Noor Murad – Food for Thought
For followers of the indomitable Yotam Ottolenghi, a wild goose chase around shops to hunt for obscure pots of black garlic, a packet of moghrabieh or a jar of za’atar will be a familiar frenzy. His fans, myself included, will go to extreme lengths to honour the British-Israeli chef, especially when the result is a chorus of “oooo’s” when you present guests with a sumptuous spread of cauliflower dripping in pomegranate molasses and plates of grilled vegetables chilled by tangy labneh and adorned with sizzled chickpeas.
Then again, if it’s mid-week and you are time-starved and overworked, the last thing you want to do is spend your free time looking for a spice list longer than your arm. In that case, look no further than the latest book Ottolenghi Test Kitchen Shelf Love: Recipes to Unlock the Secrets of Your Pantry, Fridge and Freezer. The book “packs all the punch and edge” you expect from an Ottolenghi recipe, but it comes with the flexibility of using what you already have. But the brains behind the first in the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen (OTK) series is not only the Ottolenghi we all know and break the budget for but also the head of OTK, the formidable Noor Murad.
Born to a Bahraini father and English mother, Murad was raised in a household that prized a bowl of hummus as much as it did a spaghetti bolognese. Growing up in Bahrain, Murad never even considered becoming a chef as it simply wasn’t the “done” thing, but she couldn’t fight the calling. “When I was around 16, I said to my parents that I was thinking about getting into cooking,” a sprightly Murad tells me over the phone. “My dad said to me, ‘Alright, you’re a straight-A student, you can get a summer job in a hotel, and if you still like it, we can have a serious conversation.'” Unsurprisingly, Murad became enchanted with the seductive madness of the kitchen. “It was chaos! I loved it!” she proclaims. “I knew this was the path I wanted. My dad’s plan backfired, but ironically he is my biggest cheerleader now.”
Murad then worked for a German catering company at the Formula 1 track in Bahrain before leaving for New York, where she studied at the CIA (The Culinary Institute of America) for three “intense” years. During her time there she learnt the nuts-and-bolts of the culinary world, everything from restaurant operations to accounting, French techniques to food writing. “It was all a bit of a shock,” she admits. “I grew up in this small country and was very shy, quiet and timid. I remember arriving in New York and seeing how confident and opinionated everyone was, and I felt entirely out of place. I was used to making dishes with rice, chickpeas and Indian spices and all of a sudden, I had to brunoise a carrot and make consommé.”
“I remember thinking: how can I do this? And there were times I didn’t think I could. But, after those three years, I came out of my shell and into myself. I developed that New York style of attitude where I felt I could do anything and everything.”
After an internship in Hawaii and a job in New York’s meat-packing district, Murad returned to Bahrain for over half a decade. “I struggled during that period as there simply wasn’t much opportunity for growth there,” she explains. “I started up my own catering company, but I never felt fulfilled. I love Bahrain, but I felt stagnant.” The combination of a failed marriage to her high-school sweetheart and the claustrophobia of the small country was enough to send Murad packing.
“When I was 27, everything fell apart, and I thought that’s it, I’m leaving. I remember saying if I were to go anywhere, it would have to go to work at Ottolenghi. I had all the books, and worshipped his book Jerusalem. So, I sent an email with a CV and didn’t even expect a response, but at that point, everything felt messed up so I figured what do I have to lose.”
Murad had nothing to lose and everything to gain as she would be landed her dream job working in the kitchen of Ottolenghi Spitalfields under the watchful eye of head chef Salam. “He took me under his wing. When I went back to Bahrain, that confident ‘New York Noor’ went away and Salam brought it back.”
After two years working at Spitalfields, an opening to work in the test kitchen fell into Murad’s lap, and she finally felt, “for the first time in a long time”, it was where she belonged. Her first project would be to work on Falastin – a tour of Palestinian cooking today from Ottolenghi’s restaurants’ executive chef and partner Sami Tammi. “I loved working on that book as I had never worked on one before,” Murad says.
“It was easy for me to come up with the recipes like the chicken shawarma pie, the aubergine bake and the halwa sticky toffee pudding as it was flavours and pairings I understood.” Murad then worked on the book Flavour, where she added a Middle Eastern twist to a range of vegetarian-led dishes. She is particularly proud of her recipe for iceberg salad with burnt aubergine cream – a nod to years spent in New York and Bahrain.
Wherever she is, and whatever book she puts her pen to, it seems New York, Bahrain and London are the main characters in Murad’s culinary narrative. “Bahrain is so unique as it used to be a trading point in the gulf, and it used to be part of Persia, so it’s really influenced by Persian flavours like black limes, tamarinds and sour, bitter flavours. You also have the Indian spices because of the spice trade, so everything is heavily spiced with turmeric, ginger and chilli,” she explains. “And then, my mum is English, and so she used to make a lot of traditional recipes like shepherd’s pie and so usually my recipes are those cultures mixed. Really I’d describe myself as an ‘east-meets-west’ type of cook.”
Then, of course, the pandemic struck, and it derailed offices, classrooms, and kitchens around the world. Murad retreated back to Bahrain, Ottolenghi went to Ireland, and the rest of the OTK team dispersed themselves worldwide. OTK went online and started sharing recipes that were store-cupboard friendly, offering substitutions for those who didn’t want to queue for an hour in the biting cold for a tube of date molasses. “It was a very different way to how we usually present our recipe,” she says, “it was a lot more personable. In turn, people became very attached to OTK.”
Ottolenghi and Murad then discussed that “store-cupboard cooking with minimum effort, and maximum flavour” could be the angle for their first book. Typically, Tara Wigley is the co-author behind popular Ottolenghi books like Simple and Falastin, but Shelf Love was Murad’s first time flexing her writing muscles. “It all came quite naturally. Once we had the concepts and divided the chapters into different parts of the kitchen (freezer, fridge, veg box), I felt I was writing everything from the heart. I wanted people to feel invited into it, to be a part of OTK. Also, it’s a very forgiving book. There are a lot of ‘Make it your own’ and ‘Don’t have this? Try this’ boxes.”
In contrast to Ottolenghi’s previous books, often centrepieces of pristine metropolitan kitchens, Shelf Love feels more like a notebook to scribble and rub your sumac-stained fingers all over. “There’s an avid Ottolenghi following, but we wanted this book to expand to a younger audience,” claims Murad. “For someone starting at university or beginning to cook, we wanted to create a book that wasn’t so intimidating.”
Within the pink and orange fluorescent notebook are pages and pages of mouth-watering recipes. Examples include the “mascot” recipe of tandoori confit chickpeas, meatier recipes of celebration rice with chicken, lamb and buttered pine nuts and beef rib with fig and butterbean, a vegetarian recipe for toad-in-the-hole as well as a sweeter recipe of skillet berries, bread and browned butter. The book will encourage you to head for the back of your pantry, dust off your abandoned packet of semolina flour and jar of beans, and take to the helm of your kitchen stove.
While Shelf Love focuses on stripping out your pantries, the next book in the OTK series will be about piling them back up again. “It will focus on a mix-and-match approach with condiments,” says Noor. “I’m also so excited for this one as it’s a reflection of the way I cook, which is mainly vegetable led.” The next book is due to be released in Autumn 2022.
For Noor Murad’s last ever supper, she picks a starter of “big, warm chickpeas cooked in a spicy broth with bread to mop it all up.” For her main course, a “Maroubra”, a traditional Bahraini dish of beaten rice with chicken thigh, green lentils and tomato paste, garlic and ginger. For dessert, her “mums walnut cake” and to drink, “a black lime tea with fresh lemon juice and honey.”
“OTK seems to bring a lot of joy to people. Good food really does elevate one’s mood, and if you can make a great meal to share and enjoy that is a minimum effort with maximum flavour and who wouldn’t want that sort of comfort?”
Noor Murad’s recipe for Confit tandoori chickpeas
These chickpeas have had their fair share of Insta fame for a multitude of reasons. The first being that the simplicity of the dish makes it really quite attractive: throw everything into a pan and pop it into the oven, leaving it to its own devices (and you to yours). The second being that the slow-cooking the chickpeas in oil without added liquid makes them super soft, allowing all the aromatics to break down into the oil. Lastly, this dish can easily be made ahead and served later; it only imposes with time. Swap out Greek yoghurt with a non-dairy alternative for a completely vegan meal, and serve with rice.
Ingredients (serves 4)
2 tins of chickpeas (800g), drained (480g)
11 garlic cloves, peeled, 10 left whole and 1 crushed
30g fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
400g datterini or regular cherry tomatoes
3 red chillies, mild or spicy, a slit cut down their length
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp cumin seeds, roughly crushed with a pestle and mortar
2 tsp coriander seeds, roughly crushed with a pestle and mortar
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp chilli flakes
2 tsp red Kashmiri chilli powder
1 tsp caster sugar
200ml olive oil
180g Greek-style yoghurt
15g picked mint leaves
30g fresh coriander, roughly chopped
2-3 limes, juiced to get 1bsp and the rest cut into wedges to serve
Salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 150C fan
Put the chickpeas, whole garlic cloves, ginger, tomatoes, chillies, tomato paste, spices, sugar, oil and 1 teaspoon of salt into a large sauté pan, for which you have a lid, and mix everything together to combine. Cover with the lid, transfer to the oven and cook for 75 minutes, stirring halfway through, until the aromatics have softened and the tomatoes have nicely broken down
Meanwhile, put the yoghurt, mint, fresh coriander, lime juice, crushed garlic and ¼ teaspoon of salt into a food processor and blitz until smooth and the herbs are finely chopped
Serve the chickpeas directly from the pan, with the yoghurt and lime wedges alongside