
I often make substitutions and adjustments to make recipes work for ingredients already available in my pantry. I rarely follow recipes even when baking, where precise measurements and specific ingredients matter a bit more as compared to season-to-taste cookery. Some tweaked recipes turn out fine while others get filed in the “meh” or “time to get takeout” cabinet.
One ingredient that I consider irreplaceable is yogurt. Substituting milk, cream, buttermilk, or any other similar product just doesn’t work most of the time.
My favorite yogurt brand is Fage, a tangy Greek-style yogurt strained to a thick consistency. It’s similar to Arabic labneh and is sometimes referred to as, drum roll please, yogurt cheese. As much as I like the taste and texture of Fage yogurt, I’d rather have it as a quick snack than as a cooking ingredient. It’s fairly expensive and plunking down $15 worth of yogurt on a batch of yogurt-braised chicken doesn’t make much sense to me.










