It is that time of year when cool creamy salads are delightful.  This is a wonderful, quickly-made greek salad that doesn’t need dressing or a shaker.  If you are planning to serve this immediately as a salad, there is no need to strain the yogurt or sweat the cucumbers.  However if the tzatzikis is to have a longer shelf life – go ahead, strain the yogurt and sweat out the water from the cucumbers.  Sweating is easy, an hour before making the salad, cut the cucumbers, – I use the fine slicer on the food processor – put in a bowl, salt heavily, and mix well.  An hour later there will be a lot of water in the bowl and the cucumbers will be limp.  Squeeze out the remaining water from the cucumbers and rinse well.   Sweating cucumbers gets rid of the water and any bitter taste.

Ingredients

3 large English Cucumbers – You can use any cucumbers, but if they have large seeds, cut them out.

1 Cup of Yogurt – Greek yogurt is the best, but recently I tried Nancy’s Low Fat Yogurt and it was excellent.   Dannon’s no-fat was a “thumbs down”! Nasty texture.

1 large clove of garlic finely chopped or pressed

5 large sprigs of dill finely chopped

Couple dashes of pepper

Directions

Finely slice the cucumbers – sweat them if necessary

Place in a large bowl

Add yogurt, garlic, dill, pepper

Mix well

Serve with pita bread or chips as a dip.  I love it with the pepper lamb bits I buy at Trader Joe’s or when I make a leg of lamb with rosemary, garlic and anchovies.  Side dish is rice cooked in chicken bullion and curry powder (1.2 a tsp.).

Hint - When I am using this as a dip, I use the shredder attachment of my food processor.  After the cucumbers have sweated, I chop them up as finely as possible.