SATURDAY KITCHEN: Week Two
DILL
This week's ingredient is an absolute favourite of mine, ever since my first visit to Poland in snowy winter of early 2012, warming up with dill speckled soups, hearty plates of pierogi sprinkled generously with green leaves and a good blob of butter, and lots of chopped salads (including delightful mizeria) where dill featured heavily.
Dill, or "koperek" is the quintessential Polish ingredient for me, and I use it all the time in the food that I make. It seems to go with pretty much every vegetable and works equally well in light summery soups and salads as it does in hearty wintry dishes.
I remember fondly visiting my friend Eva and her family in Sofia, one hot Buglarian summer day a few years ago and her mum serving up Tarator, a dish somewhere between a cold soup and a salad. Chunks of cucumber, crumbled walnuts, lashings of greek yoghurt, a small grating of garlic and lots and lots of lovely, chopped dill.
It was so so good mopped up with fresh Bulgarian bread, so much so that I recreated it years later for our Moxon Christmas starter and it worked just as welll in the depths of a Welsh winter as it did that summer day.
So versatile, and a forever favourite.
Dill-ightful. (sorry, not sorry)
