Yoghurt. Also known as Oghurt, courtesy of a small friend of ours who has probably forgotten about saying it that way. But we remember. And sometimes request it of each other in a 3 year old boy kind of way. ‘Oghurt!’ Because it needs to be there.
I’m going for broad brush here (though haven’t as yet tried brushing things with yoghurt): I’m including plain yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, yogo-smietanka and probably also sour cream in my rhapsodising. Think creamy and sharp, and you’re in safe hands.
Like most, yoghurt was first encountered in a fruit version. I seem to remember many years of Ski yoghurts. I’m not quite sure why you needed to ski while eating yoghurt – maybe the ad people saw expanse of whiteness, added ski poles, and were done.
I do remember the fruit chunks were quite good. Sometimes you got most of a small strawberry, it seemed.
I was also the child to turn to at school if you couldn’t open your yoghurt at lunch time. (This was also the stage at which you could open a yoghurt towards someone, fast so that it ‘burped’ at the person opposite. A mild act of aggression, really.)
Natural yoghurt was only bought for curries, as made by my dad, and for addition to cucumber to make raita. And it was pretty acidic only, back in the day, so you didn’t really want to sit spooning it in in this form.
Later, it seems like there were many happy years of Coop set yoghurts, in four-packs. They came with a little bit of sweet liquid on top, which you could drink off (if mum wasn’t looking) – long before the days of yoghurts you could drink.
The vanilla one was particularly good. I think they were trying to emulate the French yoghurts you get now in little glass jars. Worked for me. I’m sure there was an indoctrination in better quality European yoghurts when I went to Germany on exchange.
And once in Poland, there were more variants. The aforementioned yogo-smietanka is really a combination of yoghurt and sour cream – quite thick, tangy. Breakfasts in the school boarding house (my first time in Poland) were around the bread plus model favoured across Europe.
The point of yogo-smietanka was to mix it with the Polish equivalent of cottage cheese (more on that in another post, I think), plus jam, and spread it on bread. If you can imagine a kind of chunky fruit yoghurt spread, that was it.
Greek yoghurt came later. A friend who loved feeding people first introduced me to it, serving it with honey, and probably something else fruit based, for pudding. I couldn’t believe how thick it was, how creamy, and indeed why I had gone so long in life without eating it.
So: what of cooking with it? Yoghurt and cucumber: already praised when combined with dill. And accompanying curry: on occasion, I think that really what I love most is the yoghurt and the naan, or perhaps what I eat most of would be more accurate.
I like the thing of yoghurt as a marinade for meat, to tenderise it. I like it, too, as a bit of an all-purpose sauce to go with yummy things like griddled courgettes. A kind of mayo for the east of the Med, perhaps.
A former colleague introduced me to the French concept of cakes made with yoghurt – conveniently, you measure all the ingredients with the pot of the yoghurt, if I remember rightly. They’re good. I should probably have another go at making them, but then I’m probably too busy just eating the yoghurt.
I had quite a long phase of making yoghurt – a 1l machine that sits at the right temperature overnight, and provides you with yoghurt in the morning. Go a step further, and strain the yoghurt, and you get a mix between Greek yoghurt and something almost like an old fashioned ‘set cream’.
This ultra thick yoghurt is particularly wonderful with some berries, and some honey drizzled down the sides. But I had a bit of a phase too of layering yoghurt, whatever fruit I could find, and sprinkling some seeds on the top.
The latter is a Nigella Express one, adapted a bit. Particularly good if the Coop decided to sell off raspberries. I would stash them in little boxes in the freezer, and bring them out bit by bit to go with the yoghurt.
The other key place to use yoghurt is with things like chilli con carne. Dan’s version is to serve it in halves of pitta, adding salad, yoghurt, and a spot of grated cheese. Guacamole would of course be acceptable, but yoghurt is good as a calmer if the chilli is on the hotter side.
Realising that this is another post completed after midnight, I will stop there. But I will say one thing – if you find Onken Rhubarb yoghurt on special, you know what to do.