Middle Eastern Minus The Meat: Sabrina Ghayour On Cutting Down And Embracing Plant-Based Cooking

Think of Middle Eastern food and you probably imagine big platters of succulent lamb, spiced chicken and meaty tagines – and lots of it.

Iranian-British chef Sabrina Ghayour is a “die-hard meat-lover”. Being born in Tehran and having grown up in the UK, meat has just always been a huge part of her family’s culture and a staple on the dinner table (and breakfast and lunch, for that matter). “In a Middle Eastern or Persian family, if you don’t have meat on the table there would be suspicion: ‘What’s going on? Does she need money? Did you drop the meat? Is the kebab still grilling?'” she says with a laugh.

So it’s perhaps surprising that, after the success of her previous cookbooks Persiana and Feasts, Ghayour is now back with her third title, Bazaar – and (to the apparent dismay of some of her social media followers) there isn’t a kebab in sight.

She says her journey to more plant-based cooking has happened quite organically. “I started chucking cabbage into my pasta – ribboning it up and frying it – as you would with clams – with garlic and chilli, lemon zest, heavy on the black pepper and some pecorino,” she says. “And I was like, ‘God, this is stupendously delicious!’

“Converting people in my family and cooking for my mother [who lives with her] is a different ball game. I would say, ‘Dinner’s got no meat in it’, and she’d be like, ‘OK, I’ll have some ham, I’ll open a tin of tuna’,” Ghayour tells, laughing. “But now she’s the same as me – as long as there’s lots of flavour, she doesn’t care.”

But, does it require a lot more skill to make vegetarian food delicious? “I just think you have to give it a bit of thought, people just need a bit of inspiration, even vegetarians – they’re probably sick of eating mushroom risotto in restaurants.”

Although still true to her heritage in many ways, Ghayour’s signature style has evolved pretty far from classic Iranian fare. “If you look at Lebanese and Turkish food, there are loads of vegetables – we don’t really have that in Persian culture. We’re very meat-heavy and we don’t use spices at all, apart from saffron because we cultivate it, and a pinch of cumin in one dish.

“We don’t like chilli or garlic, unless you live in the region that grows garlic,” she adds. “I’ve probably confused the hell out of people because of my love for those things. We have one salad in Iran. One salad. But we do eat our body weight in herbs.”

There’s plenty of Middle Eastern influence in general at work in Baazer, although not exclusively. Think feta, pul biber, and oregano macaroni, or ras el hanout and buttermilk sweet loaf cake.

But really, her new book is a homage to the infinite possibilities from the plant-based world. “These are the most natural products on the earth that are bountiful, plentiful and not hard to season well. There are nuts for texture, dried fruit for sweeteners – you can char a cabbage and cauliflower leaves, using the whole cauliflower, and it’s totally delicious.”

That doesn’t mean Ghayour’s latest culinary venture is all about joining the healthy bandwagon though: “There are lots of people who slate salad-eaters and lots of people who slate cake-eaters – I’m the scales of justice, with cake in one hand and salad in the other, because that’s the happiest I’ve ever been body-wise in my life.

“Once in a blue moon, I might say, ‘Right I’ve chubbed up a bit lately, it’s time to reign it in’.”