SPICE AND EASY

BRITISH-IRANIAN chef Sabrina Ghayour reckons many Persian dishes can be made much simpler for the home cooks.

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"Lots of stuff is just shrouded in tradition, and tradition can go back generations to when they didn’t have electricity or didn’t have commercial cleaning of food. So, why is it essential to have four pots on the stove for a Persian stew? No, I've done it all in one pot and it works."

The 49-year-old, who shot to critical acclaim with her debut cookbook Persiana in 2014 and has since published seven more, adds: "Auntie would say, 'I’m telling you, I've been doing this for 45 years. You get told by your mother you cannot do this any other way and then someone like me comes along, who is a bit lazy and loves a shortcut.

"I’m thinking, 'Why can’t you do it this way? Screw it, we'll try it. That’s how a lot of my Persian and traditional recipes are perfected.

"I know what changes I can make and which would compromise flavour and which wouldn't, so I'm thinking, let’s make it easier. We don’t need to soak rice 500 times."

Her latest cookbook, Persiana Easy, sticks to the Persian food we know and love her for (think brunch kuku, mutton raan and polow), alongside dishes from near and not so near regions, like Lebanese Hashweh next to Pakistani-style Biryani, Indian smashed crispy potato chaat and Egyptian koshari. But this time, stripped back and simpler.