Cook the Book
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Use this labneh in Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Couscous and Mograbiah with Oven-Dried Tomatoes from their Ottolenghi cookbook. Or serve it as an addition to a cheese plate (or just for an afternoon snack).

Reprinted with permission from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Copyright 2013. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold.

About This Recipe

Ingredients

  • 4 1/2 cups (1 liter) natural goat's 
milk yogurt (or full-fat cow's 
milk yogurt)
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 to 1 1/4 cups (200 to 300 ml) olive oil
  • 1/3 to 1/2 cup (10 to 15 g) dried mint
  • good grind of black pepper

Procedures

  1. Line a large bowl with a piece of cheesecloth or other fine cloth. In another bowl, mix the yogurt and salt well. Transfer the yogurt to the cheesecloth, pick up the edges of the cloth, and tie them together well to form a bundle. Hang this over your sink or over a large bowl and leave for 48 hours. By this time the yogurt will have lost most of its liquid and be ready to use as a spread.

  2. To go the whole hog, leave it hanging for a day longer. Remove the cheese from the cloth and place in a sealed container in the fridge. Once it is thoroughly chilled, preferably after 24 hours, roll the cheese into balls, somewhere between the size of an olive and a walnut.

  3. Take a sterilized jar about 2 1/2 cups / 600 ml in capacity. Pour some of the oil inside and gently lay the balls in the oil. Add some more oil 
and continue with the balls until all the cheese is in the jar and immersed in oil. Seal the jar and keep until needed.

  4. Before serving, scatter the mint and pepper on a flat plate and 
roll the balls in it.