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Why you should never make tzatziki in a blender

Richard Cornish
Richard Cornish

There's a good reason yiayia made tzatziki by hand.
There's a good reason yiayia made tzatziki by hand.Bonnie Savage

When I make tzatziki in the blender it goes watery. P. Lindrum

You make tzatziki, the traditional Greek dip, sauce or dressing, in a blender? There are countless yiayias turning in their graves. Yoghurt is a gel. Bacteria are added to milk and eat the lactose and excrete lactic acid. The acid curdles the milk, causing the milk proteins to form long chains and link up to make a mesh that holds in the water and the other solids in a gel. When you blend the yoghurt you break apart those bonds and the yoghurt becomes watery. To make great tzatziki you need to gently mix two finely minced gloves of garlic, two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a teaspoon of salt into 475ml of plain yoghurt. Cover and refrigerate for 12 hours. Grate half a cucumber, place in a clean dishcloth and wring out the water. Fold through the yoghurt. Enjoy!

Lemon marmalade.
Lemon marmalade.Shutterstock
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I grow lemonades, which are a delicious fruit, and not nearly as bitter as some varieties of citrus. Would they be suitable for marmalade? And given they are much less tart, would I need to use less sugar? G. Costa

Lemonade lemons (Citrus limon x reticulata) are a cross between a lemon and a mandarin and are, as you write, not as sharp as a lemon. Marmalade is a form of preservation. If you add enough sugar to fruit and cook it, the osmotic pressure from the sugar draws water from yeast and bacteria, killing them or rendering them inactive. Also fruit preserves such as marmalade and jam need pectin to set. This is the starch in the cell walls that is extracted by cooking in water or the water in the juice of the fruit. The pectin won't bond and set into a gel if there is too much water. What the sugar does is absorb a lot of the water, allowing the pectin to jelly-up, as it were. So the sugar in marmalade is not about sweetness; it's about preserving the fruit and making the pectin gel. Follow an orange marmalade recipe and see how it goes. Perhaps if the marmalade is too tart you might want to shandy the recipe with a few oranges.

Letters

Brain Food by Richard Cornish.
Brain Food by Richard Cornish.Supplied

At this column we receive a lot of correspondence that doesn't make the grade for an interesting Q and A. For example, a few years back an email came in that read, "Where on earth in Mossman does one find brown sugar?" I was tempted to reply, "Ask one's staff," but that response was spiked. Over the past few weeks I have been emailing back and forth with a reader who complained her cakes smelled of onions. "Did you cut the cake with a knife used prior to chop onions," I wrote. L. Sullivan responded "No". "Did you cut the cake on a chopping board on which onions were chopped prior," I asked. She again responded "No". I then asked if she had onions in the kitchen. Yes was the answer. I asked if by any chance they were peeled. Yes they were. Were they stored near the butter in the fridge? "No, I keep the bits of peeled onions I have left over in a basket with my eggs," she replied. And there lay the problem. Eggs have porous shells and will absorb strong aromas.

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Send your vexing culinary conundrums to brainfood@richardcornish.com.au or tweet to @Realbrainfood.

Brain Food by Richard Cornish is out now from MUP (RRP $19.99, eBook $11.99).

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Richard CornishRichard Cornish writes about food, drinks and producers for Good Food.

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