Yotam Ottolenghi
Before I started working with Claudine, I tested all my recipes myself. It became too much in 2007; I had started my Guardian column and was working on my first book. Claudine would come to my apartment every week and we’d test together. That graduated to her testing from home in London, before she eventually moved to Wales.
I have remained faithful to Claudine. She knows exactly what my expectations are – if something isn’t exciting enough, she’ll tell me it isn’t very “Ottolenghi”. We use that word a lot. In my test kitchen in London, we’ll sometimes look to Claudine for final reassurance.
She’s very methodical, and never leaves a stone unturned, reminding us that we need to instruct people at home to do the things that I do on autopilot, like peeling a vegetable. These things need to be spelled out.
Her move to rural Wales has been a strength: if she can get an ingredient there, it should be fine to include it. She lives near her Welsh in-laws, so the whole family plays a role in tasting. I get her three kids’ feedback, her mother-in-law’s, her neighbours’.
Our system is very thorough. First, my test kitchen team – Ixta and Noor – put a recipe through its paces, trying it on average three to four times. For things like bakes that involve more chemistry, it could be up to 10 times. Then it gets sent to Wales. If Claudine isn’t happy, we reassess.
The equipment you have at home can create such variation. We had an aubergine conundrum for years: while we were cooking it on the hob, Claudine used her grill, which caused way more evaporation, leaving her with half the weight of flesh that we had. I want to give readers all the information they need, as the last thing I want is for them to be disappointed.
We now know what Claudine likes and doesn’t. Anything with ricotta and broad beans is never very popular with her. Otherwise, she seems to like everything, which is why the stuff she’s less keen on really stands out. When she says something is “nice”, it’s not that great! When she says “wow”, “extraordinary”, or “the best I’ve ever had”, you know you’ve got a winner.
Claudine Boulstridge
When I met Yotam in 2007, I was teaching at Leiths School of Food and Wine, where he also taught very popular classes on Saturdays. I didn’t really know who he was; his Guardian column had only recently started. I guess I was in the right place at the right time. Twelve years on and I have tested the recipes in all his books. I don’t test for anyone else.
I grew up in the Middle East, so things like cardamom, allspice and za’atar have always been familiar to me. Yotam’s food is obviously a lot more than “Middle Eastern”, but I do love using the ingredients with which he’s become so associated.
I definitely have the easiest job of his team; I get sent the near-perfect recipe every time. It’s rare that the recipes don’t work, but sometimes I’ll say, “It’s nice, but not amazing.” Often my feedback is about minor things: if, say, something says it needs to be in the oven for 20 minutes “until golden on top”, and it isn’t. My job is to be zealous about clarity.
I have more than 200 spices in my cupboard. I love that my children get to see such a variety of foodstuffs on the kitchen counter, from jerusalem artichokes to okra. I have never cooked separate food for them, and thanks to Yotam they are adventurous; my youngest loves sardines, chicken livers, sauerkraut and curry, and the other morning I found the three of them fighting over a block of tamarind. They like to chew it for its sweet-sour taste.
We don’t eat Ottolenghi seven days a week; often I’ll try to blitz a batch of recipes in a day and have people over that night. Before I gave birth to each child, I had been testing a Yotam recipe a few hours earlier. With my eldest, I mixed a pea fritter batter but didn’t have time to cook it before going into labour. I put it in the fridge and we fried it the next day, when I got home from hospital. We have great fun with the spoils of my work, although I must admit there are low points, like having to eat garlic prawns or boozy trifle at 8am. There’s also a constant stream of washing-up.
I think Yotam has kept me on for 12 years because he likes my frankness. If I don’t like something, I’ll just say no, worded gently, of course. That said, the recipes have continued to get better over the years. I thought he’d have run out of ideas by now, but he seems to have more than ever.
Claudine’s favourite Yotam recipe Lamb and hibiscus koftas: they are healthy, cheap, so soft and tasty, and quick to make.
Meera Sodha
In a recipe tester, I look for someone who’s going to call me out if something doesn’t work – if a method is too complicated, if the ingredients are too expensive, or if the finished result doesn’t look beautiful. Hannah’s value is in her brutal honesty; she’s no-bullsh*t, and won’t mince her words. Her feedback on a first rendition of beetroot halwa for my book was: “The method is brilliant, the portion size is perfect… but it’s just so disgusting that I couldn’t eat it.”
Hannah was the first person I saw when I walked through the door on my first day at Innocent Drinks, where I worked in marketing and communications. She was the office angel.
She’s intensely “foodie”; her passion for cooking is very pure and her credentials speak for themselves – she has worked at the Waterside Inn in Bray and Bath’s Bertinet Bakery, among others. When we were in our early 20s at Innocent, she and her now-husband Connor would prepare David Thompson’s Thai curries from scratch – with homemade coconut milk! – while the rest of us scoffed chicken-shop chips after the pub.
In spite of this, she’s always fighting the home cook’s corner. As a mother who is cooking on a budget, she has huge empathy for my readers and ensures the recipes deliver. I want people in the Outer Hebrides to be able to cook from them, and I find Hannah, who is based in Bath, to be a very good gauge of what’s available nationally – it’s easy for me to assume that certain ingredients are ubiquitous. She uses her local supermarket, ethnic shops and the internet to form a realistic picture.
Hannah isn’t a silent tester; she acts as a kind of creative partner. She’ll send me pictures on WhatsApp in real time, and there’ll be lots of to-ing and fro-ing on prepped veg, finished dishes, notes and comments.
I love Hannah’s determination and the pride she takes in everything working. There’s a cardamom bun in my book Fresh India that she must have tested six times before she was happy.
Hannah Cameron McKenna
When Meera’s book Made In India came out, I wasn’t very au fait with Indian food and found the likes of Madhur Jaffrey quite complicated. But Meera is good at making things simple by being precise with her methodology. For example, she’s very specific about seasoning: how much to use (not just “to taste”) and when to use it.
I’ve learned a huge amount about which spices (or combinations of them) to use. I’m much more careful about how long I keep them for now, too – never longer than six months – and buy them whole, then roast and grind them myself. This sounds like a faff, but it makes a huge difference to the flavour. An electric spice grinder has become an essential piece of kit.
While Bath is a wealthy city, it’s also very white. We have only one Thai shop here and can only just about get hold of curry leaves. She’ll send over four weeks’ worth of recipes; I’ll go out for the ingredients and then cook each one, timing myself from the moment I start prepping.
My process is about making the method more streamlined: if the recipe asks you to add toasted pine nuts at the end, I’ll make sure to put the instruction for toasting them at the beginning, so you don’t double up on pans and washing-up. I’ll make shorthand notes as I’m going along and send them to Meera, who tends to agree – she’s very good at taking feedback.
Then I’ll eat the finished dish, mostly sitting down with my family, sometimes our neighbours. My husband and kids love Meera’s food, but by the end of one of her book projects, they’ll ask for spag bol – I hope she doesn’t mind me saying that!
Hannah’s favourite Meera recipe Hard to choose just one, but the vegan sweet potato and aubergine massaman curry is a firm family favourite.
Anna Jones
We met more than 10 years ago, while I was working as a stylist at Jamie Oliver. Em came in to do some work experience – she was a chef and wanted to move into styling – and she ended up staying on to assist me. A few years later, I left to go freelance and Em joined me, becoming my regular assistant and tester. We did everything from TV shows to editorial projects and books, including three for Antonio Carluccio.
We’ve developed incredibly similar tastes. It may not sound groundbreaking, but we both want every plate of food to be really well balanced; it’s vital that we hit all the flavour notes of salty, sweet, acid, verdant and herbal, umami or richness from miso or garlic. We both have a tendency to finish a dish with a squeeze of citrus – lemons, limes, clementines, bergamots – and always want something with crunch, too. You can make a fairly average tomato soup, but add some delicious olive oil parmesan croutons or crispy onions, a herb oil, char half a lime to squeeze over, and throw some herbs on top, and suddenly it’s transformed.
That being said, we have our differences. Em cooks meat and fish, I don’t; Em has specialities (she wrote a book on Korean food, which I know very little about); Em worked in Michelin-starred kitchens for much longer than I did – and all of this shows. Early in our partnership, when we were working on shoots together, I remember being struck by her patience. I’m more slapdash, perhaps more reliant on instinct.
Sometimes writing on your own is isolating, and I need a sounding board, someone to ask, “Was adding saffron to this completely ridiculous?” Quite often when I’m stuck for ideas, I’ll ring Em. I find people can be easily impressed by food, so getting a truthful opinion can be harder than you’d imagine. My caveat for any recipe is: “Is this the most delicious version of this you’ve ever eaten?” And I can rely on Em for a candid answer.
Emily Ezekiel
I come from a big family and my mother is not that interested in cooking, so I started making our family meals. I ended up working under a very successful TV chef, but realised after a few years that restaurant kitchens weren’t for me. I wanted to do something more creative than fine dining, which was making me lose my passion for food. One day I had a terrible shift and it just broke me – I left immediately. By the Monday I was at Jamie Oliver, working for free. Then I met Anna.
I remember watching her prep and cook, and seeing how naturally an aesthetic came to her. Back then, food stylists would get out their tweezers, bottles and paint brushes, but not Anna. It was so refreshing to see you didn’t need to do that for food to look beautiful.
Our styles have developed together. We could probably cook together with the same ingredients, in silence, and end up preparing the same bowl of food. When Anna became vegetarian in 2008, it didn’t faze me at all: I do eat meat, but I’ve never been a meat-and-two veg kind of girl (my father is Iranian; my mother is half Norwegian, half Scottish). Anna pioneered the mainstream vegetarian thing – it’s only recently stopped being seen as hippy food – but I still challenge her when she’s recipe-testing. It needs to have universal appeal. I’m quite opinionated and bossy.
Six or seven years ago, we tried to make a sugar-free chocolate pot with no dairy or unrefined sugars. We just couldn’t make it work, until the shoot day… and I’ll never forget the sense of triumph. At the time, it felt like something really different. So much of recipe-testing is about perseverance.
Emily’s favourite Anna recipe I love her quick, easy ramen dish. We both share a love of spice and punchy flavours, so this ticks all the boxes.
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