7 vegan recipes from Ottolenghi FLAVOUR (2024)

FAQs

Is Ottolenghi flavour vegan? ›

Yotam Ottolenghi and his Ottolenghi FLAVOUR co-author Ixta Belfrage may not be vegan chefs, but their joint obsession with vegetables means that many of their recipes just so happen to be completely plant-based.

Essential for meat-eaters and vegetarians alike, Plenty features more than 120 recipes organized by ingredient. One of the most exciting talents in the cooking world, Yotam Ottolenghi's food inspiration comes from his Cordon Bleu training, Mediterranean background, and his unapologetic love of ingredients.

I highly recommend having a mixture of grains, protein, and vegetables — it provides a great balance not only with flavor/bulk but also texture. Grains and legumes help keep the meal filling while the vegetables bring everything together.

Beer and Wine

Isinglass, a gelatin-based substance derived from fish, is used as a clarifying agent in some beer and wine. Other non-vegan ingredients sometimes used are casein (from milk) and egg whites.

From this, Ottolenghi has developed a style of food which is rooted in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean traditions, but which also draws in diverse influences and ingredients from around the world.

We cook a fair amount of Ottolenghi recipes at home, because he's one of the regular food writers in our regular newspaper (The Guardian). They are usually fairly simple recipes that focus on a good combination of flavours - even as home cooks, they're not nearly the most complicated things we make.

If anything, Mr. Ottolenghi — tall and dapper, with salt-and-pepper hair, half-rim glasses and a penchant for pink-striped button-downs and black sneakers — should be a vegetarian pinup. But here's the rub: he eats meat. Apparently this is enough to discredit him in the eyes of the most devout abstainers.

Some of the recipes are fairly straightforward but he does have a reputation for including some hard to get ingredients and some recipes can be very involved. I really enjoy his recipes and find they are very tasty.

Numerous studies have shown that vegans consume insufficient calcium and vitamin D, not only owing to the absence of dairy products but also due to calcium bioavailability problems in plant-based diets [28]. Vitamin D insufficiency exacerbates calcium shortage further owing to impaired intestinal absorption.

Which foods are surprisingly vegan? ›

The most common challenge we see is that “new” vegans and vegetarians do not eat enough calories throughout the day. Snacking is a great way to stay full! Make sure you are incorporating snacks between meals. These snacks allow you to meet your calorie needs as well as manage your hunger between meals.

The bottom line. Most types of peanut butter are free of animal products and can be enjoyed as part of a vegan diet. However, some varieties are made in facilities that also process animal products or contain refined sugar that was produced using bone char or non-vegan ingredients like honey or fish oil.

Hummus is a vegan staple that allows you to have some versatility in your diet. It's an immensely popular food amongst vegans so you may have found a new favourite yourself. It's available in a wide range of flavours and is very versatile in the kitchen so you can experiment with it if you wish to.

What is vegan umami? Vegan umami refers to the savory taste found in plant-based foods, without using any animal products. Ingredients like mushrooms, tomatoes, fermented foods like miso and soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and seaweeds are all rich in natural umami flavors and suitable for a vegan diet.

Natural flavors are food additives designed to make processed foods taste irresistible. These flavors can come from vegan-friendly sources, but they can also be derived from animal products.

Vinegar and Mirin. In addition to fishy and salty, we need to tackle sour. That's where vinegar and mirin (rice wine) comes in. Like soy sauce, vinegar is both fermented and fermenting and is therefore a logical component of any vegan fish sauce (which is also fermented and fermenting).