A Sweet-and-Sour Tofu That Balances It All

As 2023 gaveway to 2024, the weather snapped, and I was suddenly drawn to very particular kinds of food: comforting, restoring, reassuring. As I leafed through Najmieh Batmanglij’s wonderful book “Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies,” it was her khoreshes — delicate, refined braises — that were clearly calling, inspiring my “Persian” tofu.

Making and eating a veganized version of her two khoreshes, barberry and orange, I felt calm and balanced. Not just in a general way, the way all home-cooked food can sustain and reassure, but in a really specific way. Was there something in this dish, I wondered — the tangy barberries and creamy nuts; the sweet onion, orange and carrots — that was bringing about such an instant feeling of equanimity?

Recipe: Sweet-and-Sour Tofu With Barberries

For anyone who knows about Persian food, about sardi and garmi (sardi referring to “cold” foods and garmi to “hot”), or about sweet and sour, the answer will be a resounding yes. For me, though, and for everyone else who doesn’t mind a timely reminder, ahead of the Iranian New Year celebration, Nowruz, on March 20 in Britain (March 19 in the United States), it felt good to take a moment.

Sweet and sour is clear enough as a culinary principle. A sweet ingredient (fruit in many of its forms, or simply an onion slowly sweated down) works alongside a sour one (dried or fresh lime, some tangy yogurt or those barberries) to bring contrast and, ultimately, balance to a dish. Lime juice and wine vinegar combine with grape molasses and sweet cinnamon in stuffed grape leaves, for example, or they offset dates, apricots and apples in a sweet-and-sour chicken.