Dami Gojeh Farangi

The name says what it is: dami means rice cooked by the all-in-one steaming method (from dam, the covered low-heat steam that finishes Persian rice), and gojeh farangi is the tomato — literally the 'foreign plum,' the name Persian gave the fruit after it arrived from the Americas by way of Europe. Because tomato only entered Iranian cooking in the nineteenth century, this is a comparatively modern everyday dish rather than an old court recipe. It belongs to the broad dami family of humble one-pot rices that stretch a little rice and a few vegetables into a full meal.

Soft red-orange rice, each grain stained and faintly tangy with tomato, flecked with the warm yellow of turmeric. Cubes of potato sit through it, gone floury and creamy at the centre. A bottom crust of golden tahdig forms where the rice meets the hot oiled pot. The taste is plain and comforting — tomato, a little spice, no heat unless cayenne is added — the kind of food that fills you cheaply and warmly.

In the dami method everything cooks together: the rice is added with a measured amount of liquid and steamed covered over low heat until the water is gone, so the grains absorb the tomato instead of being rinsed clean by parboiling. Tomato's lycopene is fat-soluble, so frying the paste in oil before the rice goes in binds the red colour and flavour to the grains and the potato. The potato cubes against the hot oiled base caramelize into part of the tahdig crust, and the patient low steam keeps the bottom from scorching.