A Tale of Two Ottolenghis

 

I promised I would report back on this week’s excursions into Ottolenghi, so here we go. Two contrasting recipes, one remarkably simple, and the other…not simple. But still delicious.

Let’s start with the complicated one: Tofu meatballs in korma sauce, from Flavour, which came out last year.  Essentially you make and then bake the tofu balls, then make the sauce and combine the two at the very last minute.

You start by cooking almonds and cashews in water for 20 minutes, then drain them and set aside. Then it’s onto the balls, which are typical Ottolenghi – they requires no less than two different types of tofu (firm and silken), as well as mushrooms, spring onions, tomato puree, coriander, tahini, soy sauce, breadcrumbs and cornflour. The method isn’t too much faff – fry the mushrooms and firm tofu , then pulse them in a food processor until finely chopped. Mix this with the other ingredients, then form into balls. Put these in the oven for 25 minutes.

Balls, ready for the oven

While they’re baking, make the sauce. This also has a lot of ingredients- see below:

These are the ingredients just for the sauce

You start by frying off onions, which you then blend with some water and the nuts you cooked early, to form at paste. Set this aside, then fry off garlic, ginger and chilli, then add spices, then tomatoes (supposed to be grated, I used tinned pulp), the nut and onion paste, and some more water. Actually, I forgot to add the tomatoes, so they only went in after the water but it was fine.  Then allow this to simmer aware until it’s reduced by a third (about 25 minutes). 

The balls meet the sauce

After this you add the tofu balls to warm them through, and then – you can finally eat. Serve with rice or flatbreads. It’s very good but too much work to be a regular meal (and requires too many things I don’t use very often – I am open to ideas for how to use up most of a packet of silken tofu. I’ve tried it scrambled, but other thoughts welcome).

The final meal (I forgot to mention you're supposed to garnish with coriander and red onion soaked in lemon juice) 

By contrast, this week’s other Ottolenghi – Confit Tandoori Chickpeas -  was pretty simple – although you do need to start cooking early as it needs an hour and fifteen minutes in the oven. You just put all the ingredients (ginger, an unreasonable amount of garlic, chickpeas, tomato puree, cherry tomatoes, various spices, whole chillies, olive oil) in a pot with a lid and stick it in the oven for the aforementioned period. While that’s happening whizz up yoghurt, coriander and lime juice to form a cooling sauce to go with it (it is lovely, but you could just have yoghurt if you wanted this to be even simpler).

Confit chickpeas plus sauce. Looks a bit terrible but tastes delicious.

This is from the latest Ottolenghi book, Test Kitchen:Shelf Love, which is his second since the start of the pandemic. How about that as an alternative way of measuring how long all this has been going on? Two Ottolenghi cookbooks worth of pandemic. Anyway, this is the first thing I have made from this book, but I don’t expect it to be that last – and I will definitely make this one again.