Sirocco is one of my favourite cookbooks (vegetarian-friendly!). Written by Sabrina Ghayour, it melds her family’s Persian background with a life lived in London to make something new – modern British cuisine at its very finest. I love her strong, bright, bold flavours – sumac, za’atar, chilli and harissa, lemon, barberries, nigella seeds, pomegranate molasses, garlic, pickles, big handfuls of fresh herbs – making fresh vegetables and pulses taste amazing. This is my kind of vegetable cooking.
The book is a riot of colour – the food, props, backgrounds and graphic design. To me, this book is exceptionally well designed and everything matches absolutely beautifully. When I wrote my own cookbook, How to Cook Halloumi, I had Sabrina Ghayour’s wonderful effort very firmly in mind. This book gave me the permission to fill my photography with bright, happy colour and to really celebrate up close the luscious textures of delicious, healthy, made-from-scratch food.
Marinated halloumi in vine leaves with barberry freekeh
I have cooked all kinds of dishes from this lovely book. Broccoli, barberry and chilli fritters, Courgette fries with sumac salt, Courgette, saffron and potato kuku (frittata), Chickpea and potato latkes, Puy lentil, caper and red onion salad, Cumin-roasted aubergine wedges, Roasted cherry tomatoes with goat curd, pine nuts and grape molasses, also sweets like Nectarine pavlova with mint, almonds and tea syrup.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more I want to cook. This is not just a book to look at – although it is absolutely beautiful – it is a book to cook from again and again and again. See Sirocco on Amazon.
Sabrina Ghayour introduced me to the joy of baking cheese in vine leaves – my new favourite technique – and inspired one of my recent halloumi recipes, Marinated halloumi in vine leaves with barberry freekeh (above). A taste sensation!