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Cravings and the original Greek style Tzatziki

Tzatziki with a slice of Greek olive bread
Tzatziki with a slice of Greek olive bread
My recent Greek style olive bread made me crave for some Tzatziki to go alongside with. But the problem is to find any fresh dairy products here in China. Finding original unsweetened yogurt without any kind of flavor addition and finding fresh sour cream is really something that requires a lot of searching and once you found it, it will set you back a little fortune. But sometimes you got to give in your cravings and so I tried my luck with this little neighborhood shop that is specialized in baked goods, some Russian imported goods (such as caviar and sparkling wine) and among all of these, sometimes they also carry yogurt and sour cream. But it depends on their mood, the day and their supply situation of fresh milk. But who knew, when I went down to check with them, they really had both. I quickly grabbed a good supply of sour cream (enough for a quiche Lorraine and the Tzatziki) and a bit pot full of yogurt. Both set me back about 11.50 USD. Well, the things you do to still your craving, right? So back home, I put myself to work to make this original Greek style Tzatziki recipe which is quite simple and easy to make. It was just not so easy to find it. I was really browsing a lot of recipes but none of them was really original, most of them used nonsense items such as feta cheese or lemon juice. So I was glad to find this recipe:


Ingredients:
  • 3 - 6 Cloves of garlic (up to your taste)
  • ½ Tea spoon of salt
  • 2 Table spoon (extra virgin) olive oil
  • 1 cucumber
  • 140 ml no sweetened natural yogurt
  • Pepper to season
  • 1 Table spoon of white wine vinegar
  • 4 Table spoon of sour cream
Peel the cucumber, then proceed to grate the peeled cucumber (not too fine). Then take the grated cucumber in your hand and give it a real good squeeze to get rid of all the excess water. Put the cucumber in a bowl. Now peel the garlic and squeeze it also in the bowl. Put all the other ingredients in the bowl and give everything a good stir. Cover the bowl up and put it in the fried (take an airtight container to store your Tzatziki in the fried, otherwise your whole food will smell like garlic). Let everything marinate over night. Next day your Tzatziki is ready for consumption. I personally love it with bread, with BBQ meat, with stuffed wine leaves, there is actually little foods that I would not like to have a good portion of Tzatziki added to. Oh my, suddenly I got the craving for a good hamburger paddy grilled on a BBQ with some fresh Tzatziki on top. Think I got to find myself a BBQ grill this weekend . Cravings continued, triggered by cravings!!!!

P.S.: By the way, soon I am going to have 10000 page views on my blog. That is worth a celebration I think. Stay tuned for more about this.

6 comments:

  1. this looks so appetizing... I was looking for a good recipe for tzaziki and now I need to look no more! think I am going to make this... right now!

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  2. yes I know exactly what you mean, the cravings. Especially when it's fresh Tzatsiki, with a slice of fresh bread. Enjoy and let me know if you liked it.

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  3. If you find it, go for it!
    I love Tzatziki, and you are absolutely right about the feta, but what about dill?
    I'm just draining soured milk in the fridge, let's see whether something like quark comes out of it.

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  4. Dill in the Tzatsiki, never tried it yet. Dill, for me personally, goes with Fish and not many other things. I think Tzatziki-wise I stay with the original.

    But now you need to explain. You are marking Quark? I want to hear more. Are you going to blog about it? Are you using Vollmilch, Pasteurisierte Milch, how did you sour your milk? This is something, if I would be able to do this, i would be in heaven. I have a yogurt maker, if that helps anyhow?

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  5. Are you sure? All the recipes I know require either mint or dill, or both for Tzatziki.
    I made two quark trials:
    with buttermilk, left overnight in the oven at 150 F/65 C, and then drained for several hours in the fridge. (The American buttermilk is thicker than the German one). The consistency was right, but it was milder.
    With fresh whole milk and sour milk. Since there is no such thing as Sauermilch in the US, I used yogurt instead. Left the whole thing 48 hours at room temperature and then drained it. And, of course, what was the result? A nice creamy yogurt!
    If I find raw milk, I could try rennet, but raw milk is very hard to find here.

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  6. For that, I am quite positive. But maybe I saw them, I saw the dill and the mint and immediately skipped reading. I just don't remember any Dill or Mint in the original Tzatsiki of my friend's grandmother :).

    Thanks a million for your idea with the buttermilk. Of course I won't be finding any fresh milk, rennet, buttermilk, sour milk and even whipping cream is hard to find :(.
    Now I got to make buttermilk first. I will try again the shortcut with the lemon juice and the milk. I am not sure if that would also work to make it into quark. I guess not so. Result will be following in my next bread recipe :).

    ReplyDelete