From "The Breakaway Cook"
by Eric Gower

Baked Peas With Tarragon,Yogurt and Pistachios.

Posted on Thu, Oct. 16, 2008

Yogurt, the old way
By Joyce Gemperlein
For The Inquirer

Our daughter refers to my childhood as "the olden days," so when I
told her that the first time I tasted yogurt was in college, she acted
as though I had said I didn’t have shoes until I was 18 years old.
"No way!" she said.

Funny she should say that, because "no-whey" yogurt – the unflavored
version drained for a minimum of four hours – is a key component of
one of her favorite pasta dishes.

To millions of American children, yogurt is a fact of life – and
dessert. Rather than knowing it as an ingredient, they think it edible
only if it contains added sugar in the form of flavorings, fruit,
cereal, or even bits of candy.

In the olden days, before the American marketplace pumped it full of
such things, yogurt was a happy, healthy, calcium-rich union of
certain bacteria and milk that originated in the truly olden days of
the Neolithic period in Central Asia. It then was popular in ancient
Greece, Rome and Egypt – and still is. (Tzatziki, the
yogurt-garlic-dill dip, has a widespread modern following, for
example.)

In the United States, though, yogurt began to infiltrate the
refrigerators of everyday Americans only in the 1970s. Before that it
was identified with immigrants, then with hippies living off the grid
in California.

But even before yogurt was groovy, enterprising new Americans Sarkis
Colombosian and his wife, the former Rose Krikorian, saw that it could
be profitable.

In 1929, the couple began what is now our robust yogurt culture by
founding the nation’s first yogurt manufacturing plant, Colombo & Sons
Creamery, at their small farm in Andover, Mass.

Their product, full-fat and non-flavored, was based on Rose’s
traditional recipe from Turkish Armenia, the immigrants’ home
country. At first, it sold only to European transplants familiar with
its taste and virtues. But by 1940, according to the Massachusetts
Historical Society, it was selling well throughout New England.

Over the years the company grew, expanded its offerings, and soon had
to compete with the product of another immigrant, Daniel Carcasso from
Portugal, whose company, Danone (now Dannon), pioneered fruit-flavored
yogurt in 1947. (Dannon is the world’s top-selling brand. The
Colombosian family sold its company in 1993 to the General Mills
conglomerate.)

Now yogurt is as ubiquitous a refrigerator item as milk – be it plain,
laced with fruit jam and/or cereal and/or candy, frozen like ice
cream, packed into tubes, carbonated to attract more tweens, and, just
recently for baby boomers, marketed as a "probiotic" aid to digestion
and the immune system. There are pet snacks covered in it, skin
conditioners and make-up containing what purports to be yogurt; it’s
an ingredient in toothpaste and cereal.

All of which is why U.S yogurt sales doubled to $5 billion from 1998
to 2006, according to the market tracking company Euromonitor.

Shopping for yogurt requires a glossary: Swiss or custard style is
mixed with fruit; sundae-style has fruit on the bottom; probiotic
means it contains bacteria friendly to the digestive system.

But my favorite type of yogurt is the triple-strained, thick,
unflavored Greek style, which, happily, is also becoming more
available. (Look for the Chobani, Fage and Oikos brands.)

However, since purchasing a yogurt strainer, a strange-looking,
conical footed contraption made of white plastic and fine plastic
mesh, I discovered that supermarket brands (but not the type that
contain gelatin) can be drained to produce similar yogurt – sweet and
creamy with consistencies ranging from thicker to cheeselike.

As many people of Middle Eastern descent know, it is delicious eaten
cold, perhaps with a drizzle of honey and figs in season, among other
ways.

It is also an excellent ingredient, but remember:

Bring it to room temperature before including it in a hot dish so that
it does not separate.

Don’t boil anything containing yogurt. Heat the mixture gently just
until it is warm or it will curdle nastily.

Don’t heat it to more than 120 degrees if you want to preserve its
beneficial bacteria. Stirring it in at the end of a cooking process is
best.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress