everything that's gotten gill and scale fish and do 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:03.080 all the proper you know stuff that's skillful stuff that 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:05.360 I suppose some we're busy kitchen, but we have a 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:05.960 lot of chefs and. 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:06.640 We do all that. 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:11.720 We don't have stations stations, so anyone can do everything anything. 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:14.280 By the end of probably it takes about four years 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.560 to learn all the sections. Well, not everyone here can 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.440 look on every section past the section is quite hard. 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:22.080 It is hard. 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:25.080 A lot of people be learning that section, so the 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:26.760 person on it today it's sort of. 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:27.520 Learning as well. 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:32.120 We're teaching them how to you know, and thank. 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:32.920 You at all. 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.120 Did your parents take you to restaurants? Did you go out? 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:41.600 Yeah, so we didn't have We didn't have great restaurants 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.120 in Jerusalem in the sense in the way we have now. 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.960 So this whole, this whole revolution in food has not 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:51.800 happened yet, so we ate when we ate out. We 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.840 used to go to Palestinian restaurants. So the war just 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.840 happened not long before the nineteen sixty seven war in 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:05.359 which Israel occupied East Jerusalem. So in some ways this 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.359 is before the pre traumatic times. You know, it was 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:11.520 all very new and obviously it was complicated, but it 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.760 was relatively peaceful. So I remember we used to go 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.280 travel a lot into the West Bank. We used to 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:21.640 go to Annapolis to Jericho to have bron to have meals. 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.199 So we used to go to Jericho and have like 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:28.240 incredibly little meals. Oh, we would have these spreads of 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:30.959 delicious things that you find, some of them you'd know 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.320 and some of them you wouldn't. So from you know, 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:37.120 like hummus or in Labana, you know, the strain yogurt, 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.560 but you'd also have like local herbs that be sauteed 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.520 in garlic and olive oil. They have incredible so they 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:47.960 have wonderful oranges, so you'd have orange juice freshly squeezed 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:50.760 a bit like Seville's, like they have some of them 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:52.960 that are cooking and some of them mostly for juicing 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.840 because it's so hot and humid, it's like perfect for 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.639 citrus and lamb on the grain. Also they have with 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:05.120 cooked lamb on open grill and rice dishes like my cluba, 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:09.600 like upside down rice cakes and bulgar salads. And it 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:15.320 was an amazing wonderful olive oil. Wonderful olive oil, and 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:20.000 great freshly baked breads, pizza breads and all and other 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.480 variations on that fiend. Because of Palestine cook their bread 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:25.680 in a taboon, which is that you know that kind 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:33.160 of ceramic oven, earthenware oven. So all that was there, 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:36.040 and I really have really really strong memory of driving 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.360 down to Jericho and just having all these wonderful foods 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.200 and coming back, but also in Jerusalem, I have such 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.240 strong memories of the of these flavors. 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:46.400 Did you ever think that you would like to do that? 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:48.400 Did you ever think you'd want to be a chef. 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:50.760 No, I didn't really think I would want to be. 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:54.639 I really loved eating so much so that like my 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:56.560 dad always used to make fun of me, used to 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.639 call me golozzo, which is like it's that in word 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:04.640 for like greedy, because I was greedy and I had 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:06.439 to make them like take me to restaurants. On my 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.439 There was one restaurant and restaurant in Jerusalem that served 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:14.280 as seafood, like shrimps and squid in that and it 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.600 was in East Jerusalem and the Arab part because they 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.359 were Christian era, I mean, Muslims can eat seafood as well. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.280 And we'd go there and have like a plate of 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:29.080 like prawns and like butter and garlic and lemon, you know, 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.200 like and I just thought it was the most delicious 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:37.760 thing I've ever had. It was so exotic and so yeah. 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.359 So I had all really all that wonderful food. But 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.800 I never thought I was going to become No. I 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.120 kind of just assumed I'm going to follow in my parents' 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:51.400 path an academic, you know, go to university study, which 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.960 I did. I went to university and I studied and 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:58.080 Tel Aviv university. In the late nineties, I studied university, 0:19:58.280 --> 0:19:59.359 I moved to Tel Aviv. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:01.080 So what did you eat? 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:05.360 So my first apartment that I had with my boyfriend 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:07.800 at the time, we live by Caramel Market, which is 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:10.399 the main food and vegetable market, so it really was 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.359 an apartment really close to the market. And this was 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.480 when the first time I started to cook because I 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:19.480 was at university and so many students, like you know, 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:24.720 food was not forthcoming anymore, as I had to cook, 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.240 and I fell in love with cooking through the market. 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:31.520 So on Friday I would go and buy fresh herbs 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:35.639 and vegetables and cheese that I had this incredible cheese standards. 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:38.719 They had all the Balkan cheeses, you know those sitting 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.399 in brine, you know, the different types of feta and 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:46.840 many different there are many different types of I used 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:49.280 the word feta, but it's the Bulgarian cheeses. It's a 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:53.520 whole range of young cheeses that they vary in saltiness 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.000 and texture from something which is more like a ricotta 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:00.399 to something much firmer. Yeah, you have like really really 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.840 bland like with unsalted cheeses that would you be used 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:06.840 for one use and then things that are crumblier like 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.600 more like every kota, and some are much smoother, like 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.800 other Greek cheeses, And so you'd have the whole the 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.960 whole range, and would you entertain. Yeah, we would have 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:18.600 other student friends came over and I would make like 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.320 you know, I remember making, you know, just starting to 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.439 understand what the like marinating a chicken and grilling it 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.919 and making a salad to go with, like very baby 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:32.120 steps in the kitchen. But I did fall in love 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:33.879 with cooking through that, but I was still I was 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:35.800