Your Yoghurt

Oh you lucky, lucky yoghurt lovers. Not only an M&S-based double-whammy post from me, but my very first GUEST YOGHURT POST! Or indeed Your Yoghurt as it shall be known.

The lovely Rachael who works with me and indeed has the good/mis (delete as appropriate) fortune to sit next to me has volunteered her recipe and delicious-looking picture of her home-made Tzatiki.

Hopefully the first of many, ladies and gentlemen of the Yoghurt-Loving World, I give you:

Rachael – Your Yoghurt

Ever since the news broke that my colleague and desk-neighbour Amy had devoted a whole blog to yoghurts (and their respective spellings) I have found myself pondering my own yoghurt habits, with the realisation of just how versatile yoghurt is as an ingredient and accompaniment to savoury meals.

One particular revelation to me recently has been homemade tzatziki, hard to spell, but delicious with Greek-style meatball/kofte dishes, salads or just with freshly toasted pita bread. It’s incredible how easy this is to put together, and with ingredients that I tend to have knocking about in my fridge. It’s also been a bit of discovery how flavourful tzatziki can be when it’s home-made, rather than just a poor relation of hummus/taramasalata – the coolness of the mint & cucumber balancing the heat of garlic, with an added tang of lemon juice… I think I’ve found the taste of summer.

I like to think I’ve just about cracked the recipe (if you can even call it that) – it goes something like this:

Handful of chopped cucumber (about 2 inches of a stick) – cut out the seeds and pat dry with kitchen towel. Add salt.

Handful of chopped fresh mint (or dill, if you prefer)

1 clove finely chopped/crushed garlic – now, some people may baulk at adding too much fresh raw garlic to a dip. But tzatziki, for all its refreshment, is supposed to be flavourful, and so I say, add garlic with abundance. If once tasted, the garlic is overpowering, you can balance it out with more lemon juice and mint.

About half a lemon’s worth of juice

About a tbsp. of Olive oil (again, can be used to balance out an excess of garlic)

And finally, not forgetting, the focus of this blog, plain yoghurt (about 3-4 tbsp.). Some recipes call for set Greek-style yoghurt, but I personally am happy with a lighter yoghurt, such as Sainsbury’s own brand natural yoghurt. Yeo Valley is a good compromise.

Mix at will!

Once you’ve mastered this, the possibilities are endless. I added olives, feta, tuna and some spring onions to this to make a delicious filling for pitta bread at lunch. Or it’s tasty with some smoked mackerel and carrots to dip in.

Yoghurt of the Day

Ok, it’s time to address the serious lack of yoghurt action on this blog. Sorry yoghurt lovers, I don’t like to leave you hanging. And now all I have is some murky pictures and an M&S double-dip. 

M&S is never my grocer of choice – is it anyone’s? I still remember when it was the outrageously expensive smart, treaty place where my mum would shop once a year. Then when it was the place down the road from my college which was still really expensive but 20 metres closer than Sainsburys so, according to level of hangover, my willpowers loss would often be its gain. And for around 18 months, when I lived with my now husband on the South Bank, the small, sad, commuter-overrun M&S in Waterloo station was my local supermarket and indeed the only place within 20 minutes walk where we could buy things that resembled food.

Although I now have more organic, vegan, free-range and middle-class places to buy food than you could throw a Muller Corner at within ten minutes walk in East Dulwich, if I’m coming back from town via London Bridge, M&S has once again reared its solid, green head as a necessary convenience.  

Last night I raided its much-depleted yoghurt section just before jumping on the 21.40. And this is what I found.

Marks and Spencer Extremely Low Fat Alphonso Mango and Yellow Passion Fruit Yogurt (sic)

Flavour: 3/5 – I think I’m unfairly comparing it to the Waitrose Alphonso Mango Yoghurt in my head which was TRULY delicious and tasted of actual Alphonso Mangoes. It’s possible that the mango qualities of this yoghurt are not at fault, but the passion fruit definitely overwhelmed it and it ended up a bit confected. As well as not being that yoghurt. Definitely points off for that.

Value for money: I can’t remember how much this cost. (Note to self – if you’re specifically going to have a Value section in your Yoghurt Analysis, you probably need to note HOW MUCH YOUR YOGHURTS COST.) It was under a pound. Probably in the 50-70p region. Close enough? If that’s true, value is probably around 2/5. Not good. It was after all, as no fake Italians have ever sung, just one yoghurt.

Spelling: 0/5

Presentation: 3/5 – Ok. Not great. Not really stylishly detailed or minimalist.   

Overall satisfaction: 2/5 – I was no more satisfied when I finished the yoghurt than before I ate the yoghurt. This is surely the opposite of satisfying. Unsatisfactory indeed.

Recommendation: I ate it on the sofa around 10.15pm after getting back from dinner where I didn’t have dessert (that’s why it’s a crappy, dark picture). I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Marks and Spencer Active Health Prune Yoghurt. Bloody hell, these pictures are dreadful, aren’t they. I’ll take a second to turn the sodding light on next time.

 

Flavour: 4/5 – I like yoghurt. I like prunes. I really like prunes in yoghurt. This had the advantage from the very beginning. There is certainly room in my imagination for a better prune yoghurt, but I’m happy that this exists in the world until I find it. If I’m picking holes (and if I can’t over-analyse minute details of yoghurt not here then WHERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHERE?) it was a bit too sweet and not really yoghurty enough.

Value for money: As per the Mango yoghurt above. Probably therefore 2/5. Although maybe another point for just being a prune yoghurt. So 3/5.

Spelling: 0/5

Presentation: 1/5 – Harsh, but fair. Talking of over-analysing minute details of yoghurt, I have so very many issues with this packaging. Firstly, ‘Active Health’. I couldn’t find their ‘Passive Health’ Yoghurt, but maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. Secondly, ‘A serving provides 1 x 10⁹ of the culture Lactobacillus acidophilus’. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? TO ANYONE? Apart from meaning that I now know how to type small numbers like ⁹ because I just looked it up. Lastly, ‘Enjoy as part of a healthy lifestyle that includes a balanced varied diet and exercise’. WT-yoghurty-F? Not only should there be a comma between ‘balanced’ and ‘varied’ (shouldn’t there? Proper pedants, confirm/deny please) but I didn’t realise I picked up a special offer of Judgement with a 2-for-1 on Generic Lifestyle Banalities thrown in. M&S, I just want to buy some yoghurt. Do not ever EVER use your yoghurt to tell me how to live my life, thank you a-very much. Oh god, and I’d forgotten ‘Bone Health’ too. Seriously M&S, just stop writing random words that don’t mean anything on your yoghurts, just stop it right now.

Overall satisfaction: 2/5 – Quite satisfied until I looked more closely at the packaging. There is perhaps a lesson there.

Recommendation: Buy it, eat it, then immediately throw the packaging away before you can read it. Or eat it in the dark.

Yoghurt of the Day

It may possibly, somehow, have escaped your notice that Nicole Scherzinger is the new face of luxury yoghurt. Yes, I know. Luckily, Pop Justice has written about it here, so I don’t have to try and be funny about it. But really. Nicole Scherzinger. Yoghurt. It nearly writes itself.

Now I think we can all agree that this is not the type of yoghurt which would ordinarily grace the pages of For The Love Of Yoghurt. I just find the whole Muller Corner experience deeply unsatisfying, whether it’s the weird fruit gloop in the side corner, the dusty sweet things in the ‘treaty’ versions or the too-sweet yet simultaneously too-acidic yoghurt. However, they form a part of the National Yoghurt Consciousness which cannot be denied, so it was probably about time they reared their triangular head.

And when my husband, after watching the advert with the aforementioned Pussycat Doll for this new premium praline-flavoured confectionary-based dessert, came home with a pack, I really had no choice. He thinks he fooled me into believing that it was a lovely, thoughtful, funny present so I could review it for my hilarious yoghurt blog, but really I know that he just wanted a sweet chocolatey gloopy fake dessert of which I’d usually massively disapprove. Don’t think I don’t know, darling.

Flavour: 3/5 – Not sure how to judge this really, I mean it’s just NOT YOGHURT*. But given that it’s NOT YOGHURT, it tasted alright really. A bit like slightly disappointing chocolate pudding. Which, when all’s said and done, is still chocolate pudding, and that’s a Good Thing. Weirdly, while I liked the little chocolate balls, and I liked the creamy yoghurt/chocolate sauce bit, I did not like the combination of little chocolate balls WITH creamy yoghurt/chocolate sauce. Go, as they say in America, figure.

Value for money: ?/5 – I have no idea how much this cost. It was a present, and who googles the price of a present? Especially such a thoughtful, lovely present from my husband.**

Spelling: 0/5 – Seriously, what did you expect? The chance of this calling itself yoghurt when it’s not even very good at being yoghurt was always slim.

Presentation: 3/5 – It’s been quite a few years since I’ve eaten anything which comes in two differently-sized triangular pieces of plastic and, I have to say, I found the novelty mildly diverting.

Overall satisfaction: 3/5 – 2/5 for the overall experience and an extra 1/5 because I love a surprise present. Particularly a surprise present made of yoghurt. But as above, disappointing on the combination front, which is, I’m presuming, largely the point of the exercise.

Recommendation: Christ knows. If you want some chocolate pudding, buy some chocolate pudding. If you want some yoghurt, buy some yoghurt. Maybe buy this if you like mini chocolate balls and wasting half a dessert.

*I feel it pertinent at this point to list the ingredients. Given that the ingredients to most of the yoghurts I eat are ‘milk’ and ‘those natural live culture things which turn milk into yoghurt’ I thought this was pretty enlightening:

“Yogurt (Milk), Sugar, Whipping Cream (15%), Water, Rice Flour, Milk Powder, Cocoa Butter, Glucose Fructose Syrup, Modified Starch, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Powder, Flavourings, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder, Whey Powder, Gelatine, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin, Caramel Syrup, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, Barley Malt Extract, Vegetable Fat, Glazing Agent: Gum Arabic, Thickener: Carrageenan, Salt, Crispy Fancies Coated with Milk Chocolate (8%)”

**Ok, given the inherent self interest noted above, they currently cost 89p on Ocado and at Waitrose – seriously, 89p????? For two?????? Forget my sneering and unenthusiastic write-up above and GO AND BUY THESE YOGHURTS!!!!! Worth 45p for being triangle-shaped and containing little chocolate balls ALONE.

Yoghurt of the Day

After a teaser on Friday, here is a full write-up of Stapleton Farm Fig and Date Yoghurt.

Ok, this wasn’t just my Yoghurt of the Day, more a Yoghurt of the Weekend. Definitely one for the relaxed mode of Saturdays and Sundays, just not enough pace about this yoghurt to be a weekday yoghurt. Pace is apparently a hot word at work right now, so there we go, perhaps the first time it’s been used to describe a yoghurt. But perhaps not – let me know if you come across any other uses of the word ‘pace’ in conjunction with fermented dairy products.

Creaminess: 3/5 – It wasn’t that it was too tangy and acidic, just lightened by the fruit so not too creamy overall.

Flavour: 4/5 – Delicious and very approachable. The friendly face of yoghurt – so many other things going on that the essential yoghurtiness was perhaps a little hidden, but the figs, dates, grains and seeds were all quality team players in this breakfast-friendly assemblage.

Value for money: 3/5 – At £1.10 it looks like AMAZING VALUE given all its funky extras, but it’s actually a weird sized pot which means its smaller than expected. Still, a good price for

Spelling: 0/5 – Disappointing, Stapleton Farm, disappointing. For all your Seventies packaging and your traditional Englishness and your wholesome and interesting ingredients, you still can’t bloody well spell yoghurt.

Presentation: 4/5 – Great. JUST the right side of wackaging.

Overall satisfaction: 4/5 – Very tasty and a really well thought out flavour combination.

Recommendation: Have it by itself. I had it at first with some cinnamon and honey granola which just turned it into a bit of a mess. The rest of the yoghurt which I ate with a long handled teaspoon straight out of the pot while the fridge door was still open was much more successful.

Yoghurt Round-Up

Last weekend there were too many weddings (two) and not enough yoghurt. Why does no-one serve yoghurt at a wedding? No, this isn’t a joke and there isn’t a punchline to follow, I just really want to know why.

I haven’t really subjected any specific brands or yoghurts to the rigorous tests and analysis of Yoghurt of the Day, so instead, here are a few recent yoghurt highlights.

This was the smallest bowl of yoghurt in the world, made up for by a decent range of yoghurt toppings – crunchy banana bits, dried cranberries, muesli, flaked almonds, all the best breakfast things. Part of the overwhelmingly average breakfast buffet at Walton Hall in Warwickshire where we went for Wedding number 1. The hall was very beautiful, and much larger than the bowl of yoghurt.

The best thing which has happened on the Yoghurt Agenda this week has been a large pot of Glenilen Farm Raspberry Yoghurt. This was by some margin the most delicious, wonderful yoghurt experience I have had since starting this blog. Unfortunately, I ate half of it in one go, so it was in the bin before I had a chance to take a picture of the pot.

Here is a picture I took before enjoying it with some granola.

And here is is an overview of the entire breakfast, just to get it in perspective.

The mug says ‘My Booze Hell’ and was a present from my husband. It is by the artist Jeremy Deller and I love it for reasons too obvious to explain. The tray is a new addition to our household and one which I find very exciting. Who doesn’t like eating off a tray? Not me.

I haven’t done a full report of the yoghurt because I think my unparalleled adoration is intrinsically connected to the unctuous layer of raspberries at the bottom. And I can’t yet bring myself to think through the complexities of raspberries AND yoghurt, yoghurt AND raspberries, what would the yoghurt be WITHOUT the raspberries (and for that matter, what would the raspberries be without the yoghurt?) and all the other deeper issues that this would entail. One day, one day for sure, Glenilen Raspberry Yoghurt will have the full write-up that it so richly deserves. Oh god, just looking at the picture on that link is making me go a bit weird and cravey. Seriously, BUY THIS YOGHURT.

Before I lose it completely, in EXCITING YOGHURT NEWS, I found a yoghurt by accident today in Waitrose that I had NEVER SEEN BEFORE (sorry, a positive outbreak of capitals in this post. I just can’t be held responsible for the levels of my passion about yoghurt) and it looked like the most delicious thing ever, plus it was sort of lurking suggestively in the corner of the yoghurt shelf, so I had to buy it.

This is it on my desk today, and tomorrow it will be on my spoon and in my stomach. Also love its slightly retro 70s styling.

Happy weekend, Yoghurt Lovers.

 

Yoghurt of the Day

The underlying raison d’etre of this blog is undoubtedly to find the Platonic ideal of yoghurt. Well, that and to write the single most pretentious sentence ever, so that’s one off the list.

Well, today’s Yoghurt of the Day comes pretty close. It’s certainly got the most convincing tang of any yoghurt I’ve blogged about so far and, just as it asserts on the label, really does taste like it’s very simply and purely made. In fact it reminds me a little bit of the yoghurts that my parents used to make in a electric yoghurt maker that, if memory serves, I won at a school fete. Because I was a small child and not the mature, sophisticated adult that I am today (!) I thought it was horrid. Slimy and acidic and eggy and just…weird. But today, that style seems to work for me, which slightly makes me wonder if maybe it’s not that our tastes develop as adults, we just get increasingly more embarrassed about calling out things which are DISGUSTING and so train ourselves into liking them. Either way, I thought this Glenilen Farm Handmade (but not by my parents in 1980s Birmingham) Yoghurt (AND EVEN SPELLED THE RIGHT WAY!) was really brilliant.

Creaminess: 3/5 – any creamier and it wouldn’t have the smug, knitted taste that yoghurt has to have at its core to approach the Platonic ideal. So in a way, 3/5 is the perfect creaminess score.

Flavour: 4/5 – really good, lactic, very tangy, definitely captures the taste of the raw milk and the funkiness of the fermentation. In fact, it would wipe the smiles right off the faces of those irritating women from Perle de Lait.

Value for money: 5/5 – considering that I bought this during a Wholefoods swoop (which are becoming unsustainably regular), I would say that around £1 is excellent value for this premium, natural, handmade product.

*NEW CATEGORY!* Spelling: 5/5 – let’s face it, this is going to be quite a binary category (I’m aware it ACTUALLY ISN’T you maths pedants, because obviously scores would have to be out of 1, but I’m just speaking generally, like a normal person.) as it’s kind of all or nothing. This, being ‘yoghurt’, is therefore all.

*NEW CATEGORY!* Presentation: 5/5 – delightful, it’s made of glass and looks like a mini milk pail. Plus it’s the perfect size for a generous portion.

Overall satisfaction: 4/5 – but a very high 4/5. There’s no denying this is excellent and very honest yoghurt.

Recommendation: I had it with banana and muesli at breakfast. The tang factor is great for waking you up in the morning, but might be a bit too much for pudding. One for yoghurt purists.

Yoghurt Round-Up

(listen to this while reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zODPHIim874 )

–          Yesterday evening, I tried combining a Yeo Valley Mild and Creamy natural yoghurt with peanut butter and melted chocolate. I can now tell you that you should NOT DO THIS. Ever.

–          I have heard tell of not only a frozen yoghurt place in Central London that I’ve never heard of, but one where you get to dispense your own yoghurt which comes in about a gazillion flavours. It’s called Tutti Frutti and the website is here. If you want me at any point over the summer, I’m likely to be inside, lying beneath the Cheesecake Flavour nozzle with my mouth open. Interestingly, they DO have a Chocolate and Peanut Butter flavour so maybe it was just me. I did also make a really disgusting lentil dahl last night which was so foul that not even the addition of ¾ large pot of my Everyday Yoghurt could save it, so perhaps I was just having an off-night.

–          Office sources pointed me in the direction of THIS this morning. Don’t say I don’t keep my finger on the yoghurt pulse.

–          Similarly based in this morning’s office chat (I must say I have 100% team support on the yoghurt front. I am a lucky woman indeed) I knew it was only a matter of time before the yoghurt/yogurt/yoghourt discussion came up. To be honest, I’m not sure I currently have the time or the strength. Obviously this needs to be addressed thoroughly, in detail, with serious academic rigour, and right now I just can’t live up to researching the spelling of Yoghurt with those criteria. Until I do (and worry not, THAT DAY WILL COME) here is a Telegraph article on the subject. Apologies for the Telegraph, but there we go. They do make up for it by using the word ‘row’ which I feel is exactly the right word for describing a fight about yoghurt.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5388116/Row-erupts-over-yoghurt-producers-using-American-spelling.html