Tsatsiki Sauce - A Recipe

I set out to make Tsatsiki sauce this morning, because we got some dill in our CSA bag this week. I love Tsatsiki sauce. Here is my recipe. You'll note that it is not quite as easy as the one that I took it from on Epicurious.com.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups plain yogurt

• 1 English hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, grated
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt

• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

• 2 tablespoons minced fresh dill
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 6 pita breads, cut horizontally in half, then cut into wedges
• Olive oil

Preparation:

Line sieve with cheesecloth (I used a coffee filter) and place over medium bowl. Place yogurt in sieve. Cover with plastic wrap (didn't cover with plastic wrap, figured that fridge smells would only enhance final dish) and allow to drain in refrigerator overnight.

Mix cucumber and 1 tablespoon salt in small bowl; cover and chill 3 hours.

(Yeah, so I tried to do this at 6:30 this morning when I woke up with Ginny and did not see this "chill 3 hrs, mix with the salt first" business. This will be important later. File it away. Also, one hothouse cucumber, "unpeeled." What the hell does that mean? Unpeeled? Peel on? Peel off? If it said "peeled" - I'd know exactly what to do. So what does "unpeeled" in this context mean? I decided it meant peeled, since I don't remember ever having tsatsiki sauce with peels on the cucumber. This was way more work than my brain wanted to do at this hour. In the course of peeling the cucumber, I removed two of Charlotte's socks from Ginny's mouth. In the course of grating the cucumber, I had to go get Charlotte up, bring her downstairs, change her diaper, wash hands, go back to grating cucumber, remove Cinderella Barbie from Ginny's mouth - too late, she now has a permanentely disfigured hand, good time to teach our children about not commenting on other people's physical challenges, wash hands, go back to grating cucumber, remove Charlotte's hand from Ginny's mouth - I don't want to teach Elisabeth about not commenting on Charlotte's physical challenges, wash hands, go back to grating cucumber, got Elisabeth up, sent both little people into watch tv, oh dear, the TV is on the wrong input and Elisabeth can't find the TV remote, double 'oh dear' (not actual words used) Ginny has escaped and is eating Maggie's food, haul Ginny back and throw her outside, wash hands, resume grating cucumber, hear Charlotte at the gate hollering "IN IN IN IN IN" and realize she is throwing IN the diaper that I just put on her which means she is not wearing a diaper, go investigate, put Charlotte on toilet and let her do her business, re-diaper and give speech about leaving diaper on, wash hands and miraculously finish grating cucumber. Total time elapsed since beginning cucumber ordeal: 30 minutes.)

Transfer drained yogurt to another bowl. Mix in sour cream, lemon juice, dill and garlic. Squeeze out as much excess liquid as possible from cucumber. Stir cucumber into yogurt. Season with pepper. Cover; chill at least 2 hours. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated.)

(While chopping the dill, I had the lovely opportunity to assist Charlotte in putting her pants on, at her request. Said request was summarily revoked for no apparent reason once the pants were on, so off they came. And then she asked for "help", which I went over to give and fabulous meltdown ensued. One meltdown was insufficient so then she re-enacted the whole scene multiple times by saying (totally to herself) "Help. Help pants. Mama help pants. NOOOOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOO HELP PANTS, NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" and melting down into tears. Great, the self perpetuating tantrum. Total time elapsed helping Charlotte put on pants while chopping dill and stirring in ingredients? 20 mins)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place pita wedges on baking sheets. Brush with olive oil. Bake until crisp, about 10 minutes. Cool. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Store pita airtight at room temperature.)

(Children were outside for this part. All major catastrophes averted.)

Serve cucumber dip with baked pita wedges.

End result? Well, the "put salt on the cucumber and let it sit for an hour" part is actually critical - the salt would probably largely remain in the cucumber juice which you strain off, and notably not remain in the yogurt sauce. The tsatsiki is really salty. Way too salty. I realized it as I was adding all of that salt, and only added half of what they called for. So that is very disappointing.

I also realized that I need to take whatever the recipe says for prep time and approximately quadruple it if I have two awake children and one awake puppy.