“Vegetables are on the cutting edge of cuisine”, Yotam Ottolenghi in Conversations at La Pedrera

As part of ‘Conversations at La Pedrera’ series, a meeting between the chef and gastronome Yotam Ottolenghi (Jerusalem, 1968) and Toni Massanés, director of the Alícia Foundation. The two gastronomes spoke last evening at the La Pedrera’s auditorium on trends, creativity in cooking, the Mediterranean diet, flexitarianism and the evolution of diet.

Ottolenghi is a media phenomenon in British cooking for many reasons, primarily because he offers the middle class flavourful, creative and, most importantly, healthy cuisine. "Vegetables are on the cutting edge of cuisine. You don't have to stop eating meat to increase vegetables. My goal is to bring vegetables’ colour to the dish”, the chef with Jewish roots told Massanés. 

One of his interests is the evolution of the world's diet, particularly in reference to children today: "I hope that 30 years from now people will be eating well, better than people today do, and that they don’t only eat processed foods and have a varied diet. And most importantly, that they can afford it.” The challenges of gastronomy today include “being appealing and affordable for everyone”. 

The Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation promotes cultural activities that foster the arts and thinking and seek to reflect to work for a fairer society. 
With Conversations at La Pedrera series, the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation seeks to stimulate critical thinking by giving a voice to world-class intellectuals from different fields of culture, society or science and sharing their career and vision of today's world. This is the eighth edition of the series, which has been held since 2011 in conjunction with Arcàdia. Personalities the likes of Zygmunt Bauman, Yasmina Reza, Tom Wolfe, John Eliot Gardiner, Zadie Smith, Evgeny Morozov and John Lanchester have participated in Conversations at La Pedrera.