Persian Easy by Sabrina Ghayour Review: A Cookbook Built for Simple Weeknight Cooking

Introduction

Persian Easy is the latest book from Sabrina Ghayour, the Iranian-born, London-based chef and author whose debut cookbook Persiana remains a favorite of ours. Easy is her eighth book overall and the third in a four-book series, positioned as an easier version of Persiana, built on the idea that Middle Eastern cuisines are both accessible and uncomplicated.

We cooked 12 of the 102 recipes over six days: five mains, six sides, and one dessert. On average, each dish took about 90 minutes from start to finish and served four people for roughly $8.32 per serving, though those numbers are skewed upward by a couple of long-cooking roasts with pricier ingredients like lamb shanks. Sabrina’s stated goal was to make every recipe as easy as possible without compromising on flavor or creativity. After a week of cooking, we would say she got about 90 percent of the way there.

Who This Cookbook Is For

Sabrina is upfront that “easy” does not necessarily mean quick. Her approach, refined through rigorous testing, is to take the easiest route to the best results by cutting unnecessary steps and ingredients and streamlining wherever possible. In practice, that holds up: the process was genuinely easy about 90 percent of the time, with very little active work but plenty of waiting time in the recipes.

This is a good book for cooks who want big, familiar flavors with a short ingredient list and minimal technique. It is also well suited to newer parents or busy households, which is exactly the situation we found ourselves in. One caveat worth knowing early: the book is clearly written for a British audience, with gas marks, Celsius, and metric units, and some ingredients like rose harissa, barberries, and dried wild oregano took extra effort to source in the United States.

Main Strengths

The recipes that worked, really worked. The doner kebab, a favorite we had already made before choosing this book, is a genuine standout: spicy, garlicky, ready in roughly 30 minutes, excellent as leftovers, and simple to freeze. The popcorn halloumi, a fried take on the cheese that grills, was another highlight with a thin, crispy, egg-free dredge and no need for added salt thanks to the cheese’s natural saltiness. The sweet and sour broccoli chopped salad with dates, slivered almonds, Aleppo chili, lime, and cinnamon was bright and interesting, even if the sweetness ran a touch high.

The smashed crispy potato chop, essentially baked potato nachos, was a fun idea we would happily play with again, and the sizzling sesame tomato and cucumber salad with its tahini base was a proper smash. Every single recipe comes with a suggested pairing appended at the end of the directions, which makes meal planning noticeably more convenient.

Another real strength is accessibility of process. There were rarely multiple moving pieces at once, and the long roasts were simple enough to leave largely unattended. The caveat is cleanup: these recipes use a lot of bowls, so you will want to stay on top of dishes as you go.

Flavor and Recipes: Big Ideas, Rough Edges

Out of the 12 recipes we cooked, the vast majority landed as what we would call light smashes: good food we would not make again without tweaking. The most common adjustment was reducing sweetness, particularly on the chicken wings two ways, where the sweet barberry and za’atar sauces were well balanced but leaned sweeter than we prefer. The orange spiced pork, a Middle Eastern twist on al pastor, had good flavor bones but the long simmer muted the orange notes, and charred scallions in long strands took over the plate.

The couscous royale with spiced lamb shanks was easy and satisfying rather than exceptional: hearty, filling, and generous in quantity, with the hot and sour green beans providing a welcome spicy contrast. The lamb kofta patties with burnt orange divided us, with the charred orange treatment reading as oddly sweet and bitter, while the carrot chips with za’atar yogurt were a clear winner. The cashew-based baklava called bokhage landed as a light smash: quite easy for a pastry, very sweet, and best eaten one at a time.

Overall, the creativity stayed intact, but flavors often felt rough and ready rather than delicately balanced. The book covers cuisines from Egypt and North Africa through the Middle East to China, Indonesia, and even Mexico, and while those are all excellent cuisines, most dishes here delivered solid B-tier results.

Things to Consider Before Buying

The writing is the book’s weakest area. Recipes are sometimes overly concise, leaving details confusing: is the work surface a baking sheet or a cutting board? Should the butter be cold? Are the pumpkin seeds pre-roasted? A couple of times we had to resist going off-book because the instructions did not match our expectations. On the other hand, ingredient descriptions include lovely explanatory touches like “two fat spring onions” and “a very generous amount.”

Presentation is standard for the genre, though the foil-embossed cover is a step above average. The photos are slightly embellished but mostly accurate to our results, with a few ambiguous shots, like the doner kebab image that appears to show parchment paper the recipe never mentions.

On value: we generally consider a cookbook worth its cover price if at least half the recipes we try are smashes. Here we got 11 smashes out of 12 recipes, a 92 percent rate, with the caveat that we would remake eight of those with adjustments. Still, the strong claim that the author does the thinking for you “as in all my books” raises the bar for recommending this book over her earlier titles, and the flavors could use fine-tuning before you reach for it over Persiana.

Buying Advice

If you want more Persian and Middle Eastern recipes in an easy-to-execute format, this book will serve you well, especially if you follow the advice Sabrina has given since her first book: make these recipes your own by adding, removing, and replacing ingredients to fit your preferences. Go in prepared to make some upgrades, and you will be golden. If you already own Persiana and rarely cook from it, this may not change your rotation, but the doner kebab, popcorn halloumi, and carrot chips alone justify a look.

Conclusion

Persian Easy lands as a light smash: a pretty standard cookbook with a couple of standout recipes worth coming back to and plenty of leftovers for the week. The process is genuinely easy, the creativity is real, and the flavors are good with room for a personal touch. For busy cooks who want approachable Middle Eastern food without a fuss, it is a reasonable addition to the shelf, as long as you are willing to tweak sweetness and add a little acid of your own.