Victoria Stewart interviews Zoe Adjonyoh, owner of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen about delicious West African dishes we should all be cooking at home. (Photo: Nassim Rothacker)

If you’re a hesitant cook, there’s nothing worse than a cookbook that insists you must follow it to the word, or face Dish Failure. The best ones are those that let you do what you want with them, when the author tells you how he or she came up with the recipes, and suggests thinking of them as a basis for further exploration.

Two good recent examples are Persiana and Sirocco, both written by the self-taught cook Sabrina Ghayour, which not only encompass her versions of dishes from Iran and its surrounding countries but which are also fantastically easy to follow.

Last week another self-taught cook, Zoe Adjonyoh, the Irish-Ghanaian owner of the Brixton-based restaurant, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, published a collection of recipes and stories of the same name, designed as “a celebration of the flavours and ingredients of West Africa.” Like Ghayour, she covers a number of traditional dishes “because I think it’s important for people to see and try them if they want,” but she is also keen to encourage people to “remix them” in their own kitchens.

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To read the full article, originally published in The Evening Standard in May 2017, click here.