let's cook: dips and dippers

Cooking challenge time again! This time we decided to venture into dips.

The aim was to produce two different dips, as well as something to dip into them. I was a bit tardy on this one (the house move got in the way a bit) and my mum made hers ages ago but I finally got round to it yesterday. It was nice to spend some time baking in our new kitchen.

My mum chose to make a black olive tapenade and some houmous, accompanied by cheese straws, as pictured below.



She had never had tapenade before, and wasn't sure what it was meant to look or taste like so I think she did pretty well. The cheese straws look tasty too!

I also chose a black olive tapenade as one of my dips. Luckily, I found this perfect tapenade recipe on the Guardian website so I think I was onto a winner from the beginning.



It came out really well. Super strong flavours!

I also made this artichoke and lemon dip from a recipe found on BBC goodfood.



I think this one was my favourite. It's full of winners: artichoke hearts, parmesan, pine nuts, garlic. Mmmm....

It was good for the challenge element that we decided to make dippers I think, as dips do not really require that much effort. Just a bit of blending. I decided to try and make some grissini as an accompaniment.



I found a recipe here which I used as a base, but wanted to try some different things out, so experimented with adding rosemary from the garden to some of the batch, and salt and black pepper to others.

I also tried out some different sizes, and tried twisting some into spirals. I think they came out fairly well. I had to bake them in about 4 different batches (due to limited baking tray space) so there is some inconsistency in colour and texture - they are all a bit wonky when you see them together. Or should I say rustic?



I think this was one of my favourite cooking challenges to date though, and it was timed just right for a nice spring evening snack.



Now to the scoring...

Unfortunately my mum only had my fussy dad as a judge, who refused to try the houmous or the tapenade as he "doesn't like dips" so she had to do her own judging. She gave the houmous 9/10, and the olive tapenade a 6/10 as it wasn't as smooth as she had hoped.

My dad helped scoff the cheese straws though and he gave them 9/10. The only negative was that they were possibly slightly on the crumbly side for dipping.

Ben was very kind and gave my dips and dippers full marks. Emily and Beth tried them today too and they agreed. Thanks guys!

I would maybe knock a mark off for garlic overload, but I'd definitely make them again.



Next time we will be attempting Tart Tatin. I'm excited about this one!
Hopefully my mum can find a better judge...