It’s no secret that Sabrina Ghayour’s mother doesn’t cook. But she is the reason the Anglo-Persian chef loves food. 

“Mum let me try things in the kitchen,” says Ghayour. “Nothing I did or made was wrong. She just told me to be careful with the knives and left me to my own devices.” Now the author of eight cookbooks, including this year’s Persiana Easy, credits her mother’s hands-off encouragement with giving her the confidence to cook.

Ghayour was born in Tehran in 1977 and came to the UK with her mother on the eve of the Iranian revolution, aged two. They settled in west London and, though not a cook, her mother – who goes by Mama G – delighted in introducing Sabrina to food: mortadella and salumi from nearby delis, patisserie from local bakeries, wontons from a Chinese grocery shop in Earl’s Court, not to mention Ken Hom and Madhur Jaffrey on TV. Throughout her childhood, she tinkered in the kitchen, but Ghayour went on to work in marketing at a City firm and, for a while, food was a hobby. 

It wasn’t until she lost her job in 2011 that cooking took on a more serious complexion. Laden with debt she puts down to “holidays and handbags”, she started holding supper clubs in London, producing her take on food from the Middle East, such as lamb and sour cherry meatballs or citrus-spiced almond tart. The book deal for Persiana, published in 2014, came via a supper club guest and changed everything. With its rose-petal-strewn cover and achievable Middle Eastern-inspired recipes, the book tapped into the mores of the foodies of the time – their cupboards freshly stocked with the pomegranate molasses and tahini that had only recently become available in British supermarkets. It quickly became a bestseller.

Eleven years on and Persiana Easy, Ghayour’s eighth book, promises “really simple food” for the sometimes stretched, often time-poor households of today. Ghayour resists attributing her recipes to any one cuisine – “Let’s not label it! Let’s just know that it’s delicious and get it on the table” – but making the flavours of a Middle Eastern heritage accessible to British cooks is a clear theme, as is the mission to arm readers with ideas and tools to get a good meal on the table quickly. 

One such recipe is a baharat and tomato chicken traybake, in which chicken thighs, potatoes and tomatoes are roasted in a seasoned marinade of olive oil, lemon and baharat (“spices” in Arabic) – the smoky-sweet Levantine blend of black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin and paprika, although the spices and quantities can vary. While baharat is readily available in shops, Ghayour isn’t precious about which spice blend you use – she uses garam masala, ras el hanout and Iranian advieh interchangeably. “It could even be curry powder,” she says, an ingredient she wishes people used more – with 10 to 12 “really respectable spices”, it’s an adaptable shortcut to flavour across a spectrum of recipes. 

It was Covid that made Ghayour relax about the ingredients she used. In the scrum to get toilet paper, she says, the likes of fancy spices were deprioritised. How has her cooking changed since the pandemic? “I’m a lot more thrifty,” she says. “Now I buy cheap spaghetti and own-brand mayo, I try to use fewer things, and I’ve stopped chucking pomegranate on things unnecessarily.”  

The pandemic also brought Stephen, now Ghayour’s husband, and his two children into her life – and a move to North Yorkshire. Cooking for a family “put a rocket under me to make sure things were simplified,” she says, and pushed her into new territory; she has got the kids involved in the kitchen (for example, rolling koftas) and modified her recipes to palates less used to spice. 

She might not have had a mum who cooked, but she’s a stepmum who does. “They hated my food six years ago,” she says, “but now they love meatballs, or anything kebab, or a chicken traybake. These are the winning recipes in my house.” 

Interview by Mina Holland

Serves 4-6 

Preheat the oven to 200C (400F), 180C fan, Gas Mark 6.

Add the potatoes, chicken thighs, onions, baby tomatoes and green pepper to a large ovenproof dish, then pour in the canned tomatoes.

Dissolve the tomato puree in the boiling water in a jug, add the remaining marinade ingredients and stir to combine. Pour over the chicken and vegetables and mix well with your hands until everything is evenly coated.

Roast for 30 minutes, basting as best you can halfway through, then increase the oven temperature to 220C (425F), 200C fan, Gas Mark 7, and continue cooking for a final 15 minutes until cooked through. Serve immediately.

Persiana Easy by Sabrina Ghayour is published by Mitchell Beazley