Savory Yogurt Bowl with Chickpeas, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, and Dill

I’m thrilled to partner with So Delicious, my favorite brand of dairy-free alternatives, to bring you this story and savory yogurt bowl recipe. Thank you for supporting the brands that support The New Baguette!

If a Ukrainian person refers to “salad”, nine times out of ten they mean a mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, and dill. Growing up, this salad made up about fifty percent of our summertime diet – partly because cucumbers and tomatoes were wildly abundant and partly because the salad was the most delicious thing you could eat. Ukrainian cucumbers are so fragrant, you could smell them from a mile (err, kilometer) away; the tomatoes so sweet that it actually makes sense that they’re a fruit; and the dill? There are no words.

The best part of the salad is that after you let it sit for a while, all those salty veggie juices pool up at the bottom of the bowl and you get to dip your pumpernickel bread crusts in there. (Rather, you get to fight with your table-mates about who gets to do that).

The dish requires zero fancy ingredients and no cooking, yet it symbolized the pinnacle of the whole year. It never ceases to amaze me how many elements have to align – the sun, the soil, the precipitation – in order to produce just one delightfully prickly, sweet-and-sour cucumber, let alone an entire harvest. The salad represented the season of bounty and we savored it for as long as we could.

Our summers would culminate with a weeklong pickling marathon, during which my mom would cram every single cucumber and tomato she could find into glass jars, fill them with a vinegary brine, and store them away for the winter. I was too young to handle any of the canning but my mom did let me ration the aromatics – dill, garlic, and peppercorns – among the jars before she filled them.

Sometimes, when I think about my former life, I wonder if it really happened. But what I do know is that when I catch a whiff of summer’s first cucumbers at the farmers market, the memories all come flooding back.

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To kick off the summer season here at TNB, I’m super excited to partner with So Delicious, my favorite brand of dairy-free yogurt. With winter hibernation finally behind us, I’m all about spending more time outside and less in the kitchen, and opting for simpler meals. One of my favorite dinner shortcuts includes using So Delicious unsweetened yogurt. This dairy-free yogurt is creamy, tangy, cooling, and satisfying in so many recipes – you can use it as a base for a meal like I am here, swirl it into pureed soups, or add a dollop on your pancakes or waffles.

Sure we’re all familiar with the yogurt-granola-fruit combo, but I am obsessed with the savory yogurt bowl since it makes for the perfect speedy dinner and is endlessly customizable. The inspiration behind this recipe is, of course, my beloved Ukrainian salad. I added spiced chickpeas for protein and textural variety; a drizzle of olive oil for extra richness; and a sprinkling of sumac (a lemony Middle-Eastern spice) for brightness and color.

This savory yogurt bowl is ideal for hot summer days since it requires minimal prep and cooking time, and you can have it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Here are some other ingredients to try in a savory yogurt bowl:

• Roasted sweet vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, or butternut squash

• Fresh vegetables like sliced radishes or torn arugula

• Pesto or olive tapenade

• Za’atar or dukkah

• Toasted nuts or seeds like almonds, hazelnuts, pepitas, or pine nuts

• Pomegranate seeds

• Citrus zest and/or juice

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