DIPS

Dippidy-do-dah

Dips – dontcha just love ‘em. Quick, easy, usually healthy assembly jobs if you make them yourself – I try not to go the other route, and certainly wouldn’t pay good money for a jar of that lumpy, faux tomato red, arrowroot thickened gel you’re encouraged to dip those dry, salty, saliva diminishing tortilla chips into whilst watching the football. No sirree, not for me.

I am by nature a creature of habit and once I’ve found a way that works, tend not to deviate from that routine. I’ve found that three dips are all that are needed to tickle the taste buds of dinner guests, each dip quite easy to make and all gutsy in their outlook. The easiest, quickest and my most favourite dip is tziki, that well known Greek garlic timebomb which I’d describe as cooling without being sociable. See recipe below.

The next is hummus (and I’m never sure of how to pronounce it – is it hum-us, or hue-mus?), the earthy chic chickpea dish said to be favoured by young female vegetarian students. There are several bastardised versions sold in supermarkets these days: red pepper hummus; hummus with coriander and lemon; hummus with gravy – not worth the pitta bread if you ask me.

And the final dip: guacamole. Avocados were considered posh back in my day: I didn’t know of/see/taste an avocado until I was 19 years old and must say wasn’t too impressed with my first experience – nothing new there though. I consider them a bit 70s, but they’ve obviously become more popular as the years have passed and now they’re as common as beetroot.

I’ll come back to the recipes for hummus and guacamole but meanwhile, here’s a very simple tziki mix that you can be getting on with:

All the flavourings are to taste so just go with what you feel.

½ tub of Greek yoghurt or similar (you need the thick stuff here – watery yoghurt will not cut it in this instance)
About 4 inches of cucumber, peeled and grated
1-2 crushed cloves of garlic – to taste
Chopped fresh mint, or dill – to taste
Salt

Place the yoghurt in a bowl and add the crushed garlic, chopped mint or dill and salt. Give a stir. Taste to make sure you’ve got the flavourings right for you. Let it stand for a while so the flavours get to know each other, then just before serving, squeeze the grated cucumber to remove the excess liquid and mix into the yoghurt. If you add the cucumber much before, the salt will draw out more liquid from the cucumber and dilute the yoghurt. You don’t want that. You could also sprinkle some olive oil over the top and decorate with an olive if you’re feeling frivolous.

We, and when I say we I mean the family, did a Tziki Challenge on holiday in Zakynthos some years ago – every taverna we went to we ordered their tziki and rated it out of ten. Criteria were: general appearance including garnishes (ie, olive and olive oil), taste obviously; texture and quantity may have come into it: we even drew up a table to record the scores, but it was a long time ago.

Bobby’s in Vasilikos won: all roads led to Bobby’s in the tziki department. It scored a whopping 10/10 not least for its consistency. You knew what you were getting when you went to Bobby’s.

Dipping suggestions: warmed pitta bread; cucumber sticks; celery sticks at a push (but not carrot – nobody likes carrot sticks); chips – and I mean proper fried potato chips, not those horrible triangular tortilla chips or crisps. And meatballs – or chick pea balls – does the trick when you need some gutsy grub.

You could also spread tziki quite thickly over the base of a wrap, then fill with, eg, chicken or pork kebabs, a bit of salad and a couple of chips, then roll up ready for eating. We had this for lunch in a little ‘bab place in Kefalonia a couple of years ago and it kept us going all afternoon. Veggie alternatives were available.