It's All Greek to Me

Every once in a while my family needs a Greek fix. Most often I make Greek meatball stuffed pitas topped with tzatziki sauce. Homemade pitas are fun to make and are so much better than the cardboard store bought ones.

In the bowl of your mixer, pour 2 cups of water. Add 4 1/2 teaspoons of rapid rise yeast.

Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 teaspoons of sugar or honey and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Slowly add 4 cups of flour beating until you have a smooth satiny dough.

Cover and allow to rise until doubled in bulk.

Form into 3 inch rounds and allow to rise.

On a floured surface, roll them into 5-6 inch disks.

Bake in a 500 degree preheated oven on a pizza stone for 6-8 minutes. They should puff up into pillows. If you have some that stay flat, keep them aside and i will show you what to do with them later.

For the tzatziki, you need yogurt. If you are using regular yogurt, strain the liquid out using cheese cloth and a strainer set over a bowl. It can take a couple hours for it to drain.

Seed a couple cucumbers by scraping them out with a spoon.

Slice the cukes, sprinkle them with salt and drain in a colander over a bowl.

This is the regular yogurt after it has drained.

You can see how much liquid it gave off.

You can also use good Greek yogurt which is thick enough that it does not need to be drained. I had both on hand so I mixed them together.

Place the drained cucumbers in the bowl of your food processor along with about 5 tablespoons of fresh dill. Add 2 diced garlic cloves and some salt and pepper. Pulse until smooth.

Add the cucumber mixture to the yogurt.

This is a new product from Philadelphia cream cheese. It comes in 4 flavors and I chose garlic to use in my tzatziki. I like to add cream cheese to make it richer and this new cooking creme is the perfect consistency to just stir into the mix.

Tomorrow I will show you the rest of the sandwich recipe.