Savory hangop

For the last week of August me and my family went to our summerhouse in France. My younger sister Clara and I love cooking together and so had taken upon us the task of cooking. Cooking and grocery shopping in France is so much more fun than it is at home! The farmers market is like a celebration of color, there are so many different kinds of vegetables, herbs, fruits. When you're used to shitty Dutch supermarkets you wont know what hit you. 

The star in this dish is not the soup, it's the topping. Instead of using creme fraiche we made a savoury hangop. Hangop is yoghurt that is strained from all the liquids, resulting in a very full, creamy and delicious substance, somewhat resembling greek yoghurt. The great thing about this is it tastes like it's extremely fattening, but it's only yoghurt. I like that.

So for dinner we made a grilled peppersoup with a savoury hangop and garlic croutons for topping. The soup was delicious, but the hangop was a real winner. Wanna try?

Grocery list

- 1,5 litre of yoghurt 

- Zest of one lemon and a squeeze of lemon juice

- 1 clove of garlic, pressed (or more to taste)

- a dishcloth

It's very funny to see how little hangop remains after draining the yoghurt. So much of yoghurt turns out to be water! Take the dishcloth and pour in the yoghurt. Fold it together and make a knot in the fabric, like this:

If you're impatient (like we were), you can squeeze some of the liquids out already. Hang the dishcloth above the sink and leave for at least two hours. When the hangop is ready, stir in the lemon zest  and the garlic and leave for half an hour. Season to taste. Eat on top of peppersoup or tomatosoup. 

You can very easily turn this in to a dessert. Leave out salt, pepper and garlic and eat it like a lemonquark. So good.