Romanian & Bulgarian · Soup
Tarator
- Easy
- 15 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 500 g kiselo mlyako, Bulgarian yoghurt
- 300 ml very cold water
- 400 g cucumbers
- 2 garlic cloves
- 60 g walnuts
- 20 ml sunflower oil
- 1 large handful dill, chopped
- salt
- ice cubes, to serve
Equipment
Mortar & pestle
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Pound the garlic with a good pinch of salt in a mortar until it is a smooth ivory paste with no visible pieces left.
- Whisk the yoghurt on its own until it is completely smooth and glossy, then let it down with the cold water a splash at a time to the thickness of single cream.
- Dice the cucumber into 5 mm cubes, crush half the walnuts coarsely, and stir both into the yoghurt with the garlic, dill and oil.
- Season, chill for 30 minutes, then taste again; cold blunts salt and it will want more than it did warm. 30 min
- Serve in bowls with an ice cube and the rest of the walnuts scattered over.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauvignon Blanc (Sancerre)
- Also Right
- Grüner Veltliner
- From the Taps
- Berliner weisse
- Zero-Proof
- Cucumber-lime water
Green plates want green wines: vinaigrette’s acid meets its match, and the difficult vegetables surrender to Grüner.
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