Persiana Everyday by Sabrina Ghayour

Last Updated on February 28, 2026

The latest cookbook from Sabrina Ghayour is another winner.

The end of summer is a wonderful time for settling down with new cookbooks. The hot weather is over, and it is more comfortable to head back into the kitchen. I am ripe for new ideas of quick, simple and tasty dishes to serve up over the cooler months. I invariably turn to one of my very favourite cookbook writers, Sabrina Ghayour, for inspiration as her dishes tick all the boxes. Now, Persiana Everyday (Aster) has been published, and I can safely say that I will spend the next few months cooking from it, cover to cover. Persiana was Ghayour’s nickname in her early cooking days, but now two of her cookbooks carry this name. Persiana Everyday is her sixth cookbook, and I think each one is a delight. Collectively, they contain my most frequently used recipes, and I know the newest addition will bring pleasure to my table.

For those of us who follow Ghayour on social media – she has a huge and enthusiastic following – we know that she lives with her charismatic mum, Mama G. In more recent times, she met and married her husband, Stephen, who brought two young boys into Ghayour’s life. She now not only leads a very busy life writing, teaching and making many appearances on TV, but she also cooks for a family. Persiana Everyday is therefore a collection of recipes that she uses in her own kitchen to get dinner on the table for a range of ages and preferences, the same dilemma any family faces. These recipes will satisfy your taste buds whether you are cooking for one or two, a family or a meal for friends.

Persiana Everyday is divided into chapters covering small plates, salads, fish and seafood, poultry and meat, veg, carbs and sweet things. I began with a simple fish dish – Fragrant roasted haddock, which involves coating the fish with a yoghurt sauce with ras-el-hanout and turmeric. Marinating chicken in yoghurt may be familiar to those who enjoy a tandoori chicken – the yoghurt acts as a tenderiser –  but may not have tried it with fish. It could not be easier. Mix together the yoghurt with the spices, some lemon juice, and olive oil, then roast it in a hot oven for 10 minutes. Job done. The result is a tray of fish chunks that are colourful, juicy, and mildly spicy. I am a great fan of ras el hanout (it means head of the shop) as it is one of the most aromatic spice mixes I have tried. Comprising at least a dozen spices and even rose petals, it perfumes the dish while adding some heat. I eat a lot of fish, being mostly pescatarian, and this dish is now definitely on my repeat list.

I grew up eating green beans stewed in a tomato sauce, so I was interested to try the recipe for sticky tamarind, garlic and tomato green beans. One of my all-time favourite Ghayour recipes, which I have made so often it is impossible to quantify, is aubergines in tomato and tamarind sauce. This simply fabulous dish, from her cookbook Bazaar, introduced me to the wonders of tamarind. In Persiana Everyday, Ghayour gives the tamarind treatment to green beans in tomato sauce and I knew I would love it and I did. Tamarind, balanced with sugar or honey, gives a dish such a marvellously sweet and sour flavour, and it works really well with vegetables. I thought it went rather well with the fish, and all I needed to complete the meal was a simple pot of brown basmati rice.

A few days later, I had two hours’ notice of friends arriving for lunch. My fridge was empty, so I quickly paged through Persiana Everyday to find a few recipes that would be very quick to prepare and provide a balanced meal. My husband was dispatched to the supermarket for chicken pieces, which I marinated in minutes. Usually, I would leave the chicken in the marinade overnight to deepen the flavour, but both za’atar, paprika and garlic thighs and pomegranate wings were packed with flavour even after a mere hour in the fridge. In the meantime, I put together the recipe for a most refreshing salad of fennel, oranges, feta, pomegranate seeds and chopped pistachios, dressed with a good extra virgin olive oil. To round off the meal, I made a pan of potatoes with fenugreek and pepper. Unfortunately, my husband returned with floury potatoes, not the waxy variety that the recipe calls for. The result was still full of flavour, and the difference, of course, was that the potatoes did not all hold their shape. But it is a recipe I will try again with waxy potatoes as the taste is really good, and it makes a change from roast potatoes, which I often resort to. In addition, the use of fenugreek leaves pleased me as it is not an ingredient I have used before with potatoes, and it gave an intriguing flavour to the dish. 

A quickly-turned-around meal is precisely what one needs, not only because friends sometimes arrive unexpectedly, but because it is how so many of us need to cook at the end of a working day. Ghayour’s recipes are always reliable, always tasty, and almost always easy. She believes in accessible ingredients, ease of preparation and food with punchy flavours. All her cookbooks deliver on this, and Persiana Everyday is another book to add confidently to your collection.  

You can buy Persiana Everyday online from Amazon and from good bookshops online and across the country.