Oded Oren - Oren: A Personal Collection of Recipes and Stories From Tel Aviv

My love for food started at an early age; I grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel, in an Ashkenazi Jewish family. Ashkenazi Jews are from Central and Eastern Europe, and the food culture is fascinating, with many incredible dishes, but as I got older and experienced the many different food cultures that exist in Tel Aviv, I found myself more drawn to other styles of cooking. Through friends and family, I was introduced to Iraqi, Moroccan, Tunisian and Libyan dishes that have continued to influence the food I create today. As well as this home cooking, I used to love going out to eat. Visiting different restaurants with my dad was a big part of my childhood; sometimes we would go to Kerem HaTeimanim, a district where you can get traditional homestyle Yemenite food a lot of which was cooked in huge pots over a kerosene light, which is essentially a candle, overnight. The smell was insane so fragrant and intense; huge pots of rich bone broth filled with offal, grains and beans. Other times we would go to a famous steakhouse called Mi va Mi and sit at the counter in front of an open charcoal grill. They served chopped salad made in front of you, drizzled with copious amounts of tahini, and grilled pork neck stuffed into warm pita.

After I finished my education at the age of eighteen, I had the opportunity for some headspace to think about what I wanted to do next. I quite quickly realised that I wanted to cook for a living. I attended the Tadmor culinary school, which was the only cookery school in Israel back then. At the time, the style of food that was popular in restaurants was very different to the kind of food I cook today; there was a lot of classic French and European cooking. Although my time at the school gave me the fundamentals of cooking and taught me the essential elements of working in a professional kitchen, this style of food didnt speak to me in the same way as the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern foods Id loved as a kid. I started working in kitchens immediately, working in a small restaurant in Paris for a year. It was a demanding job of gruelling fifteen-hour days. Although it was an incredible experience to find myself fully immersed in a real French restaurant kitchen, in the end I decided to return to Israel.

I worked in various restaurants in Tel Aviv, gaining experience and learning all the time. It didnt matter to me which kitchen I was in, or which restaurant I wanted to absorb all of the knowledge and skill around me, picking up new techniques and discovering how I liked to cook as I went along. It was the food that mattered as always, it was my safe place, and there was something therapeutic about just focusing on the food, wherever I was.

When I was about twenty-six, I started working at Turkiz, a renowned restaurant in Tel Aviv. I began as a line cook, then graduated to a sous-chef position, and after about eighteen months I became head chef. I was very young, and it was a big responsibility: the restaurant was well-known, and I was in charge of a big kitchen serving 200 covers. This was when I properly started to explore and develop my own style. It wasnt easy, but I relished the challenge and worked very hard. Eventually, though, I knew I needed to make a big change. So, in 2011, after eight years at Turkiz, I decided to move to the UK.

I started working in a couple of restaurants to get a feel for the food scene. I needed a break from the intensity of a professional kitchen, so decided to take on private cheffing work and consultancy for a while, but ultimately I missed the energy of a restaurant. I began doing a few pop-ups, cooking in cafs and other small venues and then something clicked. This wasnt about money or recognition: it was about connecting to the dishes that had first captured my imagination as a child and being able to share the experience with others. I realised that opening my own place was the way to do it it would give me the chance to connect, build a community and see people eating my food. I kept on with the pop-up gigs, and then I was invited to be a guest chef at a place called Louie Louie in Camberwell, South London. For six months, I travelled there every day from east London. We got a fantastic review in the Guardian from food critic Jay Rayner, and that was a huge boost; its unusual for a pop-up to get this kind of national press attention, so I knew I was on the right track.

The food that has always spoken to me, and the food that I cook today, is simple, bold, ingredients-focused and fresh. Its the food from my home; the food that I grew up with. Id never thought it would be special enough to serve in a restaurant, but my mentality was evolving. I wasnt a young chef trying to prove something and cook complex, fancy dishes: I just wanted to make real, genuine and tasty food; to return to the basics but do it better.

I opened Oren in 2019 which was possibly the worst timing in restaurant history, as we had about four or five months of trade before the first COVID lockdown. But, in that brief time, we had a great response: the restaurant filled up, and the feedback was great. It was a very difficult period, but the positive Ive taken from it was that we were able to really connect to the community around us. And, as it always has been for me, food once again became a place of safety and comfort, and we were able to offer others the reassurance and joy of delicious food during such an uncertain and challenging time. In a way, the pandemic made the restaurant what it is today a place for sharing and connection.

The dishes in this book are friendly, easy and accessible , to name a few and there are no intimidating techniques or hard-to-find ingredients.

Thats really the joy of food, for me, and now I want to share some of these recipes with you. The dishes in this book are friendly, easy and accessible there are no intimidating techniques or hard-to-find ingredients. Some of them have been on the menu at the restaurant or at my pop-ups for years; some of them are dishes I cook at home for family and friends; some of them featured on the takeaway menus we developed during lockdown. The most important thing and Ill say it again and again throughout the book is to always try and source the best possible fresh produce you can. This style of cooking is all about the ingredients, so you need to start with the best: fresh, in season and full of flavour.

I hope these recipes will inspire you, and that you too will find a way to connect with others through sharing the joy of simple, fresh, delicious food.

The recipes in this chapter are things that stay on the table for the duration of a meal. They are almost like condiments they can be eaten with bread, or used to enhance the flavours of other dishes; burnt chilli harissa is amazing smeared on warm pita then piled with lamb and beef kebabs and a dollop of tahini.

You can make all of these dishes in advance and keep them in the refrigerator for a few days, so they can last across several meals and be at the ready to make your table feel that bit more abundant.