Ted gets in a curdle

… curdled milk that is ... yoghurt.  Something hit me the other day, something that I had singularly failed to notice before, and that’s just how much chiller real estate is allocated to yoghurt in supermarkets.  Far more it seems to me than any of its milk product cousins like butter and cheese.

Who is eating all this yoghurt? Well, everyone, everywhere. It seems that yoghurt is indeed a global phenomenon, and has been since ancient times. We eat it in hundreds of different dishes, we drink it, and even lather it on our face in pursuit of beautiful skin. Depending on where you live, your yoghurt could be made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, water buffalo, horses, camels or even yaks.

Like many things the production of yoghurt wasn’t really industrialised until the early 1900’s. In 1919 a chap called Isaac Carasso set up business in Barcelona and named the business after his son “little Daniel”, hence Danone, or as it later became known in the US, Dannon. In 1933 the Czech’s in Prague got in on the act by adding jam fruit to plain yoghurt. So with all this yoghurt around, how on earth do you make your yoghurt stand out so people will choose it over all the others and pop it in their trolley. I am sure it’s a complex formula, and one that I think these folks have got right. 

The Collective Dairy have taken the approach of making some (sort of) traditional flavours and also some not so run of the mill, in their limited edition gourmet range. I have eaten passionfruit, coconut & lime, banoffi, blood(y) orange, raspberry & amaretto, blackcurrant & beetroot, spiced pumpkin, and now the best of all … “Xmas Pud”.  It really does taste like traditional Christmas pudding, with all that lovely fruit mince of sultanas, spices and orange peel sitting in little puddles among the thick and creamy yoghurt ... mmmmm … and the second best bit is knowing that yoghurt is a very healthy food and really good for our digestion.  So good is this stuff that I paired it with my favourite Xmas Pud beverage – Pedro Ximenez (Hem N ezze)  – a sweet luscious, raisiny, sticky, dark sherry, that’s Christmas Pudding in a glass ...