Bright and breezy: Yotam Ottolenghi on simple summer entertaining

This year 22 February happened twice for me. I crossed the international date line on a flight from Auckland to San Francisco during my Crowd Pleaser tour — four weeks of travelling, cooking and talking about food across Asia, Australia, New Zealand and North America — and woke up as if it were still yesterday.

The seasonal signals that normally tell you what to eat felt scrambled: I was hungry, but unsure what for. To recalibrate I took a train to Oakland and spent the afternoon with my friend Samin Nosrat. There was banana bread, coffee in the garden, a walk around the neighbourhood and, for dinner, chips and a shop‑bought rotisserie chicken pulled into pieces.

Samin opened her fridge of dressings — vinaigrette, lemon and miso, tahini and herb‑based, something yoghurty — and we dressed leaves, sat down and ate. Samin writes in Good Things about attention: time and presence are the real gifts of cooking for someone. Summer asks you to unlearn the winter instinct to prove your love through labour.

yotam ottolenghi, samin nosrat, summer entertaining, rotisserie chicken, banana bread, good things, crowd pleaser, oakland, vinaigrette, dressings