What Homa Dashtaki Eats for Dinner

All of us might use somewhat dinner inspiration — even Ali Slagle, who goals of dinner. In “Dinner Is Served,” she asks colleagues about one evening after they one way or the other reworked components into dinner with all this life occurring.

This month’s installment: Homa Dashtaki based the White Moustache towards all odds. Her new cookbook, Yogurt & Whey, is her entrepreneurial story about recognizing that easy meals can have immense worth. Let’s “have fun issues that we take with no consideration,” Dashtaki urges. And for her, nothing encapsulates that greater than yogurt — and rice.

Yogurt and rice is a really quintessential Iranian consolation and mixture. It makes me actually joyful that when a fellow Iranian will learn this piece they’ll be like, “Oh my God, this factor that’s so primary and we’ve taken with no consideration and don’t have fun — it’s getting celebrated.”

I actually find it irresistible too as a result of they’re two single components. Yogurt is milk and rice is simply rice. And so they’re each white. The yogurt you can also make your self, as I do in the ebook, and that’s a real labor of affection, however you may as well simply purchase plain yogurt. (Make it possible for the one two components within the yogurt are milk and probiotic. Fage might be my favourite business, nationwide yogurt.) Then when you make the rice, it’s simply this quite simple mixture of heat rice and tangy, cool yogurt. It soothes the stomach and is so easy and comforting and sufficient.

I do a couple of cup of basmati rice for simply myself and that’s only a smidge an excessive amount of, however I’m nice with that — I’ll have somewhat bit left over or a very nice huge meal. When your day is beginning to wind down and you are taking like a five-minute espresso break, rinse your rice till the water goes clear. Soak the rice, stick the salt in, after which go about the remainder of your enterprise. Perhaps a tablespoon’s price of salt — I don’t wish to sound like my mom, however add simply sufficient salt, you recognize? After an hour, I’ll rinse the rice and get a pot to boil with sufficient water in order that the rice will probably be submerged by not less than 1 to 2 inches, however you actually can’t go mistaken with an excessive amount of water.

I might add in all probability one other tablespoon of salt to that water after which throw the drained rice in and cook dinner it for about eight minutes. Pluck a grain of rice out across the 6-to-7-minute mark and squish it between your fingers. It creates somewhat backbone and breaks in a bunch of little fragments so it’s nonetheless uncooked but it surely’s half-cooked. Damaged however nonetheless intact.

Drain out the rice and put your pot again on the range. Put in butter or oil or a mixture of butter and oil to simply cowl your entire backside of the pot. In order for you a number of crispy rice, you are able to do it in a frying pan, however I really love to do it in somewhat 1-to-2-quart pot.

I do know that tahdig, the crispy, bottom-of-the-pot rice, could be very fashionable and really thrilling and it’s scrumptious and all of us battle over it and it’s completely definitely worth the hype, however I really feel just like the rice is admittedly lacking the motion right here as a result of the entire level of tahdig is that it’s the barrier between the fireplace and the rice, so it’s your sacrificial degree of rice that’s going to get scorched and burned so the remainder of your rice could be super-fluffy and light-weight. To get these particular person grains, you need a tighter pot so you’ll be able to create somewhat pyramid of the fluffy rice. So as soon as that butter is sizzling, on, like, excessive or medium-high warmth, put the drained rice again in, form it into somewhat pyramid, and make a pair pockets with the again of a wood spoon. Put a couple of teaspoon of butter in every little pocket, then take a kitchen towel and wrap the lid of the pot with it; this may take in the moisture from the rice in order that it will likely be fluffy. Safe the material on high of the pot with a rubber band.

Put the lid on and switch the warmth all the way down to medium-low and simply let it go. You’ll be able to normally scent when it’s completed. For one cup of rice, I might say 20 minutes could be good to get that rice actually cooked and light-weight and get that water evaporated so the grains are very particular person and outlined and light-weight and the tahdig falls into place. I flip the entire pot onto an enormous plate and scoop out my portion right into a bowl, add a number of yogurt on the aspect, and crack contemporary pepper and add salt.

After which your temper simply takes you, so if you wish to put barberries on high, you’ll be able to. If you wish to put sliced tomatoes on high, you’ll be able to. If you wish to put kimchi on high, you’ll be able to. Your temper dictates how difficult or easy it will get. However I might love for individuals to consider the yogurt as a sauce. It’s such a miraculous option to save uninspired leftovers.

I haven’t completed this explicit combo the best way I’m describing it to you since I used to be single. It’s received this bizarre sense of nostalgia to it. Once I was actually, actually distant from my household and beginning White Moustache, I might have a lot further yogurt and all I needed to do was make a pot of rice. This could be dinner two or thrice per week.

Now, I get to make it somewhat bit extra elaborate for my ladies and my husband — it’s our Sunday-night dish with barberries and a roast hen. My daughters love, love, love yogurt. I’m making an attempt to be chill about it like, oh, okay cool, no huge deal, as a result of the minute I get enthusiastic about them liking yogurt, I do know they’re going to be over it.

This interview was condensed and edited for readability.

Ali Slagle is a recipe developer, stylist, and — most vital of all — residence cook dinner. She’s a frequent contributor to the New York Occasions and Washington Put up, and her cookbook is named I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To): Low-Effort, Excessive-Reward Recipes.
Daniela Jordan-Villaveces is a artistic director and illustrator. She was born in Bogotá and raised between Colombia, the Netherlands, and the U.S. She presently lives in sunny Los Angeles together with her husband, their son, Lou, two kittens, and a pup.