Persiana Everyday
As the author knows too well, family meals that nourish growing children need to be ready on time: simple, plentiful, flavourful, colourful feasts. This is what she has produced in this collection with ingredients that can be adapted to suit all tastes.
Staying with the modern menu formula, the opening chapter presents small plates that include dips and patés, salads, pastry twists and puffs and soups, all providing delectable starters or light meals. The salads that follow range from light refreshers to meals in themselves, while the meatless recipes identified as vegetarian or vegan, all colourful and spicy. The section on poultry and meat presents a tempting choice of chicken dishes and some intriguing one-pot bakes, some of which are likely to become family favourites.
Sabrina Ghayour
It won’t be only vegetarians and vegans who will hone in on the veggie chapter, more than 50 pages of flavour-packed dishes starring greens, some simplicity itself – think sautéed corn with spiked honey butter – others complex such as pomegranate-glazed aubergine with peanuts and spring onions. Carbs of all kinds include dishes of rice, pasta sauces, couscous, bulgar wheat and even dumplings, which Sabrina admits do not feature in Persian cuisine. The short choice of desserts consists mostly of cakes, a fine finale for a splendid collection of tantalising fare. For those cooks who enjoy spice but not heat, it is easy to reduce or omit the chilli in these recipes.
Myrna Robins
Persiana Everyday by Sabrina Ghayour. Published by Aster, London 2022.
