Yoghurt and goat’s cheese with spring herbs

A sprightly herb-scented cream cheese is useful for spreading onto crusty bread and serving on top of grilled meats. The flavour of the cheese can depend on whatever herbs are in season.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6 with crusty bread

200g creamy goat’s cheese
150ml live yoghurt
1 or 2 small cloves of young garlic

Herbs: a tablespoon each of fresh herb leaves, tarragon, young thyme, chives, whatever

Details

Achieving the perfect results

1. Mash the goat’s cheese with a fork then stir in the yoghurt. You will have a creamy, slightly lumpy mixture.
2. Peel and crush the garlic cloves to a pulp, the stir them into the cheese with a grinding of black pepper.
3. Chop the herb leaves. They should be quite large, so they keep their flavour and add texture to the cheese. 
4. Check for salt, you may well not need to add any depending on what your goat’s cheese was like.
5. Stir the herbs into the cheese.
6. The young leaves of thyme, so tender in the summer, can be used but this is also a chance to use the fleshy, summer herbs such as tarragon, chervil and dill.
7. This is also an interesting way to experiment with the herbs that come into flower in mid-summer. Thyme, chive and coriander flowers are all worth trying stirred into a cream cheese such as this, as are marigold petals.

This recipe is supplied by The Pantry and Parlour.