Yotam Ottolenghi is the co-owner of four restaurants and the author of six cookbooks, including his latest, Sweet. Sweet is his first dessert cookbook and Ottolenghi and his co-author Helen Goh have outdone themselves with this one. Gorgeous photographs and recipes that make your mouth water just looking at the page. Any page.
What does this chef and cookbook author read when he's not whipping up something delicious? See Yotam's Ottolenghi's picks below, and look here for more celebrity favorites.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s favorite reads of 2017
Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
I hoovered this first novel up. It’s a small domestic tale, on one hand – the story of a man and a woman and their marriage and their relationship with their kid and with his first wife and with all the other relationships which make up life – but, at the same time, it’s about so much more. Ultimately it’s about what’s normal – who says so? Who sets this ‘standard’ – and, therefore, who’s to say what’s a deviation from that? What does normal mean? What does being an outsider mean? All the big questions, then, but written with such a big wit that I absolutely hooted with laughter throughout.
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
This is another book which works on a small and a grand scale. On one hand, again, it’s about two families and the way their lives interconnect and cross and affect each other but on the other hand the sweep of the novel is grand, spanning these two families over five decades. It’s about the way that single actions have consequences, often unintentional, which can ripple out for years and years.
The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber
This is a must-read for anyone interested in food and the future and the relationship between the two. Dan’s book is about the way we can keep good food on our plate in a way that is sustainable long term. The vision is big and important but Dan conveys it in a way that is eloquent (and often funny) enough to feel well within all our grasps.
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