Piperies me Giaourti Recipe (Roasted Peppers with Garlic Yogurt)

Piperies me giaourti pairs two ingredients that genuinely improve each other: sweet, smoky roasted red pepper and sharp, cooling garlic yogurt, dressed simply enough that both flavours come through clearly rather than being buried under anything elaborate.

This is a good example of how far a Greek meze table can go on very few ingredients, provided each one is properly good, since there is nowhere here for a bland pepper or a thin, watery yogurt to hide.

It takes only minutes to assemble once the peppers are roasted, and it holds up well made a little ahead, since the yogurt and pepper's flavours meld together nicely over a short rest in the fridge.

Key preparation steps

1. Roast red peppers until charred, then peel and slice.
2. Mix thick yogurt with crushed garlic.
3. Arrange the peppers and spoon over the garlic yogurt.
4. Finish with olive oil and serve.

Roasting the peppers

Char whole red peppers under a hot grill or over a gas flame, turning until the skin blisters black all over, then seal in a bowl covered with a plate for ten minutes, which loosens the skin for easy peeling. Deseed and slice into strips.

Good quality jarred whole roasted peppers, well drained, are a genuinely reasonable shortcut here if you are short on time.

The garlic yogurt

Mix thick, strained Greek yogurt with crushed raw garlic and a pinch of salt, adjusting the garlic to your own taste, since this dressing is meant to have real, noticeable bite against the sweetness of the peppers.

Assembling

Arrange the pepper strips on a plate, spoon the garlic yogurt generously over or alongside, and finish with a good drizzle of olive oil and a little chopped parsley if you like. Serve at room temperature or lightly chilled.

Tips from my kitchen