Yotam Ottolenghi, who burst onto the American scene out of almost nowhere a few years ago, is back. He has a new cookbook, Plenty More, and is touring the country.

Ottolenghi, who has four restaurants in London, was virtually unknown in this country when his first book, Plenty, was published. A vibrantly flavored vegetarian cookbook based on the flavors of the Middle East, it was a runaway bestseller (to date it has more than 500 reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of 4 1/2 out of 5 stars).

He followed that up with the even-more popular Jerusalem. Ottolenghi, who was raised in a Jewish family in that city, co-wrote the book with his business partner Sami Tamimi, who was raised in a Palestinian family only a few miles away.

His newest book is Plenty More, another collection of vegetarian recipes.

I interviewed him for Live Talks LA in front of a crowd of almost 500 of his fans at All Saints Church in Beverly Hills. The full video podcast of that talk will be available soon on iTunes, but until then, here are seven takeaway moments, edited and abridged.

On the success of Plenty.

Plenty came at a time when many people were deciding to begin to cook more vegetables, and everybody knows how bad vegetarian food used to be. And also how exclusive the vegetarian movement was If youre not one of us, youre not anything. I think the vegetarian movement wasnt doing itself any favors by this attitude. Im happy to say that things have become more relaxed. A lot of people have realized that youre not going to get more people to eat more vegetables if you insist that they become exclusively vegetarian or if youre cooking food that is [vegetarian because it is] just void of something. That kind of attitude is all about self-denial and I dont think self-denial is very constructive or attractive.

On the Ottolenghi effect

Im a little bit a victim of my own success, in a sense. When I cook something that is slightly less, uh, noisy, I give it to tasters and they say, Yes, that is quite good, but it is not an Ottolenghi. We all know what it means. It means that there is a certain set of expectations that you need surprise in an Ottolenghi dish, there are layers of flavor that kind of come and go in the eating experience. And that is difficult sometimes. I made a really delicious pea soup a few months ago and we were tasting it and they said it was brilliant, its got this great color from the process, and it was really nice and fresh, but it didnt have that something that really distinguished it from other pea soups. We found a way around that, we made some specially flavored crumbs. But you know, thats just the way it is. There is a certain set of expectations and I go around trying to meet them.

On the visual presentation of the food in his books.

More:
Ottolenghi on vegetarian cooking, the Middle East, feeding a 2-year-old