THICK YOGURT CREAM

It seems that in Turkey, elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, and India, people have long drained yogurt overnight, so that it acquires the consistency of cream cheese. If it needs thinning, they will add back milk or other liquid.

This ancient and simple practice offers great advantages to the home cook. It can lift yogurt out of the diet category into a mainstream role in the home.

For starters, the procedure eliminates the chalky taste objectionable to many, particularly in low-fat or nonfat yogurt. Then, it allows a liquid of your choice to be stirred into the yogurt. Finally, even a little liquid stirred into the thickened cream produces an exceptionally smooth consistency.

Uses for Thick Yogurt Cream

Crackers may be spread with the thick cream, as you would cream cheese. This may be topped with olives, anchovies, or roasted red peppers, or with any of the classic cream cheese garnishes. This finds ready acceptance for appetizers, particularly from those wishing to avoid high-fat cheeses and pates, but not limited to them.

Thick yogurt cream, with orange juice stirred in, is excellent with beets. Also black beans. Use the cream as a garnish floated on soups, either plain or flavored with toasted cumin. It is a natural spread for sandwiches, alone or with a little mayonnaise.

The thick cream may be stirred into spinach or other vegetables to make an Indian raita. It is especially useful here as the mixture will always be thick enough and can be thinned to desired consistency.

Recipes using thick yogurt cream occur throughout this cookbook. In our household we have gotten quite used to having it constantly on hand, and would not know what to do without it.

Uses as Sour Cream

If the straining procedure is halted at 2 or 3 hours, a sour cream consistency will result. This is good to know, but we have found it simpler just to keep a supply of fully thickened yogurt cream, then dilute with milk, water, or other liquid if we want a sour cream consistency.

Either way yogurt can substitute for sour cream in such classics as mushroom and sour cream omelet, salmon and sour cream, beef stroganoff, beets and sour cream, borscht and sour cream. (Jennie Grossinger’s classic book, The Art of Jewish Cooking, is a natural source of sour cream recipes.)

For general substitution remember that yogurt cream is somewhat tart, therefore not an automatic substitute for sour cream in all applications. Try and taste is the only advice that can be given.

Traditionally draining is done through damp cheesecloth in a strainer or hung over the sink. However, a strainer alone works well.

A fine strainer, such as you buy in a kitchen store, is preferred. The coarser mesh, available in hardware stores, will work well enough, but will pass through a little of the yogurt.

Place yogurt in strainer, cover, and drain in refrigerator overnight. Yogurt will acquire the consistency of cream cheese.

The draining may be continued for several days, with the cream gradually getting thicker day by day.

Thickened yogurt cream may be stored in the refrigerator a week or more.

Kitchen Logic Note

In our household, we have come to use yogurt in a variety of ways, in both its guises as sour cream and cream cheese. As a practical matter, we do not store the two different products. We keep a constant supply only of the fully thickened yogurt, thinning this if we want a sour cream consistency. Thinning may be done with milk, or a liquid appropriate to the specific use, or even water. Or, refrigerate the drained liquid, said to be healthy, and thin with this.

Uses As Cream Cheese

Yogurt cream cheese may be considered in place of cream cheese generally. Suggestions are given in the Appetizer and Sandwich sections.

The thickness provides an opportunity to infuse with a flavored liquid. Stir in orange juice, for example, and you create a flavored cream for beets or black beans (see recipes).

Stir in sherry, and you have a sophisticated garnish for black bean soup. Other yogurt garnishes for soups are given in the soup section.

Ayla Algar calls this product "mellow yogurt cream."

To Cook With Yogurt

Yogurt by itself will curdle if heated. It requires the same care as sour cream, added to beef stroganoff, for example, only after the cooking is done and the dish about to be served.

Yogurt may be used in cooking, however, if stabilized with cornstarch or egg white. Other recipes use whole eggs and flour which also stabilize.

Claudia Roden, in A Book of Middle Eastern Food, page 81, (see Bookstore) describes a traditional Middle Eastern method for stabilizing yogurt. One tablespoon of corn starch is stirred into 5 cups of yogurt and the mixture cooked gently for 10 minutes, stirring in one direction only. This evidently heat-proofs the yogurt.

Fortunately this 10 minutes of tedium can be avoided, achieving the same result in the course of a recipe. The key would seem to lie in not heating the yogurt too suddenly at the beginning.

Taste Adjustments

The yogurt cream may be enriched with addition of a little olive oil or softened butter. This also mitigates the chalky taste of nonfat yogurt.

Addition of milk sweetens the cream somewhat, lessening the tartness. (The draining already has removed some of the sour flavor.)

Try adding mayonnaise. A little produces a marked effect.