By: Maria Moore

One of the great pleasures of shopping at the New Hartford Farmers’ Market is that Bob and I never quite know what culinary treasures we’ll chance upon. Recently it was fresh dill which Karl Dineberg had at his farm stand, or more precisely farm table. Karl sets up his one table, under his signature red umbrella and he carefully lays out the week’s bounty from his farm. We had made our purchases when Karl said: “Here, try some fresh dill, see what you think of it,” and he handed Bob several stalks of the fresh herb. We’ve learned not to argue with Karl when he says “See what you think of it” and so we thanked him and took our dill home.  Our next couple of meals were centered around the dill and what a lot of fun we had discovering how to use it in our cooking!

Here’s one great recipe we found online that used not only the fresh dill but also some fresh cucumbers that we also bought from Karl:

Yogurt-Cucumber-Dill Sauce
(’Tzatziki’ is the Greek name for this sauce)

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 2 cloves of garlic minced finely
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt (we left it out)
• 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper (we only had black, it worked fine)
• 1 cup of yogurt (called for Greek yogurt, we used Stonyfield’s)
• 1 cup of sour cream
• 2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and diced
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill (we used 1 tablespoon ~ we had a lot of dill to use up)

Preparing the sauce:

In a bowl combine the olive oil, the vinegar, the garlic, salt and pepper.  Mix it well. Using a whisk, blend the yogurt and the sour cream.  Blend the olive oil mixture into it and then add to it the cucumber and the fresh dill.   Cover and chill for 2 hours, or less if you have less time.

And there you have a really nice, cool sauce for the summer months.

Ways you can use the sauce:

We used the sauce with falafel, a Middle Eastern food which I got addicted to in London where Israeli falafel fast food restaurants were as ubiquitous as pizza parlors are here.  You can make your own falafel, but in our case, we used one of the Near East falafel mixes we picked up at Marandino’s.  Sadly, they were all out of pita bread but, ever flexible, we picked up some fresh rolls which worked almost as well.  Line the pita bread (or rolls) with lettuce and sliced tomatoes, add the falafel balls and garnish generously with the yogurt-cucumber sauce.

Our falafel and yogurt-cucumber-dill sauce meal with rolls substituted for the pita bread. We also added lettuce and sliced tomatores.

Other uses:

Use the sauce as a complement to grilled meats and vegetables; you can also use the sauce over poached salmon.

Substitutions:

If you really can’t find any fresh dill, you can use mint.  But the dill is really much nicer in this sauce.

Many thanks: To Karl Dineberg for bringing his farm-fresh produce to our local Farmers’ Market, and for his unfaltering good humor.

Catch up with Karl on his Dineberg Farm page on Facebook.

The New Hartford Farmers Market is on every Friday afternoon from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. on the green in Pine Meadow, rain or shine.  See you there!

Call For Recipes:

Send us your favorite recipe using Fresh From The Market ingredients and if we publish it, you’ll win a $10 gift certificate to the New Hartford Farmers’ Market.

Karl Dineberg (in shorts) and Bob Moore visiting at Dineberg's Farm Stand. Photo: Maria Moore

Karl recently added this iron chicken to his display with a "Don't Feed The Chicken" sign on it. Photo: Maria Moore