Beyond the fruit-sweetened stuff: Around the world, cooks turn to yogurt for a huge variety of culinary delights. From left: cast-iron chicken marinated in a yogurt-spice blend and topped with the Middle Eastern grain freekeh; a Persian cold yogurt soup; shitake frittata with labneh, kale and shallots. From Yogurt Culture by Cheryl Sternman Rule.
Ellen Silverman/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For centuries, cooks around the world have been tapping a powerful secret ingredient. It can bind casseroles, tenderize meats, meld with vegetables and spices as a cooling dip or blend with fruits for a tangy drink.

We’re talking, of course, about yogurt.

American consumers are just beginning to look beyond yogurt’s fruity, sugar-sweetened incarnations to explore its savory potential. But across the globe, the culinary culture of yogurt is ancient, thriving and incredibly diverse.

“I think yogurt is just a fascinating topic not just culinarily but culturally,” says Cheryl Sternman Rule, whose new cookbook, Yogurt Culture, is a pun of a title that explores both concepts.

Yogurt’s protean potential begins with the animal providing the milk. And that depends on where in the world you find yourself.

Most commonly worldwide, it’s cow’s milk. But goat’s milk (which has a lower lactose content and can be tolerated by more people) and sheep’s milk (which produces a sharper, more sour flavor) are also frequently used in countries like Greece and Turkey.

Buffalo milk yogurt, with its creamier texture and higher fat content, is a popular choice in India and parts of Asia, Sternman Rule says. And in Mongolia, where milk is considered sacred, yogurt makers turn to yaks, though mares and camels will also do the trick.

There are the endless ways to cook with, pair and transform yogurt. Mongolian nomads will dry it, press it and cut it into portable cubes, then turn the byproducts of yogurt and buttermilk production into a milk vodka. In the Middle East, yogurt is strained into a super thick, cream-cheese-likelabneh that’s spread on pita and topped with za’aatar spice mix.

In India, where yogurt is a daily, homemade staple, it’s eaten mixed with rice and in raita – yogurt-based side dishes with chopped vegetables or fruit folded in. When paired with spicy dishes, raita offer a cooling counterpoint.

Persians turn it into chilled soups and mint-cucumber dip, or dilute it with water and mint for a refreshing drink. Serbians drink it as jogurt,which Sternman Rule describes as “closer to buttermilk.” Albanians use it in elbasan, a traditional lamb casserole with a firm, baked yogurt crust. Eritreans drizzle it overfata, a dish of spicy tomato served over bread. Turks, from whose language the word “yogurt” derives, often pair it with kebabs.

The Japanese — who consume around 70 percent moreyogurt per year than Americans do — have been guzzling a beloved probiotic yogurt drink named Yakult since the 1930s. Demand for yogurt is exploding in China, where drinkable yogurts now account for nearly 20 percent of liquid milk products sold there.

Sternman Rule stuffs her book with a global smorgasbord of tempting recipes. Some were gathered during trips abroad, or adapted from interviews and cooking lessons with immigrants in the U.S. for whom yogurt remains an essential taste of home.

Iranian-born chef and memoirist Donia Bijan told Sternman Rule about a classic Persian soup. As an 8-year-old girl in Tehran, she took over soup-making responsibilities for her mother. And Sternman Rule says that as Bijan told her how to make the dish, “You could hear it in her voice, when remembering this time of her life, that it was an honor for her. … I think that yogurt is really a foundational food in many of these cuisines.”

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SOURCE: NPR
Maria Godoy