Yotam Ottolenghi wants one thing on the table at weekend breakfast. His fix for a house full of people on a weekend morning is one big dish, set down in the middle of the table, that everyone helps themselves from. He made the case in the Guardian on August 29, 2026, alongside six recipes from his new book, Simple Too.
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The change traces back to his children. Family life has shaped his home cooking more than almost anything else, he wrote, and the result is a lot of pasta, potato wedges, meatballs, and pancakes. The pancakes were meant to last the week: batch-cooked on Sunday, then reheated in a toaster or dry pan until Friday. Instead, all 22 disappear by Sunday lunch, eaten by his sons, their friends, and whoever else is at the table.
What goes in the middle of the table
The dishes he names for that role share a shape rather than an origin. Butter beans in Urfa chilli butter come with toast, bacon, and semi-hard-boiled eggs. A tray of tomatoes baked with za’atar and mascarpone sits beside sausages and sourdough.
Then there’s menemen, the Turkish dish of eggs scrambled with tomatoes and spices, served with a leaf salad and sliced avocado. He adds the eggs off the heat, so the pan’s own residual warmth finishes them. His stated reason is not speed. He doesn’t want to be the last person standing once everyone else has already sat down to eat.
One of the six recipes, coconut greens with Scotch bonnet and eggs, has a traceable route into his kitchen. It began as a Trinidadian bhaji, which reached his test kitchen through his colleague Milli Taylor, who first tried it through her friend, the chef and food writer Shivi Ramoutar.
What “simple” means in the new book
Simple Too follows Simple, his 2018 bestseller, and narrows the same idea further. On the Good Food podcast, Ottolenghi described a recipe as simple only once it uses fewer than ten ingredients, one pan or pot, less peeling and chopping, and jars or tins without apology.
The recipes he discussed there reach past breakfast. Chickpeas confit with olives and orange. Meatballs baked in the oven and finished with a pomegranate-molasses glaze. One rustic tomato sauce meant to do the work of several, three rice dishes built on dairy, and a brown-sugar dessert.
He co-wrote the book with Verena Lochmuller. It adds a new Fundamentals chapter of flavour-builders meant to sit ready in the fridge.
Why a cook this well established still has news to make
Bon Appétit lists Ottolenghi as a seven-time New York Times best-selling cookbook author, who also writes for the paper’s Food section and keeps a weekly column at the Guardian. Both NPR and the New York Times named Ottolenghi Simple among their picks for best book of that year. Jerusalem, co-written with Sami Tamimi, won Cookbook of the Year from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and Best International Cookbook from the James Beard Foundation. He lives in London, where he co-owns a group of restaurants and the fine-dining rooms Nopi and Rovi.
On the Good Food podcast, Ottolenghi also talked about his line of ready-made condiments, which began during lockdown.
