Bulgarian Milk Salad (Snezhanka) with Yogurt and Cucumbers

Sour milk

1. The days when milk went sour before you could carry it home from the store are long gone. Nowadays store-bought milk doesn’t sour, or at least not for a very long time. So, unfortunately, to make soured milk from store-bought milk you have to put in some work. Once, while buying milk in a supermarket, I noticed that among the parade of pretty bottles and cartons on the shelves, at the very bottom, in some plastic crates, there were plastic bags of milk piled up. Those who are older will surely remember that milk was once sold in such paper-and-plastic bags. Surprisingly, this milk turned out to be much closer to natural, tasty, it doesn’t turn into grains and lumps when cooking sauces, and, most importantly, it sours normally into soured milk in the proper time. You can usually find good milk.

   

2. Natural milk sours and becomes soured milk in a few days. It is enough to pour the milk into a jar, cover it with a napkin and leave it in the room. The ripened soured milk, which contains a lot of liquid, has to be drained. This is how homemade curd cheese is made in villages. I remember my grandmother had a huge linen bag, always clean and sterile. They poured almost a bucket of soured milk into it and hung it from the ceiling until the liquid stopped dripping.

   

   We need to do roughly the same. Pour the finished sour milk into a clean cloth bag and hang it up. Let a considerable part of the liquid drain off. Not all of the liquid, but most of it, otherwise instead of a thick fermented milk product you will get curds, which are not very suitable for a salad. The consistency of the finished drained sour milk is creamy and uniform. It is very similar to delicate creamy Italian mascarpone cheese.

   

3. There are other ways to make the fermented milk base. You can often buy ready-made yogurt of acceptable quality, without flavorings, additives or colorings. That is even better. I also discovered recently that you can buy an inexpensive cream cheese with a consistency like very thick sour cream.

   

Salad

1. For a yogurt salad you need the youngest, freshest cucumbers, firm and crisp, not limp. Ideally, straight from the garden bed.

   

   Whatever their ripeness, the cucumbers must be peeled with a knife. With a sharp knife, dice the cucumbers very finely. Note that they should not be grated or chopped by any other method, but diced. Much finer than the vegetables are cut for Olivier salad.

2. Bake the red bell pepper in the oven or, if you can, roast it over an open flame. Then the baked pepper will be incredibly aromatic, which has a positive effect on the dish. Scrape off the charred skin with a knife.

   

4. Pick the sprigs from the dill, discarding the coarse stems. If the dill is a little limp, it is worth putting it into cold water beforehand, and then the dill will become firm and pretty. Lightly toast the chosen nuts in a dry frying pan until they smell pleasant. Keep a few nuts aside to sprinkle on the finished dish.

5. Chop the dill, a clove of garlic and the baked pepper quite finely. Mix the cucumbers with the herbs, garlic and baked pepper, sprinkling with ground black pepper and salt to taste. Mix the vegetable part of the yogurt salad very thoroughly.

   

6. Add the vegetables to the prepared sour milk and mix.

   

   The consistency of the salad should be like a very thick cream, and this curd appetizer should hold its shape and not spread.

   

Serving

1. It is best to serve in small portions. Put 2-3 green salad leaves on a plate and a few scoops of the salad, the curd appetizer, on top. I recommend placing the portions of salad on toasted bread.

   

   If you like, add a few fresh dill leaves and olives to the salad, and be sure to sprinkle it with chopped nuts, very generously.