Babaganouj and beetroot dip!

As a part of my little sisters Girls Night In celebrations, in raising funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, I provided about half the food for her, and part of that was a bunch of dips! One of them was a romesco sauce, and the recipe for that can be found here. I make this all the time as the ingredients are cheap and readily available, and its so easy...

The other 2 dips I made were babaganouj and beetroot, both super easy, managable and delicious! Most of the ingredients you throw in the oven and roast, then blend it with a few other ingredients. Youll never buy bought dips again! Well, you probably will, but these are so delicious youll make more than you need so you can keep more for yourself!

Babaganouj

1 eggplant

2 cloves garlic (unpeeled)

1 tbsp sesame seeds

Greek yoghurt

half tsp sumac

Method

1) Prick the eggplant all over with a knife, place it whole, on a baking tray with the garlic (unpeeled) and then in a hot oven for 15-20mins, or until the eggplant has softened. You can put the garlic under the eggplant if you can to protect it from burning more, otherwise rub the garlic with some oil and tuck it under the eggplant as much as you can. Take them out and let em cool.

2) Put the sesame seeds in a fairly hot pan to toast. Once they start popping take them straight off the hob, as the residual heat in the pan will continue to cook the seeds, and if you leave it on the heat youll burn them, and if you take them too far, chuck them out and start again. Once they're nicely toasted, pop them in the blender/mixmaster/another container until everything else is ready.

3) Once the eggplant and garlic are cool, peel them both and pop them both in the blender. The eggplant should have deflated and look a bit shrivelled and sorry for itself, and the skin should be easy to peel off. If, while cooking in the oven, youve burnished the flesh of the eggplant - dont worry about it, that adds to the smokey flavour. However if you feel like you might have overdone the sesame seeds then leave a few of the browner bits of the eggplant out. Dont chuck them out though, you can add them later if you feel like the dip can take it - if youre like me youll just chuck the lot in!

4) Add salt and pepper as well as the sumac, to the blender which should have the eggplant, garlic, and sesame seeds. Add the yoghurt to the mix - some like the dip more eggplanty, some like it creamier and smoother - this is where you add as much as you like. Add 1 tbsp and blend, then taste. Its up to you if you add more or leave it. You can also use tahini, a sesame seed paste, however I dont use it because I dont like it much and prefer the lightness that yoghurt gives, but try it for yourself!

Beetroot dip

4 beetroots

yoghurt

half tsp cumin

salt and pepper

Method

1) Wrap each beetroot in foil with a shlug of oil, and place in a hot oven for about an hour.

2) Take the beetroots out and let them cool a bit. Youll find you can peel the skins off fairly easily (the fresher they are, the more easily the skin comes off). 

WARNING! Beetroot can stain your hands and clothes big time - some wear gloves when peeling them as the skin and colour gets under your nails and stains them for the night (unless you spend some time scrubbing).

3) Chop the beetroots up and throw them in the blender with the S&P and cumin. Add the yoghurt as you like it, some like this to be a chunky dark purple dip, others like it to be a creamier bright pink! Add it tablespoon by tablespoon until it tastes how you like it. Its delicious served with toasted pinenuts or walnuts and crumbled fetta with flatbreads.

Both these dips can be used as a dip or on polenta, mini toasts etc as canapes, which is what I did for my sisters party. Not a great pic below, but you get the idea! Id had a couple of glasses of bubbly by this stage and so the presentation was a little bit lacking!

Salsa Romesco

Sometimes you need to get rid of veges that are clogging up your fridge. Other times you need something healthy to jazz up a piece of chicken, or youd like to make your own dip to take to a party. The answer is salsa romesco. Of Spanish origin, the basics youll need are almonds, pine nuts and/or hazelnuts, roasted peppers, garlic and olive oil. Added bonus ingredients are red wine vinegar, roasted tomatoes, and onion. This post cant be called a recipe, its more a guide to making a romesco sauce that suits you. I didnt really use any measurements at all.

I decided to give some roasted chicken drumsticks a bit of life last night, and made my own version of this spanish sauce. I used Stephanie Alexanders recipe as a loose guide, but it got changed plenty, and I didnt measure anything. There are ways to make this the easy shortcut way, or a more drawn out, pottering in the kitchen way. I choose a fairly easy method, using jarred piquillo peppers I bought from Spanish Flavours in Mt Hawthorn. If you wanted to use peppers you have at home, blacken them either under the grill or over a flame/coals, put them in a plastic container or bag for 10 minutes. Once they're cooler, peel the skins off and discard them, and keep the flesh for when you need it.

I decided to use tomatoes in my sauce, so tumbled a punnet of cherry tomatoes (in my opinion the only safe bet when buying toms from the supermarkets) into a oven tray, with a whole chilli. A healthy glug of garlic olive oil (the healthy oil!) and a smattering of seasoning later and they were ready for the oven.

I put them under the grill, and kept checking back until they had blackened a bit. I pierced them all with a knife before grilling, as sometimes tomatoes pop and explode a bit, and I didnt really feel like dealing with that! Once theyre grilled, its up to you whether or not you peel the skins off, or drain the liquid. Stephanie Alexanders recipe says you should use Roma tomatoes and once grilled, lose the skin and put them in a colander for 20mins to drain. However the juices that had come out were delicious and full of tomato flavour, and I couldnt be bothered to peel them - besides, I like a bit of a char flavour on things!

The recipe also calls for blanched 3 times garlic, and cooked till its softened. I blanched it once and cooked it till it was soft, however it would be just as nice to hide it under your tomatoes, skin on, to soften that way.

I then chucked it all into my food processor, along with a handful of the jarred peppers (squeezed off their excess juices), almonds, a shlug of red wine vinegar, some salt and pepper, and blitzed.

Done.

Taste it, see if youd like more vinegar, more almonds... Secret is, to add less than you think to start out with, then taste it. You can always add more of something but its alot trickier to take it away! In this case I would have taken the seeds out of the chilli as it has quite an aggressive heat - it would be amazing used as a marinade for bbqs, but we were using it as a dip, so it was a bit much. Leave it out if you want.

Its SO versatile, and so easy to make. It doesnt require anything fancy, you can use any vinegar you like really, that you enjoy the taste of. Use lemon instead if you want. Its a very forgiving recipe, if you can call this post a recipe... This is definitely an everyday food - you're likely to have everything in the cupboard already, and its healthy enough to eat every day! Its certainly versatile enough.

Easiest way to jazz up a piece of chicken or red meat, use it as a dip, put it on bread with cheese and grill it, use it as a pizza sauce with lamb and fetta... Add mint, coriander or parsley... You'll be eating well!

Options for this healthy choice sauce are endless!