Sabrina Ghayour

Sabrina Ghayour shares recipes for mango, lime and chilli chicken, crispy oven-baked latke and sticky-glazed spring onions with sesame. The chicken is marinated with mango chutney, yoghurt, chilli sauce, turmeric, paprika and lime before being traybaked. The latke achieves crispness without frying by thoroughly squeezing moisture from grated potatoes and baking them with oil, while the spring onions are roasted and finished with an apricot, lemon and pepper glaze. The recipes are adapted from Ghayour’s cookbook Persiana One.

Sabrina Ghayour presents recipes for lamb kofta patties served with yoghurt, burnt orange, honey and rose harissa, alongside a smoky aubergine salad with feta and pickled chillies. She emphasizes their suitability for family meals, entertaining and shared Middle Eastern-style feasts, and provides detailed ingredients and cooking instructions for both dishes. The recipes are adapted from her cookbook Persiana Easy.

Sabrina Ghayour presents two vegetarian Christmas recipes: beetroot, feta and chestnut pastry puffs, and harissa, honey and cumin Brussels sprouts. Both recipes include vegan adaptations, while the puffs can be prepared ahead and frozen. Fiona Beckett recommends an affordable Chilean Pinot Noir to accompany the dishes.

Sabrina Ghayour presents four vegetarian Persian-inspired snack recipes: turmeric, spinach and sweet potato fritters; cucumber and feta bruschetta; spiced buttermilk fried tomatoes; and a spiced crudité platter with cumin hummus. The recipes combine vegetables, herbs, spices, dairy and chickpeas, with detailed preparation and frying instructions for serving as light bites or snacks.

Sabrina Ghayour taste-tests supermarket crisps, houmous, vegetable crisps, guacamole, tortilla chips and salsa. Asda’s hand-cooked vegetable crisps receive the top rating, while Asda’s lightly salted tortilla chips are named the best tortilla option. Aldi’s ready salted crisps also perform strongly. Several products are criticized for excessive oil, sugar, acidity, salt, or poor textures, with Lidl and Iceland’s houmous and guacamole receiving especially harsh reviews.

Six aubergine recipes draw on Japanese, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Indian and Chinese cooking traditions. The collection includes sweet miso aubergine, aubergine and pomegranate salad, semolina-crusted aubergines with honey, aubergine cannelloni, baby aubergines with coconut and curry leaf, and aubergine in sweet-and-sour sauce, with ingredients, preparation times and step-by-step cooking instructions for each.

Six barbecue side-dish recipes are presented, including Turkish-style slaw, French-ish peas, new potato salad, Hoppin’ John, cumin-and-thyme creamed corn, and grilled cabbage wedges. The recipes come from chefs and cookbook authors and emphasize fresh vegetables, contrasting textures, and flavors suited to summer grilling.

Sabrina Ghayour discusses Sirocco, her second cookbook, which combines eastern-inspired flavors with western ingredients and cooking methods. The feature presents seven recipes, including tamarind honey prawns, chargrilled octopus, spiced lamb kebab, cumin-roasted aubergine and a dark chocolate, cardamom and espresso mousse cake. Ghayour’s development from restaurant-industry marketer to successful supper-club host and cookbook author is also outlined, alongside the strong reception of her first book, Persiana.

Sabrina Ghayour reflects on childhood memories of Persian meatballs and explains how kofta traditions differ across Middle Eastern and Western cuisines. She shares a festive recipe for lamb koftas with cranberries, cumin, pine nuts and orange-spiced yoghurt, offering preparation and cooking instructions designed to make an easy, family-friendly meal.

Sabrina Ghayour recalls her great-aunt Mama Gohar’s exceptional Persian stews and explores the influence of Persian cooking on cuisines across the Middle East, India and North Africa. She argues that stews share a common principle of slow braising and encourages flexible use of ingredients, while cautioning that cooks should add flavours gradually. The featured recipe combines chicken thighs, apricots, preserved lemons, harissa, spices, eggs, hazelnuts and breadcrumbs, and is served with rice, flatbread or potatoes.

Sabrina Ghayour reflects on growing up between Iranian and British food cultures and her lifelong enthusiasm for pies and filled pastries. Inspired by Moroccan m’hencha, a coiled pastry traditionally filled with nuts, she adapts the dish into a smaller savoury version using filo pastry, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, feta, lemon and thyme. The recipe makes six pastries suitable as starters, snacks or a light main course.