Zaytinya’s Chilled Yogurt Soup

Yogurt, in all its forms, is an essential element of Eastern Mediterranean cuisine. Soups made of yogurt are a particular comfort food in Turkey, served hot in the winter months and cold in the summers. While those Turkish soups often add rice and maybe saffron, we love this cool garlicky version. Closer in style to the Persian cold soup called abdoog khiar, with flavors of cucumbers, raisins and rose petals, it makes a perfect canvas for the season: peas in the spring, corn in the summer and honeycrisp apples in the fall. OK, I know it’s a lot of slicing and dicing just to create the garnish, but that’s what makes it so interesting and versatile. We like to add a kick of salty feta flavor to the soup by stirring in some of the brine that blocks of feta are stored in.