Latest news with #KattyKay
Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The Rest Is Politics US review — the stale art of Trump-hating
Like an enormous water buffalo sustaining a flock of flea-eating river birds with a lifetime of free dinners, the Trump administration supports a throng of parasitic podcasters. Conservatives gawk and cheer. Liberals gawk and scoff. The world can't look away and the dollars roll in. Very firmly in the gawk and scoff camp are Anthony Scaramucci and Katty Kay of The Rest Is Politics US. Kay is a British journalist. Scaramucci, you probably recall, is famous for his ill-fated 11-day stint as Trump's communications director. Though not quite culture-bestriding political commentary superstars on the level of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart (hosts of the namesake show The Rest Is Politics), Kay and Scaramucci command a loyal audience of Trump-transfixed British liberals. That audience — world-weary, trainer-wearing centrists — was out in force last night for The Rest Is Politics US Live. Kay and Scaramucci appeared at Indigo at the O2 in London, a smaller side theatre in the famous dome where Billie Eilish was playing the main stage. But even Eilish's tweenage obsessives would struggle to equal the levels of fan devotion from the Rest Is Politics US crowd. 'Scaramucci 2028' caps were on sale at the merch stand and the hosts were whooped and cheered on to the stage. • Read more radio and podcast reviews I confess to a certain bewilderment. I've never quite got the appeal of The Rest Is Politics US. Scaramucci, though clearly genial, strikes me as a bit of a blowhard. I've never felt Kay has much of shattering insight to say on US politics. Still, the fun of Trump-hating will never die. You may have thought the vein of political comedy based on remarking repeatedly on what a ludicrous man the president is with his orange hair and silly tan was exhausted half a decade ago. Not here. The audience chortled away happily as we trotted through his disgraceful antics … the tariffs! The Musk bust-up! The hair! The hair looks like a racoon, Scaramucci observed to merry guffaws. My lips nearly twitched moderately upwards at his description of the president as 'an orange Moses descending from Mount Evil'. But an excess of self-respect prevented even a half-smile from forming. I read a thousand versions of that joke on Twitter in 2016. This stuff is really pretty tired. • Why are podcasters so fixated by Donald Trump? As for the commentary … well, we learnt that 'Trump has got Europeans to take defence spending seriously', that hosting Trump for a state visit may make him feel warmly towards Britain and that by cutting USAID Elon Musk's Doge unit has damaged American soft power. Why anyone would fight their way to the O2 through hordes of marauding Eilish fans on a sticky July evening to hear such lukewarm insights is beyond me. Such are the mysteries of podcasts. Rather more tenuously Scaramucci thinks Trump's havering on Ukraine can be explained by the fact Putin has kompromat of a sexual nature on the American president. To me this is sheer conspiracism but at the O2 I'm in a minority. 'Raise your hands if you think Putin's got something on Trump,' Scaramucci says and a forest of eager arms appears. 'It's not a pee-pee tape,' Scaramucci opines confidently. 'Trump could survive a pee-pee tape.' At one point Scaramucci says of Trump, 'He's a really bad guy, ladies and gentlemen.' This stunningly original observation is greeted with cheers and applause. It's just so easy. As long as Trump remains in the White House, the podcasters are safe. ★★☆☆☆
Daily Mail
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Donald Trump gave me the biggest break of my career at 60: KATTY KAY reveals how Trumpmania has transformed her world
There are few critics of Donald Trump who would admit he has done them a favour. But Katty Kay, veteran British reporter and presenter, is on a career high at the age of 60, in no small part due to the President of the United States. 'Yes, Donald Trump is good for business,' says Kay. 'Donald Trump, at the moment, is the only game in town, which is exactly how he likes it.' As one half of the hugely successful podcast The Rest Is Politics US, along with the outspoken Anthony 'The Mooch' Scaramucci (who famously managed just 11 days as Trump's communications director in 2017), she has seen the numbers rise from 2.1 million listeners in December to 7.5 million right now. The podcast only launched in April 2024, during an election year in which within months the sitting president had been forced out of the race after a catastrophic debate performance against his rival, the convicted felon Donald Trump. What followed has often seemed like chaos that needed explaining. In the second act of the Trump presidency, it seems that the more headlines the man in the White House grabs, the more people tune in. And the more famous Kay gets. This very morning, as she landed at Heathrow, someone recognised her. 'That happens most times I arrive in the UK. People say hello on the tube,' she says. 'It's always a bit of a surprise.' Weeks later, after Trump sends US bombers to strike Iran and boasts their 'spectacular success', I talk to Kay again. Trump's reaction reminds her of 2003 and George W Bush's early 'Mission Accomplished' jubilance in the Iraq war: 'We know how that ended.' But while other commentators are downbeat, with The Atlantic running the headline 'American democracy might not survive a war with Iran', Kay is circumspect. 'I'm pretty optimistic that the system holds,' she says. But she has been texted a lot of 'emojis with head exploding'. 'Or dumpster fires. A lot of dumpster fires have arrived on my phone over the last couple of years.' As a US correspondent, Kay has seen six presidential terms and two of them have been Trump, but the Washington veteran says this administration feels different. Contacts of hers – good contacts, she says, people who speak to Trump regularly – are more reluctant to talk. Journalists, she adds, are spooked that Trump might go after them by going for their taxes or burying them in lawsuits. Is she nervous at regularly holding him up to scrutiny? 'I did have a moment recently. I'm a green card holder. I'm not a citizen. And I had a moment of thinking, 'I wonder if I'll get hassled at the airport. I wonder if I'll get turned around.'' But scared? In a word, no. 'So they come after me. I mean, what are they going to do?' I ask Kay how she got the Rest Is Politics US gig and am told gently that she invented it. She'd come across an article by one of the co-founders of Goalhanger, the production company behind the The Rest Is podcast franchise, saying that they wanted to break into the US. 'American audiences are the Holy Grail and I remember reading that thinking, 'Hmm, maybe I could help them.'' A text to Alastair Campbell, a presenter on The Rest Is Politics (UK), led to a pilot episode. All Kay needed was a co-host. She and Scaramucci seem, on the surface, to make an odd couple. But she brings the calm to his storm. 'We definitely have different roles,' she says. 'After years of being a BBC journalist, I see things with a 'data analysis' brain and Anthony comes at this as – what would we call it? – a civilian? He's somebody who's come out of politics very clear about his opinions – not as a journalist. 'People have this view of Anthony that he's, you know, this brash ex-Trumper, Long Island Italian American. But audiences have got to know him now and appreciate how thoughtful he is, how smart and how steeped in history he is. He's one of the best- read people on American politics and history. 'As Brits,' she says, 'we think we know America because we've seen it in the movies. Every Brit I know who arrives in America thinks, 'Oh, yeah, I understand this country.' And then the longer you're there, the more you realise how different it is. Anthony is steeped in a side of America that most Brits don't know.' Kay's look is what you might call 'effortless Riviera': a white long-sleeved top, with its collar up and sleeve unbuttoned, and loose brushed sea-blue cotton trousers. Her perfectly blonde shoulder-length hair is swept back and she glows. Her sidekick, meanwhile, famously admits to careful skincare and judicious hair-dyeing. 'Anthony says that when people stop him in the streets in London it's always to ask, 'Which moisturiser do you use?' He says no one asks him about politics.' What does she make of this peacockery? 'I think he's opened up a whole new conversation for British men that it was about time they had,' she says, in a voice that makes me want to rush to the gents and look in the mirror. Katherine Kay was born in Blewbury, Oxfordshire, into a diplomatic family. By the age of two, she was living in Beirut, her dad serving in a number of countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Instead of sending their daughter to boarding school (save for a brief unhappy period when she was 11) her parents took her with them. The result was a change of school with every new posting, including a French-speaking lycée in Morocco. 'Six different schools in five years,' she says. 'I calculated once in three countries in two languages.' There were several consequences of this peripatetic life. Young Katty became a linguist, fluent in French and Italian. Also, she says, it made her adaptable. 'I could fit into different cultures or countries,' she says. 'It made me good at making friends quickly. On the downside, I don't have friends from childhood. I don't have a sense of continuity. Before moving to Washington, I never had a house I lived in for more than three years.' Paradoxically, in 2021, after a prolonged application process, Kay got Swiss citizenship (her father was born in Switzerland) and tweeted: 'Today I became Swiss. I cried when I opened the email. My dad, who died in January, was Swiss. As a child growing up in the Middle East, holidays with my Swiss grandmother were a refuge. When I arrive at Interlaken station, I feel I'm home.' She graduated from Oxford with a degree in modern languages, worked for a short, unhappy period at the Bank of England, then joined an aid agency in Zimbabwe. While there she met an old friend, the BBC correspondent Matt Frei (now with Channel 4 News), who seduced her into journalism. Her CV since then easily occupies two sides of A4, with stints at the BBC and The Times. In 2021, she left the BBC to work at a short-lived new company called Ozy Media, from which she resigned when allegations of fraud were made against senior figures there. She and her husband Tom Carver, a former BBC reporter, live in Georgetown, Washington, in the house they've owned for 25 years, and are there most of the year. They also have a house in West London's Hammersmith. She has two children, Felix, 31, and Maya, 29, with her first husband, Sebastian Mallaby, a former staffer at The Economist and The Washington Post, who now writes books (they're still 'very good friends' and spend Christmases together), and two with Tom: Jude, 25, and Poppy, 19. She is enormously proud of all of them. 'Felix works in the US Senate, as a camera technician. Maya is a PhD astrophysicist, which she really didn't get from me, and wants to work in climate modelling. Jude did a master's in marine engineering at Southampton University, having done architecture at the University of Virginia, and is now back in Washington looking for a job. And Poppy has just finished her first year of university in New York but is spending this summer working at the River Cafe [in Hammersmith]. She started this week, so I hope she doesn't drop the plates.' Their Washington home also has a helpful new perk: half the Trump cabinet has moved into the street around the corner. 'Literally, [Secretary of Health] RFK Jr lives 300 yards from my front door and passes my house every morning on his way to his AA meetings,' says Kay. 'And as I walk my dog now, I pass Kristi Noem [Secretary of Homeland Security] and Scott Bessent [Treasury Secretary] on my way to the park.' Interesting neighbours, and possibly nosy ones. I ask if she thinks that what's on the podcast gets back to Trump. 'He knows who I am, absolutely, because I do a TV show in the States, Morning Joe, two or three times a week, which is on in the White House. The President says he doesn't listen to it, but everybody on the show is convinced he does, because he quotes it back.' Has she interviewed him? Once, she tells me, but, she adds regretfully, not face to face. It was down the line. 'He told me that I was very negative about his [2016] campaign, but I didn't need to worry about it.' Did she get the impression he respected her? 'Donald Trump respects ratings. So if you have a platform that has reach, he respects the fact that you're reaching people. I don't think the fact that Donald Trump criticises you means that he doesn't respect you. I'm sure he respects Anthony. The fact that he criticises him often is a kind of compliment. It means he's listening to you.' So would she like to meet him again? 'Yes, but I think he's a difficult person to interview because you have to make the decision, do I fact check him in real time? In which case you will spend a lot of the interview fact-checking. But if you decide not to do the fact-checking in real time, you're allowing him to say things that aren't true.' One thing stands out in our encounter. Kay is having a ball. Her Instagram account is a sea of pictures of her with her family: trips to Paris and Spain with her daughters, Marseille with her husband. Far from fading out, her life couldn't be fuller. 'I spend weekends making jam and chocolate cakes. That's my relaxation,' she says. And there are the ballet classes. 'That's my favourite exercise. When I was about 13, I applied to the Royal Ballet and I didn't get in. I got into Elmhurst, another ballet school, and then decided not to go. But it is a thing I love doing. It's an exercise in humiliation, because I used to be quite good, and now I'm bad. So it's actually good for my sense of hubris.' And there's a lesson that she's keen to pass on to younger women. 'When I was in my 30s, I remember thinking I had to do things now; that I was going to run out of time and how could I possibly manage having kids and a career and there just weren't enough hours to do it all. I wish I could say to my younger self, 'It's OK, you don't need to rush. You're going to have years after your kids have left home when you can carry on working and be successful and reinvent yourself.'' Watch or listen to The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts COOL FOR KATTY AI: terrific or terrifying? Definitely terrific, probably terrifying. Your idea of holiday hell A cruise. Go-to karaoke song Hey Jude - it's my son's name. He hates the song, I love it. Spotify song of last year Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe. I've always been a huge Dylan fan. I've seen the movie four times already – Timothée Chalamet is perfect: cool and aloof. Film that makes you cry Casablanca. Best movie ever made. Cat or a dog person? With a name like Katty Kay I don't think I have much choice. Feline all the way. Word you most overuse Yesbut… all one word. Obnoxious, definitely. Astrology: believe it or bin it? I'm a Scorpio but honestly, bin it. I don't even know what time of day I was born and Anthony says that's key. Hero beauty product Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant. An instant skin brightener – I'm addicted. Best breakfast In my ideal world, a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant. I have a sweet tooth. Favourite swear word F**k. Speaks for itself. Picture director: Ester Malloy. Stylist: Nicola Rose. Make-up: Sonia Deveney using Sisley. Hair: Federico Ghezzi using Bumble and Bumble.
Daily Mail
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Ex-Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci makes lame dig at his old boss with bizarre outfit choice
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has made a lame dig at President Donald Trump by wearing a superhero T-shirt. The US military attacked three nuclear facilities across Iran on Sunday, thrusting the country into the Israel-Iran conflict. Trump stunned the world with the strikes and has called for a regime change in Iran, suggesting its current leaders are 'unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN.' Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, 'Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated,' noting the operation was an 'incredible and overwhelming success.' As US officials caution Iran that any attack on US targets would draw an unprecedented response, Tehran has begun preparing to close the Strait of Hormuz in a move that would throw global oil and gas markets into chaos. Scaramucci - who infamously spent just 10 days working for Trump in 2017 before he was fired - and his co-host, BBC presenter Katty Kay, recorded an emergency episode of their podcast 'The Rest Is Politics: US' to discuss the news. During the episode titled 'Trump's Taking Us To WAR,' the former communications director claimed his selection of a Batman shift symbolizes how he feels about the decision to strike Iran. 'I'm wearing my Batman shirt, Katty, intentionally. Remember, we want to be Superman,' Scaramucci said. 'We want to be truth justice and the American way. We want to be Superman. He's our normative myth, but Batman is who we really are. 'Okay, we're dark, we're ugly, we make secretive decisions, we do things that sometimes lead to unexpected.' Scaramucci doubled down on his comparison on his Instagram Stories, posting a video of himself in the gym explaining the meaning behind his shirt. 'I'm wearing Batman today because Superman is who we want to be, but Batman is who we are. We are dark s**t. So that's why I got the Batman on,' the former communications director said. Earlier this month, Scaramucci made a wild claim about California Gov. Gavin Newsom's political future amid his clash with Trump over the immigration LA riots. 'This whole fiasco could make Gavin president,' Scaramucci posted on X. 'Gavin has the guts to stand up to these wannabe authoritarians. I will give him that.' Scaramucci has supported Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, since his brief tenure in the first Trump White House. In April, Scaramucci predicted the demise of Trump's bromance with Elon Musk while speaking on Welcome to MAGAland podcast. 'I think Musk's a very smart guy... I don't think Musk will be speaking favorably of Donald Trump 12 months from now,' the former White House communication director said. 'I think Elon is between a rock and a hard place. He is in it now, the problem is when you get in it, all types of cognitive dissonance fill your brain with wanting you to stay in it. 'It is very hard to admit the mistake, and I was a Trump supporter, so I had to face it myself. I had to face my ego. I had to face my human frailty... I think Musk's gonna get there.'
BBC News
14-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- BBC News
Gretchen Rubin: One sentence can change your life
Let's face it: it's hard to be an adult. Even in the past, when times may have seemed easier or simpler, it was still incredibly hard. But try being an adult now, amid a tech revolution, a climate crisis, global political upheaval, economic chaos – you get the picture. So, when someone writes a book that offers to reveal the "secrets of adulthood" – it's worth a listen, especially when that person is Gretchen Rubin. Many of you may know her for her best-selling book, The Happiness Project, but in her latest, Secrets of Adulthood, she unpacks why single-sentence bits of advice are often the most useful at cutting through the noise of life's craziness. The book is chock-full of dozens of profound, yet digestible, bits of wisdom that just seem to make going through life a bit more simple: "The world looks different from a footpath than from a car." "Recognise that, like sleeping with a big dog in a small bed, things that are uncomfortable can also be comforting." Gretchen is such an insightful writer and we had a really thoughtful conversation about advice, life and what it really means to be an adult. If you have a few minutes, you should definitely watch or read some of our discussion below: Below is an excerpt from our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. Katty Kay: Gretchen, you've spent a lot of your career looking at things like happiness and habits. Now, you are looking at the Secrets of Adulthood. Do we ever understand the secret of adulthood? I mean, I'm now 60 and I feel I'm a long way off understanding the actual secrets of adulthood. Gretchen Rubin: No, I don't think that we ever do figure it out. But we do learn some lessons throughout life, usually the hard way. And I think that it's very easy to forget those lessons as soon as we've learned them. So, part of it is just reminding ourselves of everything that we've learned and have to keep learning over and over. KK: What is it about the format of a sentence or two that appeals to our brains or that sticks in our brains in a way that a paragraph or a chapter doesn't? GR: There's something called the fluency heuristic, which is the idea that the easier something is to remember, the stickier it is in our brains. And this is why things like alliteration or rhyme often are very powerful. Like 'If it bleeds, it leads', right? I'm sure you've heard that as a journalist. That sticks in the mind better than 'negative news is more likely to attract people's attention than positive news'. Lytton Strachey said that the truest test of a man's intelligence is his ability to make a summary. There is such a discipline in trying to express yourself very, very briefly. A lot of times, my thinking got much clearer when I tried to say it in a very, very short way. KK: We are living in these rather extraordinary, overwhelming times, both technologically, politically, geopolitically, economically. Do you think that is a time when people want aphorisms more? GR: People are always searching for insight and wisdom. I think it's a question of the readiness of the person to hear it. One of my aphorisms is 'it always seems like times are hard.' There's a wonderful anecdote about Michelangelo, who, after he painted the Sistine Chapel, wrote to his father and was like, well, 'the pope is very pleased with my work, but, you know, times are really hard for an artist like me.' And he was living in the High Renaissance, which is considered to be like the high point of Western art. But even he was like, 'Man these are tough times!' That's not to say that we are not in tough times; I think we are. But I'm just saying it's not unusual to feel like you are in tough times. KK: Was this book the culmination of years of experience and failures and ups and downs? Could you have written it when you were 30? GR: I think I needed time and experience to see these things. With the Secrets of Adulthood, a lot of them are just one sentence or two, but for each of them, there is a story behind them. I could tell you, 'Oh, that's that story that's haunted me for years, or that's this paradox that's always puzzled me that I finally figured out.' There's a proverb that [goes], 'When the student is ready, the teacher appears.' I think we've all had that experience where you read a single line and suddenly you see the way forward, or your own thinking is illuminated or something that you kind of vaguely understood is crystallised. And I love it when I read something like that. So, I've been collecting these for years. I couldn't have sat down to write this. They had to come to me over time. KK: Let me give you my non-secrets of my adulthood, which is still a mess, so if you could do my therapy for me – GR: My sister calls me a happiness bully, because if I think there's a way I can make you happier, I can get very insistent. So, OK, bring it on! KK: Excellent. So, I get distracted a lot. This morning, I found myself listening to one of your interviews, flicking through Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, all whilst listening to a podcast. None of this is effective. I know this. I'm a reasonably sensible, intelligent adult. I know that's a crap way to spend my time. What's the way to fix that? GR: The one that comes to mind is the secret of adulthood, which is 'working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.' So, if you find yourself multitasking as a way to avoid doing something that would be very difficult and is probably your real priority. As somebody who writes nonfiction, I'm always like, 'I need to research that.' And research is great, but if I find myself going down some deep rabbit hole of information just because I'm interested, I often stop and say, 'OK, this might be valuable, but is it a good use of my time right now? Am I actually working on what my project is right now?' And often the answer is no, it is not. KK: OK, I'm gonna repeat one of your own lines back to you, one of which I loved and helped me this morning. So, when I was stupidly multitasking, I thought of this one: 'If you don't know what to do with yourself, go outside or go to sleep.' And I went and walked around the block and you were right! GR: Yes, it works, right? KK: I was almost kind of annoyed at how well it worked! But there's another one: 'It's easier to notice the exceptional than the familiar. So, to observe the obvious requires intense attention.' Talk me through that one a little bit. What were you thinking of? GR: I'm always better off when I'm idiosyncratic. So, for instance, I'm one of these super all-or-nothing people. I can do something never or I can do it all the time, but I can't do it sometimes or just a little bit. I have a sweet tooth and people kept saying, 'Well, be moderate, follow the 80-20 rule. Just have half a brownie. Don't demonise certain foods.' And then I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to just try giving it up altogether.' And for me – and it turns out for a small number of people – it was easier to have none of something that is a strong temptation. Something that was working very well for other people did not work for me. And so instead of thinking, 'What's wrong with me?' I thought that maybe, there's a different way for me. --
BBC News
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'Food is a language everyone understands': Yotam Ottolenghi on how cuisine connects people
The famed chef and author tells the BBC's Katty Kay that it was finding academia too 'esoteric' that led him to seek out a simpler path: to help the world simplify its food. Yotam Ottolenghi's singular style of cooking has been embraced across the globe. Focusing on simple ingredients and treating food as a way to bring friends and family together, he's become a renowned chef, a best-selling author and a touchstone for home cooks looking to incorporate global flavours into their everyday rotations. The chef, father and former philosophy student explains to BBC special correspondent Katty Kay, in her interview series Influential, that having parents who cooked helped shape his path. However, he says that it was the sense of belonging that came with cooking – not family expectations – that truly drew him in. "There was a quiet expectation that I would probably become an academic," he says. "I don't remember having a conversation, which must have happened. 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' I don't remember that." His parents were both in education – his father, Michael, was a chemistry professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University – but Ottolenghi notes that his folks both had experience in the kitchen. "Food was very important. We had good ingredients, good cooking. Both my parents were good cooks," he says. "My father used to cook a lot because he worked more flexible hours. My mother was a head teacher at school [...] She also cooked but he cooked even more." The 56-year-old chef – who has authored 11 cookbooks – tells Kay that rather than having an epiphany about his future path, he saw the kitchen as a space for curiosity and play, something that he's now passed onto his own children. "My kids – I've got a 9 year old [and an] 11 year old – they play, you know?" he says. "They go in the kitchen and they make an omelette and this and that. I call it cooking as play. So, I used to do a bit of that but I wasn't obsessive about cooking." Before making his name in the culinary world, Ottolenghi dabbled in philosophy but found the subject matter too isolating and "esoteric". "The conversation was being held amongst a group of, like, four people, you know like groundbreaking stuff but actually nobody was participating," he said of his time in university, where he tackled topics like the meaning of photography and what images mean to their viewers. Instead of that very specialised field, he turned his focus to something simpler, literally. In 2018, following the success of his eponymous Notting Hill café and shop, Ottolenghi published his fifth cookbook, Simple, distilling all the techniques and preparations that he'd become known for into something accessible and approachable. "Food is a language that everybody understands," he says. What surprised him about that, however, was that the books started to eclipse the food. "Rather than just being a book to sell and share, the publishing arm of Ottolenghi became the dog wagging the tail in this respect. The books became the main thing, almost." The books were a way for fans of the restaurant and of Ottolenghi's pared-down, flavour-forward recipes to access that world at home. He tells Kay that he hopes to be part of a movement to take cooking from being a chore into something healing and restorative. "Home-style cooking and family-style serving are way more popular now than they used to be. I really put that down to, first of all, cost of living, but also Covid. In that moment, we understood that actually food should be healing rather than just one of all other activities that we do all day long that push us." More like this:• Misty Copeland is 'not scared' to face a career beyond dance• Ina Garten on her internet appeal: 'Young people don't have mom in the kitchen'• Entrepreneur Jane Wurwand on why 'high-touch will overshadow high-tech' in business Fans soon saw the changes in his books, shifting from the exact recipes served at his restaurants to something less haute cuisine and more streamlined, boasting titles like Simple, Plenty and his latest, Comfort. "I think since Simple, I have been spending more of my time thinking, 'What does it actually mean to cook this recipe?' You know, 'When do I cook – when does one cook it? How much effort goes into it?'" he says. "Funnily, from a grand old age talking to younger chefs, I say to them, 'Is someone actually going to cook this?' I want people to cook my food." That pared-down approach has even turned "Ottolenghi" into an adjective – used to describe food that offers high impact with few ingredients and straightforward techniques. He remains humble, brushing off the distinction and putting the focus back on his desire to make cooking comforting. "Food really is one of those activities that shouldn't induce anxiety. It's as simple as that," he says. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
