Cacik

Cacik

Garlicky yogurt, cool cucumber and dried mint — Turkey's all-purpose summer soother.

Total
25 min
Serves
4

Turkey's cool answer to summer: thick yogurt beaten silky with grated cucumber, garlic, lemon and dried mint, loosened just enough to spoon. Cacik works as a dip, a sauce or a chilled side soup — and it makes anything grilled taste twice as good. Keep a bowl in the fridge and watch it vanish.

Ingredients

  • 500g Natural Yoghurt
  • 2 tsp Lemon Juice
  • 1 tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 1 tablespoon Dried Mint
  • 1 Cucumber
  • 2 cloves minced Garlic

Instructions

  1. Put a sieve over a large bowl, line it with a thick sheet of non-dyed kitchen paper or a clean muslin cloth, and spoon in the yogurt. Cover with another sheet of kitchen paper and leave to strain in the fridge for a minimum of 12 hrs.
  2. Add the lemon juice, most of the olive oil and the dried mint to a bowl and stir well for the dried mint to soften and soak up the juices. Mix in the strained yogurt, then pour away the strained yogurt liquid and leave that bowl to one side.
  3. Halve the cucumber(s) lengthways and remove the seeds by running a teaspoon from the top to the bottom of the flesh, halve the cucumbers widthways to make them shorter and easier to handle, then coarsely grate each one into the bowl the yogurt was straining over. Using clean hands (or a clean muslin cloth), squeeze as much of the liquid out of the cucumber as possible.
  4. Add the strained, grated cucumber, garlic and ¾ tsp flaky salt to the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Garnish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of dried mint.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories
120
Protein
6 g
Fat
8 g
Carbs
6 g

Adapted from bbcgoodfood.com. Rewritten and re-photographed by MealIdeas.

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