Snezhanka

The Bulgarian Snow White salad: strained yoghurt, cucumber, walnut, garlic, and a great deal of dill

Origin: Sofia & Plovdiv, Bulgaria

From the journey of Dill.

Snezhanka means Snow White, for the colour, and it is Bulgaria's most-ordered meze. It is the same set of ingredients as tarator, the cold yoghurt soup, with the water left out and the yoghurt strained thick, and Bulgarians are quite firm about the distinction: one is drunk from a bowl and the other is scooped with bread, and calling either by the other's name will be corrected. Some menus list it as mlechna salata, milk salad, or simply as salata ot kiselo mlyako. The yoghurt is the reason the dish works and Bulgaria has a particular claim on it. Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, one of the two organisms in a standard yoghurt culture, was isolated and named from Bulgarian soured milk by Stamen Grigorov in 1905, and the country's dairy culture is correspondingly serious. Proper Bulgarian yoghurt is sharper and thicker than most, and strained overnight it becomes dense enough to hold a spoon upright. Against that thickness and that sourness, dill is the herb that works. It is used generously, chopped fine, and it goes in raw at the end; anything gentler disappears under the garlic and the yoghurt. The walnuts are not optional either. Bulgaria puts crushed walnut into a whole family of cold yoghurt dishes, and here they give the salad its faint grittiness and a richness that stops it from being merely refreshing. It is eaten as a first course with rakia, and in summer it is on every table in the country.

Ingredients

Yoghurt

  • 1 kg full-fat plain yoghurt, preferably Bulgarian

Salad

  • 2 whole cucumbers, about 500 g
  • 1 tsp fine sea salt, for drawing the cucumber
  • 4 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste with a little salt
  • 80 g walnuts, roughly crushed, plus more to finish
  • 5 tbsp fresh dill, very finely chopped

Dressing

  • 3 tbsp sunflower or mild olive oil
  • 0.5 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1 pinch freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Line a sieve with muslin, tip in the yoghurt, set it over a bowl, and leave it in the refrigerator overnight to drain. You should be left with roughly 500 g of very thick yoghurt.
  2. Peel the cucumbers if the skins are thick, halve them lengthways, and scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon. Grate coarsely or dice very small.
  3. Toss the cucumber with the teaspoon of salt in a sieve and leave for twenty minutes, then squeeze it firmly in your hands or in a cloth to drive out the liquid.
  4. Beat the strained yoghurt smooth in a bowl with the garlic paste, the oil, the salt, and the pepper.
  5. Fold in the squeezed cucumber, the crushed walnuts, and the dill.
  6. Cover and chill for at least an hour. Taste again before serving, since cold blunts salt and it will almost certainly need a little more.
  7. Serve in a shallow bowl with a few more walnuts and a drizzle of oil over the top, with bread and rakia.

Notes

Bulgarian yoghurt is sold by Balkan and Eastern European grocers and is worth seeking out; Greek yoghurt is thicker to start with and needs a shorter strain, perhaps four hours. For tarator, the soup version, do not strain the yoghurt at all: thin 500 g of it with 300 ml of cold water, add the same cucumber, garlic, walnut, dill, and oil, and serve with ice cubes in the bowl. The two dishes are the same idea at two consistencies. Do not make it more than a few hours ahead. The dill fades, the garlic strengthens, and the cucumber weeps however well you squeezed it. Some Plovdiv versions add a spoonful of crushed walnut oil, and a few add a very small amount of finely chopped mint alongside the dill. Neither is standard but both are good.

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