Last September, the Persian/British food writer, author and TV presenter Sabrina Ghayour went double-barrelled, becoming Mrs Ghayour-Lynn when she married Stephen Lynn in Chelsea Register Office in London, becoming a stepmother to two young boys in the process. “I’m technically a newlywed,” she says, on the phone from her home in a Yorkshire village, to which she decamped when Covid took hold and temporarily shut down her cookery demonstration and supper club business in London.
“They hated everything I made, everything. Now, it’s ‘Is Sabrina coming back because, Dad, I don’t want McDonald’s any more’ she says of her culinary wooing of Olly, nine, and Conor who has just turned 13. “They like spice, which is pretty great, and they’re not afraid of chilli at all, which is wonderful. And I’ve done a lot of sneaky conversions from chicken breast to chicken thigh, because obviously chicken breast is not always great unless it’s attached to a whole chicken. They don’t like to see bones and skin and fat and things like that.
“The older one is fine with lamb, the little one is like, ‘I don’t always like lamb’. Then again, he doesn’t eat cheese, but he eats cheeseburgers and he eats pizza. It’s a minefield, it really is. I’m told that everybody’s kids are pretty much the same.”
Cooking for the family during successive lockdowns, while also writing her sixth cookery book, Persiana Everyday, caused Ghayour-Lynn the same kitchen counter stresses that many of us experienced. “This book was written in the pandemic, at the homeschooling, don’t leave the house point. It wasn’t even in the fun part where kids were allowed to just do whatever they wanted. So it’s the book that almost gave me a nervous breakdown.”
As the main provider of meals for three adults – her mother lives with the family – and two children, she recalls “cooking every single day, three times a day, sometimes five different meals, because at that time the boys weren’t eating the same things; they didn’t want to eat at the same time. So I just literally said to my husband, I can’t do this any more, I am going to burn out and resent you all, like it’s happening. And it’s happening fast.”
Instead, encouraged by her husband, she decided to take the heat off herself in her new parental and familial role, and channel the experience into her book. “It really disciplined me to strip things right back. Some of it is quick cook. Some of it is quick prep, slow cook, some of it is no cook,” she says of the recipe collection which is subtitled Delicious dishes you can make in minutes.
Ghayour-Lynn has always tried to make her books as accessible as possible, and this one is no different. Making do with what you’ve got in your cupboards and fridge is a given, and ingredient substitutions are allowed, encouraged even. For example, although you will find mentions of wild oregano (not the little bottles of dried oregano you’ll find in supermarkets) liberally sprinkled throughout the recipes, “You can just use regular oregano, it’s absolutely fine,” she says.
“I get frustrated when I open my cupboards and find extract of bats’ wings or whatever, that I used a pinch of for a recipe, and I paid £6 for a jar and five years later it’s still in my cupboard. I literally curse the author of the recipe sometimes. So yes, I use wild oregano, and pul biber and garlic granules, and in this book curry powder, a lot, but in ways that are different every time and provide loads of flavour and allow for substitutes. Simple, flavourful, economical – they’ll always be the three things that I try to stick to.”
Persiana Everyday by Sabrina Ghayour is published by Aster (£26). Photography by Kris Kirkham
Recipe: Cucumber and chicken salad with pul biber and tahini lime dressing
