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YOGURT & WHEY

Homa Dashtaki

Recipes of an Iranian Immigrant Life

A collection of recipes reflecting a life affected by immigration, community, adaptation, and experimentation - and sublime, old-world, creamy yogurt.
As founder of much-loved The White Moustache Yogurt company, Homa Dashtaki employs the same traditionally Iranian methods of making yogurt that her family has for generations in her kitchen today. Her passion culminates in inspiring the use of a new ingredient: whey, the liquid gold extracted from straining homemade yogurt. Across 100 recipes ranging from ancient see-rogh to rum cocktails, ghormeh sabzi to lemon meringue pie, Dashtaki weaves in and out of nostalgic and innovative dishes. The result of years of obsessively making yogurt results in a love for every drop of whey that she passes onto home cooks in these recipes. Embrace whey's bright tang in a summer gazpacho or a pitcher of pineapple margaritas. Enjoy the crispy edges it lends to creamy pancakes. Enlivened by hand-drawn illustrations and dreamy photographs, Yogurt & Whey is a beautiful homage to Iranian yogurt traditions - past, present, and future. Homa Dashtaki is the founder of the White Moustache. Her artisanal yogurt has garnered acclaim from the New York Times, Vogue, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine. She was born in Iran and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Published 2023-03-07 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

feature and sample recipe: Persian New Year Recipe: Homa Dashtaki's Cake Yazdi Read more...

Yogurt & Whey is ultimately a reminder of why cooking is so important: It's a love letter to a minority culture with just about 15,000 to 20,000 members left in Iran, rooted in Dashtaki's sense of responsibility to keep her community's traditions alive.

Truly one of a kind... [Yogurt & Whey] demands to be read, with stories both ancient and modern and fillips of fancifulness and humor: 'When combined with whey, not only does the cauliflower sing, it puts on a one-woman chorus line.'

...Find yogurt-centric recipes accompanied by illustrations and learn the joys of lemon-whey meringue pie, ghormeh sabzi, whey ceviche, and pineapple margaritas. Read more...

An edifying and delicious exploration of Zoroastrian cuisine and the many innovative uses of yogurt and its usually discarded by-product, whey... [these] eponymous ingredients prove to be amazingly versatile.Dashtaki proves a skilled and thoughtful writer, and her reverence for the dishes she offers makes this a treat. Read more...

We all could use a little dinner inspiration - even Ali Slagle, who dreams of dinner. In "Dinner Is Served," she asks colleagues about one night when they somehow transformed ingredients into dinner with all this life going on. This month's installment: Homa Dashtaki founded the White Moustache against all odds. Her new cookbook, Yogurt & Whey, is her entrepreneurial story about recognizing that simple foods can have immense value. Let's "celebrate things that we take for granted," Dashtaki urges. And for her, nothing encapsulates that more than yogurt - and rice. Read more...

If you want to up your yogurt game, this Iranian cookbook will show you the whey. Read more...

Interview: ..."Yogurt forces you to slow down," says Homa Dashtaki, who started White Moustache, named after a prominent feature of her father.... Read more...

When it comes to yogurt, there is no greater authority than Homa Dashtaki... This book is a love letter to Iran's diasporic cooking traditions through yogurt, one of the most elemental ingredients. Read more...

Homa Dashtaki, Founder of The White Moustache Yogurt Company, moves from beyond the yogurt jar and onto bookshelves with "Yogurt and Whey: Recipes from an Iranian Immigrant Life,"her first venture into cookbooks. Like many 2023 cookbooks we've been able to sneak a peak at, "Yogurt and Whey" is a breezily depicted tether to its author's edible biography. Read more...

I had tears in my eyes holding @homadash of @whitemoustacheyogurt's immaculate cookbook... This book could not be more gorgeous & brilliant.

Yazdi Cake recipe + excerpt Read more...

[Dashtaki's] movingly articulated sentiments and stories - and the recipes they've inspired - will have many of us absorbed. Read more...