GREEK YOGURT

Greek yogurt, called yiaourti, is thick and creamy, nothing like the runny commercial yogurts found in Western Europe and in the U.S. Yogurt has been a tradition in Greece, indeed throughout the Balkans, probably ever since the first itinerant shepherds tried to store milk in their goat skins only to find that the agitation and the heat had turned the milk into something else: slightly sour, unusually refreshing, and delicious.

Traditional Greek yogurt is made either with sheep’s milk or with goat’s milk, although today cow’s milk yogurt predominates in most supermarkets.