Cold yogurt soup with cucumbers and roses

You can’t have a summer in Bulgaria without a tarator on the menu. Tarator is Bulgarians’ beloved cold yogurt soup served in every Bulgarian home and in almost every Bulgarian restaurant, and most probably you’ve tasted it, too if you’ve visited our country during summer.

So we were very excited when we found the Persian recipe for this cold yogurt soup. “Ab Dough Khiar” is present in Persian cuisine as a traditional cooling soup for the hot summer days, which is strikingly similar to our favorite Bulgarian tarator. But according to the Presian tradition, more fresh spices, raisins and… roses have been added to the ingredients known to us in Bulgaria.

With all due respect and love to the classic Bulgarian tarator, this exotic variation from the Middle East has quickly become our big culinary discovery of summer. It’s a great world cuisine finding and part of our long-standing efforts to find, adapt, create and modernize recipes in which rose is present as an ingredient with flavor and function. So, we are excited to bring you this cooling functional rose ‘tarator’. We believe that once you try it, you will love it too.

And for many more and ever more curious cooking ideas and recipes with rose, do not miss to explore our culinary treasury in the Recipes section here.

COLD PERSIAN SOUP WITH YOGURT AND ROSES

PRODUCTS:
500 g of yogurt
500 ml cold water (or more, according to taste)
1 cucumber
2 sprigs each of dill, basil and mint
4 tbsp. Rosey’s Mark rose water
50 g of raisins
50 g of walnuts
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp salt
a pinch of black pepper

Rosey’s Mark dried rose blossom
olive oil

RECIPE:

1. The yogurt is stirred and poured into a bowl with the water.
2. Cucumber is cut into small cubes and added.
3. Add rose water, the finely chopped herbs and garlic, raisins and walnuts.
4. Season the soup with salt and pepper and mix well. Chill for at least 1 hour in the fridge.
5. Sprinkle with dried rose petals and olive oil and serve.