Rolling in the dip

You are having a lovely meal, enjoying a good TV programme and the comfort of your home. All is well with your life, nothing can disturb your peace. Until THAT happens: the dip conundrum. The dip conundrum affects all of us, but not everybody is aware of it. It is something it has now become part of our lives and most of us don’t even notice anymore, but we as community need to do our best to find a solution to this subtle but troublesome issue.

You have your bread sticks, tortilla chips, pretzels, veggies or whatever dippers you fancy, and they are served with one or more dips. You start dipping your food, but all you can think of is what is the best proportion of dip to use with your tortilla, in order to have some dip in all your tortillas and finish all of them with no dip left. It is a very complicated game of strategy and precision, where a miscalculation can lead to 3 possible catastrophes:

1. you put too much dip in the first tortillas you eat, ending up with soggy and over-dipped (is that a word?) tortillas and no dip left for the rest of them
2. you try to “save” your dip, so the first rounds of tortillas are super dry as you are having them with a minuscule amount of dip. You miserably end up in a similar situation as point 1, where you realise you have A LOT of sauce left, and try to finish up the dip you tried to save so desperately, but now it is too much for your dippers that will inevitably become soggy and over-dipped
3. this is the worst possible scenario ever, this is what I call the “stupidly in love” situation. You decide you don’t want to think about calculations or percentages, you just want to enjoy your snack, no matter how much dip you will have left or how soon it is going to finish, you will just enjoy the moment. So here you are, your dip is finished and you still have 1/3 of dippers looking at you. There is no way you are going to eat those celery sticks on their own, so what do you do? You get another batch of dip, you finish off the dippers and you still have half of the new batch of dip that will now go in the fridge for a couple of days, and then the bin. To summarise, you blindly went for what you thought it was right, and ended up with (emotional baggage) dip that will go in the bin, hence the “stupid in love” situation. I think that by now it is pretty clear that I hate to waste food: https://theparmigianawhisperer.blog/2020/07/14/dont-cry-over-too-much-milk/ https://theparmigianawhisperer.blog/2020/06/23/love-your-discard/ https://theparmigianawhisperer.blog/2020/06/29/mozzarella-made-me-do-it/ so this scenario is absolutely unacceptable for me, and I am not keen on the first two either. So while I was thinking about this significant first world problem, I thought to myself: what if the dip was already rolled in the dipper? And I came up with this recipe, that I absolutely loved, and let me enjoy my food without worrying about dip&dipper ratio.

Ingredients for 5 people:

-flour, 500g

-olive oil, 4 tablespoons

-milk, 300ml

-instant yeast, 1 sachet

-salt, 1 tablespoon

-artichokes heart, 1 can

-pitted green olives, 20

-cheddar cheese, 70g

-grated mozzarella cheese, 70g

-grated parmesan cheese, 40g

Steps:

1.warm up the milk at a medium temperature

2.mix together the flour with the yeast and olive oil

3.add the milk and knead until you have a smooth consistency

4.add the salt and knead for a few minutes

5.leave it to rest for 1 hour

6.in the meantime prepare your dip: put the artichokes hearts in a bowl with some water, and microwave them for 3 minutes

7.put the cooked artichokes and 15 olives in a blender, and blitz them until you have a rough paste that still has some chunks and pieces

8.add the parmesan cheese and mix

9.preheat the oven to 200° fan assisted

10.back to the dough: using a rolling pin, flatten it until it is 5mm wide

11.take the 5 olives left and chop them roughly

12. spread the olive pieces on the dough

13.spread the artichokes and olives mixture on the dough

14.spread the cheddar and mozzarella on the dough

15.roll the dough starting from the short end

16.you should now have a “sausage”: cut it in slices about 2cm wide

17.line a tray and place the slices at distance (they will raise in the oven)

18.cook for 13/15 minutes

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