In conversation with Adam Liaw, the chef discusses cultural appropriation of food, sustainability and getting his kids to eat what he cooks

“Who owns the recipe?”

This was one of the questions Yotam Ottolenghi and Adam Liaw considered on Tuesday night. The chef and the cook, both bestselling authors, were in conversation as part of An Evening with Ottolenghi at the Sydney Opera House.

Cultural appropriation of food is something Ottolenghi was asked about while touring the US in October – and it’s a query he finds difficult to respond to.

The Israeli-British chef, who often collaborates with the Palestinian-British chef Sami Tamimi, has given it plenty of thought because the dishes he creates are Middle Eastern-inspired.

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“[Cultural appropriation] deals with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and who owns recipes, and who started them. In that conflict it’s a serious question because people’s sense of self is connected with food – because they have very little else. But I find this really, really difficult because I don’t know how to answer these questions in the American context. Is it OK for a white person to cook Mexican food? How can I answer this question?”

Liaw said he also found the idea of cultural appropriation of food tricky. “Food is one of the great unifiers,” he said. “Before you speak someone’s language, before you understand their history, before you walk a mile in their shoes, you eat the same food that person eats, and get some insight into how their life works, the way their culture works. So I don’t really believe in cultural appropriation in foods because it’s such a wonderful window into other aspects of the multicultural societies that we live in.”

People would have these expectations that my kids would have raw preserved lemon for breakfast. That's just not the case Yotam Ottolenghi

Ottolenghi is touring Australia, talking about his latest cookbook, Simple. The appreciative Opera House audience was the largest the popular chef has faced, and the pair’s hour-long discussion ran the gamut from food photography, Ottolenghi’s grandmother’s secret Mossad past and the three ingredients he’d want if stranded on a desert island (lemon, flour and olive oil, apparently).

He returned to the contradictions that cooking can often expose, pointing out that Palestinians and Jews often eat the same food yet remain divided.

“They enjoy the same kind of level of spicing and the same way of eating – the informality, the chickpeas, the tahini, the olive oil, the olives. It’s insane that they can actually share that same kind of intimacy around food and they can’t have the same conversation with each other.”

He added: “It’s tragic that we are so good at adapting ourselves into different cuisines and enjoying and being super international, and not being able to apply the same level of tolerance to the actual people that cook them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Mixing food with guilt is the worst combination because food is all about pleasure.’ Photograph: Ken Leanfore/Sydney Opera House

Simple is Ottolenghi’s sixth cookbook, and focuses on quick and easy recipes. He says his approach to creating new recipes has evolved since his earlier cookbooks, such as Plenty and Jerusalem. Considerations like sustainability are now often top of mind. “It’s never been my first consideration, because for me it’s all about the flavour, but the next consideration would be all those issues because I don’t operate in a vacuum.”

It’s why he doesn’t publish many fish recipes, either in his cookbooks or in his regular Guardian column: “Especially in the UK, the amount of sustainable, affordable fish is really minimal. In our restaurants we do the same, so I’m very aware of that conversation.”

Many of his books champion vegetables – which he says he’s obsessed with – but don’t expect him to push people to eat them more often. “I really have an aversion to push people to do anything. I don’t like people telling me what to eat and I don’t like to tell people what to eat.”

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He believes many people are confused about what to eat because the lists of food we should and shouldn’t eat is ever-changing. “If someone hears that ... they have to eat certain vegetables or certain amount of vegetable and they feel like something else, then they start feeling guilty. Mixing food with guilt is the worst combination because food is all about pleasure. It’s really easy to get into this cycle so I just think vegetables are wonderful and people can choose whether to eat or not to eat them.”

The audience was delighted to discover that Ottolenghi sometimes struggles to get his two young sons to eat the food he prepares for them. “People would have these expectations that my kids would have raw preserved lemon for breakfast. That is just not the case.”

He described them as normal children with “unpredictable tastes”. “They learn the word ‘any more’ very early on, and ‘I don’t like this any more’ [comes up] when you serve] something you have fed them a million times. [They say] ‘I don’t like prawns any more.’ Since when?”

He does have one fallback dish, which he thinks will work for most parents: “My comfort food is their comfort food – and that’s mejadra rice with lentils and fried onions … People should try that.”