UCSB Arts & Lectures will present Chefs in Conversation with Samin Nosrat and Yotam Ottolenghi, and moderated by Sherry Villanueva, at 11 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 28. Villanueva is managing partner/owner of Acme Hospitality. The virtual event is a part of UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Winter 2021 House Calls series.
James Beard Award-winning cookbook authors and chefs Nosrat and Ottolenghi will share their passion for everything food, inviting the audience along as they dish secrets from the kitchen. With a hit Netflix series, best selling debut cookbook and New York Times food column, Nosrat is the it girl of the culinary world.
Israeli-born London restaurateur and Guardian columnist, Ottolenghi is the bestselling author of such cookbooks as “Jerusalem,” “Ottolenghi Simple, and most recently, “Flavor.”
Tickets are $10 for the general public and free for UCSB students, registration required. For tickets and more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535, or visit www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.
Acme Hospitality brings custom-crafted meals to audience members’ House Calls experience. Attendees can order brunch from The Lark with a meal inspired by Nosrat and Ottolenghi. Order by noon on Thursday, Feb. 25; meals available while supplies last. Order here.
As an undergraduate studying English at UC Berkeley, Nosrat took a detour into the kitchen at Chez Panisse restaurant that determined the course of her life and career. Since 2000, she pursued her twin passions of food and words with equal vigor, aiming to create work that inspires, creates community and raises cultural, social and environmental awareness.
Nosrat learned to cook at Chez Panisse, in Italy alongside Benedetta Vitali and Dario Cecchini, and at Eccolo in Berkeley. She studied poetry with Robert Hass, Shakespeare with Stephen Booth and journalism with Michael Pollan. She has said that Alice Waters and farmer Bob Cannard taught her more about land stewardship than anyone else.
Her book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking” was illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton. It is a New York Times bestseller and 2018 James Beard General Cookbook of the Year, 2018 Fortnum & Mason Debut Cookbook, 2018 IACP Cookbook of the Year, 2018 IACP Julia Child First Book Award and Sunday Times Food Book of the Year 2017.
A documentary series based on the book is now streaming on Netflix. In 2018 Nosrat was named the Eater Chef of the Year. She was also one of five food columnists for the New York Times Magazine, and recently published her final column for the magazine, Saying Goodbye with Beans (Feb. 3).
In March, Nosrat will appear among the celebrity guests and renowned chefs guiding the title characters around the globe in Netflix’s new family-friendly food series “Waffles + Mochi,” featuring Michelle Obama, the former first lady.
Nosrat has spoken about food, art, culture and cooking at venues as diverse as the Oakland Unified School District Nutrition Services, UC Berkeley, Yale University, SFMoMA, St. Mary’s College, University of San Francisco, the Orange Institute, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) and Artechef, the Cuban national cooking school.
Ottolenghi served as a pastry chef at three London restaurants: the Michelin-starred Capital Restaurant, Kensington Place and Launceston Place in Kensington New Town. In 1999, he became head pastry chef at the artisanal pastry shop Baker and Spice, where he met the Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi, who grew up in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Ottolenghi and Tamimi bonded over a shared language — Hebrew — and a joint “incomprehension of traditional English food.”
In 2006, Ottolenghi began writing a weekly column for The Guardian titled The New Vegetarian, influenced by the straightforward, culturally grounded food writing of Nigella Lawson and Claudia Roden, Ottolenghi’s recipes rarely fit within traditional dietary or cultural categories.
His mission is to “celebrate vegetables or pulses without making them taste like meat, or as complements to meat, but to be what they are. It does no favour to vegetarians, making vegetables second best.”
Ottolenghi has hosted three television specials: “Jerusalem on a Plate” (2011); “Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast” (2012); and “Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Island Feast” (2013). In 2017, he served as a guest judge on the ninth and 11th season of the cooking game show “Masterchef Australia.”
He had declined numerous guest-judge offers in the past and agreed to appear on Masterchef Australia “because it’s quite humane and positive … It’s about the personal development of the contestants more than the competition.”
In his recently-released bestselling cookbook “Flavor.” Ottolenghi teams up with his test kitchen’s Ixta Belfrage to reveal how flavor is created and amplified through 100-plus plant-based recipes.
House Calls media sponsors are Noozhawk, Santa Barbara Independent, KCRW, Voice Magazine.