Cookbook Author Homa Dashtaki Shares Her Iranian Heritage One Yogurt at a Time

Carson Downing. Food Styling: Kelsey Moylan

Each glass jar from The White Moustache contains a few precious ounces of traditionally fermented yogurt. Some feature sour cherries, dates, or orange blossom honey at the bottom, but the velvety yogurt—which takes Homa Dashtaki and her team three days to make—is the star.  Compared to big brands, hers is a charmingly artisan process. She makes 15 batches of naturally-fermented yogurt weekly and has a list of stores waiting to carry it.

Besides yogurt, The White Moustache now also offers labneh (a thick, spreadable type of yogurt cheese) and probiotic tonics and pops made with whey, the tangy, probiotic liquid gold produced in the yogurt-making process when fresh yogurt is strained.

Michael Cervieri

Dashtaki started the company in Brooklyn in 2011 with her father, Goshtasb, naming it after his distinctive facial hair, but their connection to yogurt-making goes back much farther. In Yogurt & Whey, she shares her family’s yogurt recipe and more than 100 ideas for how to use the titular ingredients. Among the most personal are those dishes she ate with her family growing up in Iran where yogurt appears in a savory context as a cooling sauce.

I talked with Homa about what it’s like to share her history through her new book, how her mission shapes her decisions as an entrepreneur, and Homa’s mission to get every yogurt-lover drinking and cooking with whey. 

My story and White Moustache’s story are different. It’s really important that I don’t mark my brand as an individual. The business has its own team, but the book, I wanted it to be richer than a commercial exercise. White Moustache is woven in there quite tightly, but it’s not dictating the story. It gets to be my perspective and