Interesting Things You Can Make Out of Milk: Labaneh
Labaneh is delicious middle-eastern dish with a similar texture to cream cheese but much cleaner, sharper taste. Delicious as a dip, a mezze, a tapa, a spread or a sandwich filling, you can have it plain or customise it with herbs, spices and flavourings in whatever way you fancy.
Ingredients:
- Half a litre of yoghurt (or more - increasing quantities doesn't much affect the recipe)
- Salt (optional)
First of all, stir a pinch of salt into your yoghurt (fresh, home-made yoghurt, of course), then pour it out into a sieve lined with cheesecloth (a clean teatowel) over an empty bowl to catch the whey runoff.
Now gather the ends of the cloth together and twist into a wobbly bundle. If you do it right, the teatowel shuold look a little like a picasso-esque sculpture of an elephant:
Leave that in a cool place for about 18-24 hours, or until it has reached a consistency that you are happy with. A traditional way to prepare labaneh is to let it drain for about 2 days until it is very firm, then roll it into little balls, put the labaneh balls in a jar and cover them with olive oil. Presumably, labaneh prepared this way will stay fresh for a long time (and be deliciously oily) because the oil prevents contact with air, but the recipe I'm giving you today will produce a slightly softer, more spreadable/dippable texture, so it only needs to drain for about a day.
After draining overnight or longer, the yoghurt will have reduced in volume to about a quarter and become thick, firm and cream-cheesey.
That is pretty much it - your labaneh is done. Eaten just like this it is very tasty - fresh and sharp-tasting with slight acidity but loads of richness and wonderfully creamy texture - but it's also a blank canvas waiting to be jazzed up with all kinds of good things. This is one way I like to do it:
Ingredients:
- A handful of flat parsley
- A few sprigs of mint
- Half a teaspoon of cumin seeds
- Olive oil
- Salt
- Pepper
- A pinch of Cayenne pepper
Now squash the labaneh out until it's flattish and fills the bottom of your container (this is easiest if you run a teaspoon under the hot tap and then use the hot, wet back of the spoon to shape the labaneh - otherwise it can stick to the spoon and you get in a mess).
Heat the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat until they become fragrant, but take care not to let them burn. In the meantime, finely chop your parsley and mint. Combine herbs, pepper and cumin seeds with a generous couple of glugs of olive oil and stir them all up to make a thick green dressing. Pur this lot over the dish of labaneh, and finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt over the top and a little scattering of cayenne pepper - for colour and a little bit of heat.
Now toast a pitta bread, and enjoy.
Get creative with your flavourings too - maybe stir in a little finely chopped garlic and chives when the yoghurt is still liquid to create a sort of Boursin-esque effect. Or how about fresh chilli and coriander? Or give it morrocan flavours with cumin, cinnamon and raisins. Sundried tomatoes, basil and balsamic vinegar - the possibilties are endless! Well, maybe not endless - I'd probably stick with savoury, vaguely european flavours: Not sure if curried labaneh, sweet-and-sour labaneh or seaweed labaneh sound great - but the possibilities are certainly many!
This is the last of my things-to-do-with-milk series, and I hope some of you can be bothered to give this one a try - it really is delicious and dead easy to make. I'd love to hear about how you get on with this - and any other recipes - and what different flavourings/seasonings/variations you've come up with!
Love love
Genghis
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