A couple of years after opening the Ottolenghi flagship in Islington, a neighborhood in North London, in 2004, The Guardian [...] approached him to write a weekly vegetarian column. The request gave him pause. “I didn’t want to be known as ‘the vegetarian chef,’ ” he says, “but I did want that column.” He did it, and well, but often angered vegetarians when he made suggestions like “serve this with a lamb steak.”

Bittman on Yottom Ottolenghi in this week’s Times Magazine. A lot of the recipes from his column are available at The Guardian’s website, but I still want the beautiful book.