Wendy Ra­hamut

Yo­gurt is one of the fer­ment­ed foods de­vel­oped by prim­i­tive peo­ple the world over. In Mid­dle East­ern house­holds, mak­ing yo­gurt is an al­most dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ty. It's an es­sen­tial part of the Mid­dle East­ern di­et be­ing re­ferred to as "Per­sian milk" in Bagh­dad, as mast in Iran, as la­ban in Syr­ia and Lebanon, la­ban zaba­di in Egypt, and mad­zoon in Ar­me­nia. Yo­gurt is al­so an ex­cel­lent source of cal­ci­um and phos­pho­rous, vi­t­a­min A, sev­er­al B vi­t­a­mins and zinc.

As it's more di­gestible than milk, it makes a great food for peo­ple with lac­tose in­tol­er­ance. It al­so works won­ders for the di­ges­tive sys­tem help­ing to keep the good bac­te­ria in­tact with­in the in­tes­tine. Our Mid­dle East­ern cooks have not on­ly mas­tered the art of mak­ing fine yo­gurt they have cham­pi­oned its us­es in a myr­i­ad of ways. Not on­ly is yo­gurt splen­did in drinks, it makes a won­der­ful meat mari­nade, a fine ad­di­tion to cakes, and can be used as a low fat sub­sti­tute for sour cream in sal­ad dress­ings and dips, and it is al­so used as a ba­sic liq­uid el­e­ment in meat and veg­etable dish­es.

If you are buy­ing yo­gurt look for nat­ur­al yo­gurt with­out a lot of sweet­en­ers, colour­ing, flavour­ing, emul­si­fiers, thick­en­ers and oth­er chem­i­cal ad­di­tives and be sure that the yo­gurt you buy has live and ac­tive cul­tures. Home­made yo­gurt is sim­ple to make all you need is milk and a small amount of un­flavoured yo­gurt, here's how to do it.

CIN­NA­MON YO­GURT CAKE

2 1/2 cups all-pur­pose flour

2 tsp bak­ing pow­der

1/2 tsp bak­ing so­da

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup but­ter

1 1/4 cups gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanil­la ex­tract

1 tbs or­ange zest

1 1/3 cups thin yo­gurt

Top­ping

1/4 cup sug­ar

4 tsp cin­na­mon

Pre­heat oven to 350F

Com­bine 1/4 cup sug­ar with cin­na­mon and set aside

Cream but­ter with sug­ar un­til light and creamy, add eggs one at a time, beat un­til mix­ture is light and fluffy. Add vanil­la and or­ange zest.

Com­bine flour with bak­ing pow­der and so­da, sift. Add dry in­gre­di­ents al­ter­nate­ly with yo­gurt to bat­ter in 3 ad­di­tions, be­gin­ning and end­ing with flour mix­ture.

Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan, place one third of the bat­ter in­to pan, sprin­kle with one-third cin­na­mon, sug­ar mix­ture.

Lay­er with an­oth­er set of bat­ter and sprin­kle on cin­na­mon sug­ar, add last amount of bat­ter and top cake with cin­na­mon sug­ar.

Bake for 55 to 60 min­utes or un­til gold­en brown, springy to the touch and mix­ture comes away from the sides of the pan.

Re­move cake from oven, cool on rack for 10 to 15 min­utes.

Makes one 10-inch tube cake

MINCED LAMB KOF­TAS

1 lb minced lamb

1/2 tsp salt

Pep­per to taste

1 tea­spoon ground, roast­ed cumin or geera

1 tea­spoon, roast­ed, ground co­rian­der

1/4 cup fine­ly chopped fresh mint

2 cloves gar­lic, minced

3 tbs un­flavoured yo­gurt

1 tbs fine­ly chopped chadon beni or fresh co­rian­der

Veg­etable oil for fry­ing

In a large bowl com­bine the minced lamb, salt, pep­per, geera, co­rian­der, mint, gar­lic, yo­gurt and chadon beni.

Form in­to small meat balls about 1 inch in di­am­e­ter.

Heat oil in fry­ing pan and fry meat balls un­til brown and cooked through. Drain and serve with tamarind chut­ney.

Makes about 30 meat balls.

YO­GURT

6 cups milk (any type)

1/2 cup evap­o­rat­ed milk

3 tbs pow­dered skimmed milk (or full cream)

2 tbs nat­ur­al un­flavoured yo­gurt

Boil milk un­til frothy, cool to 109F stir in evap­o­rat­ed milk and pow­dered milk.

Stir in yo­gurt and strain in­to a glass con­tain­er.

Cov­er and let stand undis­turbed for 12 hours in a warm part of your kitchen, ovens are good here.

Stir the yo­gurt, it will be thick al­most like pourable cus­tard.

Re­frig­er­ate and sweet­en if de­sired.

Thick store bought yo­gurt usu­al­ly con­tain­ers sta­bi­liz­ers and thick­en­ers to get it to that very thick con­sis­ten­cy.

Makes 7 cups