A formula for making dip with whatever you've got
Dips for dinner, part II
Dips can be anything you need them to be: tart, creamy, tangy, light, hefty, chunky, smooth. And if your dip or assortment of dips are substantial enough, they can even be dinner.
They’re also an excellent way to use up odds and ends, and you know how much I appreciate versatility. Dips are the kitchen sink of the snack world: almost anything can be put into one.
Last week I made a dried mushroom thing, with a texture between a dip and a relish. (Was I inspired by Alicia Kennedy’s mushroom pâté? Probably!) I also mixed together a yogurt dip, seasoned with Z&Z’s excellent spices: I poured in lots of their za’atar and sumac and finished it with their Aleppo pepper. (This is not a Z&Z ad, I just love them.)
A few weeks ago I ate what is probably my favorite dip to eat out, the Syrian muhammara at The Green Zone, which is also one of my favorite restaurants/bars that I will miss very much, which I am also not paid to say.
And the dip of my childhood was a block of cream cheese with a cup or so of Pace “Picante” (sarcastic quotes mine) poured over top, then microwaved and stirred together. It’s pink like faded Pepto Bismol. My sister and I ate it a lot. I now reserve this dip for her birthday.
I’m not writing today about salsas, because they are their own class of dips that deserve their own post. I’ll likely never write about guacamole or hummus because although I’m not a purist per se, I don’t stray far from what’s deemed traditional. And fondue and processed cheese dips are glorious, obviously, but I don’t make them often, so you should seek the appropriate experts for help there.
Do you really need a formula for taking any ol’ handful of ingredients and turning them into a dip? Probably not. I think you’re smart enough to figure it out.
But here’s what I do, generally:
Start with a base: yogurt, spreadable cheese, silken tofu, cooked beans, cooked or raw vegetables, nut/seed butters or soaked nuts/seeds that you’ll blend.
Season the base: choose one spice or seasoning you want to use and build up from there. This is obvious but worth noting anyway: if you’re adding salty ingredients (preserved lemon, soy sauce), don’t add more salt until later.
Blend if you want, add liquid if needed. I like a silky smooth dip, generally. I usually add water when blending. Rather than diluting flavor, as you might expect, it sort of ties it all together. Don’t underestimate water! If I’m making bean dip, though, I add bean cooking liquid.
Taste and adjust for salt (“needs more salt” is the name of this newsletter, after all), fat (a little oil can add needed richness), and acid (rice or apple cider vinegar, lemon or lime juice, tamarind concentrate, pomegranate molasses, etc., etc.; they’ll all brighten and accentuate.)
Add heat in the form of spice or literally add heat by serving your dip warm. Unlike revenge, some dips (especially bean-based ones) are better — or at least more satisfying — served warm.
The dip I’ll focus on today is tahini-based. Before I get to it, though, since tahini is an ingredient that is typically stripped of context when it appears in recipes on the internet, some context:
Tahini is made from sesame seeds. As Tienlon Ho writes in this excerpt from the book You and I Eat the Same by Chris Ying:
Sesame is everywhere. It has come to represent a great deal to a great many different cooks around the world. But in spite of all its many variations in appearance, flavor, and application, the sesame in all the world’s oils, pastes, and bread toppings is one and the same species: Sesamum indicum, first cultivated in the Indus Valley at Harappa (current-day Pakistan) some four thousand years ago.
The whole excerpt is worth a read for much more sesame background. Sesame built civilizations and remains an important crop and ingredient throughout the world. (I feel compelled to also mention that some of the best sesame seeds are grown in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which is still in the midst of a civil war.)
For more reading on tahini (but actually much more than tahini), see: Hummus and Gentrification in Jaffa by Joel Hart in Whetstone; What Is the Arabesque Kitchen? by N.A. Mansour in Eater; and, to tie all that together, What We Write About When We Write About Food by Ligaya Mishan in T Magazine.
How did I land on using tahini as the base of a dip? I was probably influenced by tahini sauce served with falafel, but I think the zeitgeist struck, too; tahini is very “ingredient used everywhere by every food person to the point of ridiculousness,” much like turmeric and kimchi. (I’m not saying this is a bad thing so much as acknowledging my own role in the global pantry food writing complex; this is why it’s important to provide context.)
Tahini is great if you’re paranoid that you’re randomly developing nut allergies as a 30-something (me) and you’re lactose intolerant and appreciate that tahini can lend creaminess in places where before you might have reached for cashew cream (also me).
We used to go through tahini so quickly that when we came across a Lebanese brand sold by the 8-pound bucket in Pittsburgh, we decided that yes, buying the bucket was a totally reasonable thing for two people to do. We’ve since gone through two buckets—which, by the way, make excellent compost holders if you’re not someone who cares about having a cute compost collector—and then switched to a different Lebanese brand available in bulk at another store in Rockville. (I forget where I read this, but I’ve heard that Lebanese tahini tends to be good across brands, and since it’s always at the Middle Eastern stores I go to, that’s what I get. Other brands that people really like are Seed + Mill and Soom. You do you!)
For this dip, I had a few sad, extremely flaccid carrots to use, plus spices that I’ll never finish before we move, but a girl’s gotta dream. I boiled the carrots in a little water, with granulated mushroom seasoning, turmeric, ajwain seeds, and seaweed flakes. I added apple cider vinegar halfway through cooking. Once the carrots were soft—softer than they were before, that is—I blended it with a quarter of a preserved lemon (flesh and all) and a generous scoop of tahini, plus lots of water. (Tahini thickens/turns grainy when you add liquid, but if you add enough water it will smooth out again.)
I didn’t need more salt or acid, but wanted something to make it pop, so I topped it with sumac. (Yet another ingredient that needs context one of these days! If you’ve got them, please share your favorite sumac-related reads in the comments.)
Reading
Really the only things I’ve read this week (besides articles linked above) are about Ukraine and Russia:
In Wordloaf, Andrew Janjigian shared a letter from a friend about Olia Hercules, which also includes several reading links and a few places to donate, if you’d like.
I cook from Olia Hercules’ books often — last year I wrote about her latest, Summer Kitchens, in the Bold Fork Books newsletter — and she’s sharing a lot on her instagram, too, of course.
The Calvert Journal linked several things in their recent newsletter, but I was especially grateful to learn of The Kyiv Independent, an English-language news source by people in Ukraine (they have a Patreon). Here’s an article to get you started: Before Ukraine, there was Georgia: How Russia recycles its 2008 playbook.
This made me hungry…Now I’m going to make a dip! Where are you moving?
Love this post, Kara, and the fact that you gave me a shout-out is way down at the bottom of a long list of reasons why.