Tarator

Ingredients

• Bulgarian yoghurt700 ml
• Cucumbers500 g
• Walnuts80 g
• Garlic3 clove
• Dill40 g
• Sunflower oil3 tbsp
• Cold water200 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Grate the cucumbers coarsely or dice them small and salt them.

   10 min

2. 2

   Leave the cucumber ten minutes to give up its water, but do not pour that water away.

   12 min

3. 3

   Crush the garlic with salt into a paste so it does not turn up in pieces.

   5 min

4. 4

   Grind the walnuts to a fine crumb, keeping a few larger pieces back.

   6 min

5. 5

   Whisk the yoghurt with the cold water until even and add the garlic and walnuts.

   5 min

6. 6

   Stir in the cucumber with its juice, the chopped dill and the sunflower oil.

   5 min

7. 7

   Chill it an hour and serve with an ice cube in each bowl.

   8 min

About the dish

The cucumber is grated or cut very fine and always salted in advance so it gives up its water. That water is not poured away — it thins the yoghurt naturally, without loss of flavour.

The yoghurt is Bulgarian, sour and thick. Sweetish European yoghurts make a different soup entirely, and Bulgarians consider them unusable.

The walnuts go in ground, into the soup rather than on top. They give a light body and an oiliness that separates tarator from plain cucumber yoghurt.

Worth knowing

• — Use sunflower oil rather than olive. Bulgarians use it specifically, and olive oil gives this soup a foreign taste.
• — Add just enough water for the soup to drink from the bowl. Too thick, and tarator becomes the snezhanka salad instead.
• — The ice goes into the bowl rather than the pot. In the pot it melts and dilutes everything; in the bowl it keeps the soup cold to the end.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

260 kcal

Protein

12 g

Fat

18 g

Carbs

14 g

More from Bulgaria

• Shopska salad — Tomato, cucumber and pepper under a cap of grated white cheese. The vegetables are cut large, the cheese grated fine.
• Banitsa — A filo spiral with white cheese and eggs, doused in yoghurt and bicarbonate before baking.
• Kavarma — Pork with mushrooms and peppers, stewed in a clay pot under an egg.