Editors Reads Verdict
Plenty More confirms Ottolenghi's status as the most influential cookbook author of the early twenty-first century — a collection of vegetable recipes so inventive and delicious that they have permanently changed how many cooks think about plant-based cooking.
What We Loved
- The recipes are genuinely inventive — Ottolenghi consistently finds combinations no one else has thought of
- Every recipe is photographed beautifully and the food actually looks like the photographs
- The book works for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike
- The range of influences — Middle Eastern, Asian, Mediterranean — gives the book unusual breadth
Minor Drawbacks
- Some recipes require specialty ingredients that may be difficult to source outside major cities
- The recipes are generally more complex than weeknight cooking allows
- Portions can be difficult to scale for smaller households
Key Takeaways
- → Vegetables become the most satisfying food in the world when treated with the same care and technique as meat
- → Ottolenghi's signature move: take a familiar vegetable and pair it with an unexpected flavour combination
- → Charring, caramelising, and roasting develop flavours in vegetables that boiling destroys
- → Herbs, spices, and condiments are not additions but structural elements of a dish
- → Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines offer the most interesting vocabulary for vegetable cookery
| Author | Yotam Ottolenghi |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Ten Speed Press |
| Pages | 352 |
| Published | October 7, 2014 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Cooking |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Confident home cooks who want to expand their vegetable cooking repertoire — particularly those willing to invest time and seek out specialty ingredients for exceptional results. |
Vegetables as the Main Event
When Yotam Ottolenghi published Plenty in 2010, it changed the conversation about vegetarian cooking. Here was a cookbook that made vegetables genuinely exciting — not as health food or as compromise but as the most interesting ingredients in the kitchen. Plenty More continues that project with 150 additional recipes that demonstrate there is no limit to what can be done with plant ingredients.
Ottolenghi’s background — a Palestinian Israeli who trained in London and opened restaurants there — gives him access to a uniquely rich culinary vocabulary. His cooking draws on Levantine, North African, Persian, Turkish, and Southeast Asian traditions simultaneously, combining them with European technique to produce flavour profiles that are immediately recognisable and unlike anything else.
The Signature Move
Every experienced Ottolenghi reader knows the move: take a vegetable that everyone thinks they know, apply unexpected technique or flavour combination, and produce something that makes you wonder why you never did it that way before. Burnt eggplant with pomegranate and tahini. Roasted squash with chilli, lime, and seeds. Braised green beans with tomato and cinnamon. The pairings seem obvious in retrospect because they are so precisely right.
The technique underlying all of this is the use of char, caramelisation, and concentrated roasting. Ottolenghi does not steam or boil his vegetables into submission. He finds the cooking method that develops maximum flavour — usually high heat, usually longer than you expect — and then adds layers of acid, heat, sweetness, and freshness.
The Investment Required
These recipes take time. Most require thirty minutes to an hour of active preparation, good equipment, and ingredients that may require some searching. This is not weeknight cooking but Sunday cooking — the kind that produces the food you think about the following week.
Our rating: 4.6/5 — Ottolenghi at his most inventive: a vegetable cookbook that permanently changes how you think about plant-based cooking.
Ready to Read Plenty More?
Check the current price on Amazon.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Prices and availability are subject to change. See Amazon for current price.
Review last updated: