To Nourish a Soul
It was 2018, and I was in the back of Komaaj, a little Persian spot tucked into a cafe in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto, up to my elbows in beets. The restaurant hummed with simmering stews, and I was chopping away, grinning ear to ear, lost in it all. This was back in high school, when I'd toyed with the idea of culinary school. Food felt like the one thing that made sense, a way to create something real. Komaaj, the cake we were named for, comes from northern Iran: rice flour mixed with yogurt, a hint of saffron and rosewater, then glazed with honey and topped with dried rose petals. A tricky recipe to get just right. But I didn't mind the fuss. I'd known Hanif, the founder, since I was a kid in an afterschool program. He'd left engineering behind when he immigrated, landing as a chef at Golestan, a Persian immersion school. Hanif's love for this work was fiery; it drew me in and made me want more. As I leaned into that, I caught the spark too. I started small: pr...