Cooking Masterclass with Total Greek
Recently Total Greek Yoghurt held a cooking masterclass at Atelier des Chefs with their head chef Andre Dupin.
The event began with a talk by a nutritionist, Hala El Shafie, preaching a healthy lifestyle and how to lose weight. As it was not sold as a weight loss day, this was rather surprising. It is always great to be able to grill a professional about the various diet and health myths but she didn’t really answer any of the questions thrown at her by the audience. Maybe she didn’t really know.
This was followed by a talk by a blogger who had lost a ton of weight, which I didn’t really pay much attention to as it was not relevant to me.
The next part was the cooking masterclas. We were to cook each of the 3 dishes created by the head chef of the cooking school, Andre Dupin using Total Greek Yoghurt as the common ingredient. Some of the dishes were made using the 0% yoghurt and some were made with the 2% yoghurt as the little bit of extra fat prevents it from splitting in the sauce.
Total Greek is the only proper Greek Yoghurt in the UK and it is not a “Greek Style Yoghurt”. It is also a live yoghurt with live culture that is recommended for a healthy gut. It is made from just milk, cream and culture with no sugar, sweeteners, thickeners or additives. The 2% pot has only 67 calories.
The first dish was Samosas with a minted yoghurt dip. For this recipe we used Brick pastry rather than filo as they are easier to work with and won’t dry out so quickly. The resulting samosa was crispy and light so the substitution was success.
We had great fun playing with all the combinations from the ingredients prepared for us. What was most fascinating were the portable induction hobs on which we were cooking. They were very quick and is the quality of the hobs you would find in the newer high end kitchens.
The second dish was Mackerel Tartare with minted cucumber soup. Using the yoghurt in the dressing for the mackerel was a brilliant twist. This was using the 0% Greek Yoghurt.
Next we made Pan fried Medallions of Pork with TOTAL Greek Yoghurt Gribiche and Fennel. The yoghurt was in the dressing for the fennel.A nice balance as the fennel gave a textural contrast to the meat.
We then made 2 dishes for dessert.The first was a Chestnut Tiramisu which sounded odd but is a terrific combination. Maybe it would have been better named something else as tiramisu raises certains expectation of how it should taste. You can find the recipe here.
We also made TOTAL Greek Yoghurt White Chocolate Mille-feuille with Spiced Plums, which was a matter of quickly cooking off the plums and then assembling ready cut slices of puff pastry and adding some of the yoghurt cream mixture and the stewed fruit. A light dusting of icing sugar made the end product look surprisingly professional. Nice trick.
Total Greek Yoghurt Tasting Notes:
Personally, I would always choose the full fat organic yoghurts, preferably from companies who say where the milk has come from. In the UK, I have only found Rachel’s who say that their milk is from grass fed cows. Not so easy to confirm though.Total says that although their product is not organic, the milk is taken from low intensity farms where the cows feed on grass anyway.
We were given several different flavours to take home and here is my review of the different flavours.
The split pots with honey – My favourite, the classic combination yoghurt and honey. This is wha,t my Greek colleagues used to have for breakfast in between their endless glasses of Greek Frappé Coffee.
I was a bit sceptical about the Tropical Fruit flavour but the combination of fruits was not too weird and was pleasantly surprised that I really liked this one.
The other one with a blueberry compote had a very nice tang, feel righteous having 0% yoghurt and a superfood too.
You can get all their flavours at all the major supermarkets and do try out some of the recipe ideas from their site : http://www.totalgreekyoghurt.com/
SlowFoodKitchen was guest of Total Greek Yoghurt.
