Chef’s hearty dishes trick carnivores
Veggie dishes are so tasty no one will even ask for a serving of meat
From a fixation on the absence of animal protein to an overemphasis on meat analogues, mainstream conversations around vegetarian eating often leave out the very source of the word: vegetables.
With an abundance of fresh herbs, spices and produce presented in inventive and satisfying ways, Sabrina Ghayour’s fourth cookbook, Bazaar (Mitchell Beazley, 2019), is a welcome invitation to refocus.
“It’s not about substitutes,” says the U.k.-based chef and food writer, adding that she wrote the collection of vegetarian recipes with omnivores, like herself, in mind.
“(Meat alternatives) don’t offer us as meat-eaters anything that we don’t already get. We should actually be trying to enjoy vegetables. So I’ve just thought, ‘would this really satisfy my inner carnivore?’
“Is there crunch? Is there texture? Is there freshness? Is there zing? Is there robustness of spice, is there earthiness? Is there comfort?
“Whatever the combination is in each different dish, I’ve done it so it satisfies multiple levels of your brain and you feel satisfied. You don’t question it.”
Since her award-winning debut cookbook Persiana was published in 2014, following a string of successful supper clubs in London, Ghayour has firmly established herself as a bringer of immensely flavourful and straightforward Middle Eastern recipes.
Bazaar is no different with its sensory punch and effortless execution, but the process of writing it diverged in one important way: Trialling the recipes required some familial deception.
“I really worked a lot harder to make sure that 100 per cent I was conning the meat-eaters in my family when cooking these feasts.
“The toughest audience is my family. No reader on God’s earth is as tough as convincing Persian or Middle Eastern people to not have meat,” Ghayour says with a laugh.
“I found that the best tack was to not tell people that you weren’t cooking meat and nobody noticed ... if I had told them there was no meat, they’d all be like, ‘It was nice, but maybe some roast lamb on the side would be good’ … when we don’t tell people there’s no meat, the dish is carried on its own merit.”
Marrying vegetables and fruit with the contents of your pantry and spice cupboard is at the heart of the book.
Ghayour structured Bazaar by type of produce (such as “Eggs & Dairy”), by section of the house (in the case of the especially ingenious “Cupboard Sustenance” chapter), and by course (as with “Salads for All Seasons”).
A culinary teacher, she’s well attuned to the needs of home cooks; ingredient listings are reliably incisive and recipes economical.
But it’s also simply a reflection of how she cooks.
Her favourite ingredients — such as sumac, harissa and barberries — run as a thread throughout her work, but no single ingredient is vital unless she explicitly states that it is.
“It’s not the world’s biggest secret. I’ve never really written complicated recipes because I’m too lazy at home. And I don’t want an art project — I just want to cook a meal,” says Ghayour with a laugh.