Persiana: Recipes from the Middle East & Beyond

I bought this as a present for my friend and it looked amazing flicking through it before I gifted it. It's a lovely, quality book. However, my friend is an amazing cook and a few weeks later after being invited for a meal I was treated to an absolute 'WOW!' meal that she'd cooked from the book. The flavours were amazing and very unusual. As an amazing cook, my friend is also very talented and she also commented she'd really enjoyed cooking the recipes. I was so impressed I went back and bought a copy for myself even though I don't cook (... just in case #youneverknow!)

I remember watching Sabrina on Come Dine With Me and wanting to recreate some of the dishes at home. Since then I have seen her on Saturday Kitchen as well as other TV foodie programmes and finally bought the book. Visually it is absolutely stunning and I am keen to try and cook something from this at least weekly. For me the ingredients are really accessible living in a major city and as luck would have it, an Iranian minimart on my High Street. I have had no problems with the many recipes I have already tried - my first attempts were ambitious - but I pulled off a tapas/mezze style dinner and each dish was delicious and worth the extra shopping for ingredients and planning time. I do not believe any of Sabrina's recipes are labour intensive, if anything I was surprised how easy the recipes were. A tip - if you need to stock up on Iranian ingredients try local middle eastern shops, look on-line or even places like Sainsburys which is where I buy my Pomegranate Molasses, La Chinata smoked paprika as well as pul biber pepper at a fraction of the cost of Amazon. I have also spotted this book on The Book People for £6.99 and have just ordered 6 cookbooks for Christmas for £25.93 rather than £70+ on here. Each one (new releases) on here is typically £17 and I paid less than £5 for each one. Having been fairly faithful to Amazon especially on books I have learnt my lesson - always shop around.

Good recipes

This is a beautiful book. Even if you didn't make any of the recipes, it would be worth having just for the photos & the textured cover. The recipes however, are fantastic. They're straightforward & very well explained. Everything I have made so far has turned out to be delicious. Sabrina cooks a lot of the stew type recipes on top of the stove, which for a Rayburn user is a very inefficient cooking method. I have adapted these to cook as a casserole in the oven & they work perfectly. Also where Sabrina tells you to put ingredients into the recipe in stages, I have cheated a bit & put everything in together & it's all still great. As for other reviewers who gripe about the salt in some of the recipes, all I can say is use your common sense! If you don't usually cook with that much salt, don't put it in. There are some uncommon ingredients required for some of the recipes, which can be difficult to source in local supermarkets. I have found the store cupboard ingredients I need are available at Amazon. Just watch out for some steep delivery charges! I have shown this book to friends & they have been totally impressed as well & are going to get their own copies. I have other books on Middle Eastern & Moroccan food & this is quite different. It offers a lot of new ideas & exciting flavour combinations. Add this to your library. You won't be disappointed!

This review references the Kindle version of this book, though of course the content is identical to the print versions. I've had the book for several months now and have cooked several recipes from it (multiple times, as below). Summary: Excellent Middle Eastern cookbook with a focus on (but not exclusive to) modern Persian recipes. Instructions are clear & results are dependable. Full Review: I picked up Ms Ghayour's book in Kindle format after downloading the free sample and liking the available content. I'll admit that I was initially drawn in by the gorgeous photography, as I already have a fairly hefty collection of Middle Eastern cookery books, and several that are specific to Iranian food. The Kindle version features interactive tables of content (so critical for a cookery book and yet often missing, especially from older Kindle books) arranged by course (ie appetisers, mains, desserts etc) and then individually broken down with links to each recipe contained within that section. The layout is simple to use across devices (tested on iPad, Win & Mac desktop, Android). The photos which accompany each dish are compelling and bright, without being over-styled: in essence, getting your dish to look like the one pictured is actually attainable without a Michelin star to your name. Each recipe has a photo and the book doesn't contain excess 'ingredient' photos (you know the type; the macro shots of a lemon, scattered cloves, etc etc) which makes it very usable indeed. To date, I've made the following: Batinjan al Rahib, a (very!) garlicky eggplant dip that goes perfectly alongside rich/fatty meat dishes, with a nice play on texture between the soft eggplant and the crisp peppers; Cacik, a Turkish staple, fantastically fresh with loads of herbs; Spiced Lamb Kefta, which smell as amazing as they taste, with sweet notes from the currants (try these with the Cacik, as we did all three times we made them); Butternut Squash with Pistachio Pesto & Feta, which makes a really gorgeous vegetarian main but is (as with any recipe, of course) very dependent on excellent butternut squash (the first time it was so-so, the second time fantastic) and very ripe, sweet pomegranate; Karniyarik, stuffed eggplant, have become a staple in our home, the flavour combination is amazing and while they take a long time from start to finish, you can make a big batch and they keep very well in the fridge for several days; top with plenty of labneh or Greek yoghurt and try to convince yourself going back for thirds is a bad idea... (it isn't); Spice-Perfumed Shoulder of Lamb is gorgeous and so, so simple; I did find I needed to turn down the oven slightly to cook for an extra hour at a lower temperature for fall-off-the-bone texture (while retaining moisture), but this of course is a commentary on my oven rather than the recipe; Blood Orange and Radicchio salad, a beautiful flavour combination of sweet, tart & bitter; goes very well with the lamb shoulder and would stand up well to any robust meat dish, with the hint of fresh dill really elevating it above a simple salad (do yourself a favour and track down a good pomegranate molasses with only 'pomegranates' listed in the ingredients, as often the syrups available are too sweet). I would honestly happily pay the price of the book for just the karniyarik recipe, but I'm really pleased with this purchase, and look forward to trying many more dishes. This really is a fantastic, accessible cookery book and should appeal to a broad range of palates. As evident by the answers, comments & other reviews, Ms Ghayour is very responsive to questions that may crop up; while I've not asked any myself, I always find it reassuring when an author (or publisher) makes an effort to provide assistance. Highly recommended.

Beautiful book and great recipes.

Great book and half the price than in shops can’t go wrong

good recommented, if you are intersted in M East cooking

Sobre todo para los amantes de la cocina oriental. Variedad de recetas con explicaciones muy fáciles de seguir, con resultados espectaculares.

The most important thing about this book is that all the recipes are not overly sophisticated, i.e. can be made for a regular dinner and are edible. Persiana contains recipes for dishes that are to taste good and not necessarily to look excellent. Well, they also do, but their taste is more important. That's something not so common compared to many, many other cookbooks.

I am asian learning Middle East food. But recipe for lamb, beef or chicken ain’t much written in here.

È diventato uno dei miei libri di cucina preferiti!