The ubiquitous dip

"A bit of chopping, a quick stir or whizz in a blender and you're done." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

The picture is from Donna Hay again - it's a pea and mint hummus, but it's not just this that inspired this article - it's also the Coles Magazine again, which had a couple of pages of dips you can make. It gave rise to two questions I have about dips. When and how did they become so popular that about a third of my local supermarket chilled food aisle is filled with various dips? And why do people buy them when they are so easy to make? Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is absolutely right. In fact you don't even have to do any chopping. Open a can of some kind of bean, drain and rinse and chuck the beans in a food processor with some oil, some lemon juice and some herbs and/or spices. Whizz and you're done. So quick, such fun to think what to put with what, and so impressive to serve. Learn from pictures like the above by the professionals to just sprinkle something on top, or drizzle a bit of oil and it looks gorgeous.

And yes it is true that you can make much more complicated dips - tapenade perhaps, though not if you buy the olives ready stoned, baba ganoush perhaps - you have to cook the eggplant, or any other roast vegetable dip - you have to roast the veggies first - although if you have leftover roast veggies for some reason a dip is a great way to use them. Indeed all sorts of leftovers can go into them. Then there's the fishy ones - best done with some kind of smoked fish just whizzed in a blender with some melted butter and a touch of lemon juice, a herb perhaps, and chilli, then left to solidify in the fridge. Yum, yum, yum.

This post is not aimed at giving you lots of recipes though - just look through your recipe books, the net or your foodie magazines and they will give you lots of ideas, well beyond the basic hummus. And once you've made a few you can improvise to your heart's delight.

"a mixological blending of seasonal goodies and tempting spices to produce the altogether gentler, less bracing and tastier proposition of the dips you serve with sticks and slices of raw veg and fruit." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

And it doesn't stop there either. Because a dip is a gift that keeps on giving. You can use them for so many other things.

"Once something has been blitzed or mashed to a rough paste or purée, I’m as happy to spread it out on a platter to serve as a dip for a crowd, as I am to keep it in the fridge for a couple of days to serve as a condiment." Yotam Ottolenghi

I have used leftover dips to add flavour to other dishes - soups, stews, stir fries ..., to spread on toast for lunch, to coat a fish for roasting or meat for barbecuing, to put in a marinade - just let your imagination run free.

And yet there are all those dips in the supermarket. So obviously a lot of people do not go to the minimal trouble of making their own. Even my foodie daughter-in-law buys shop made hummus. In England apparently there was a crisis which created an absolute storm of complaint on social media, when hummus had to be withdrawn from the supermarket shelves. Sainsbury's posted a recipe at the space where the hummus should have been and The Guardian posted an article and a recipe, because apparently:

"figures suggest almost half of the UK population has a pot of hummus waiting for them in the fridge at any given time." Felicity Cloake

I wonder if any of those people who felt they couldn't survive without it, had a go at making their own. Not many I'm guessing. I'm also guessing that the situation is the same here as far as consumption of shop-bought as opposed to home-made hummus is concerned.

So when did this happen and why? Well I guess the answer to why is the same as for any food not native to the English speaking world - when we had all those waves of immigrants after WW2 and food became a bit of a craze. According to Felicity Cloake it dates to the 80s in England, so probably the same here. Although maybe earlier - when the Greeks started opening restaurants and accustoming us to tzatziki, taramasalata and hummus to eat with pitta bread before the souvlaki - now almost a national dish.

"Waitrose was the first major supermarket to introduce it back in the 80s, but it didn’t go really mainstream until the mid-90s, when, along with exotica such as sun-dried tomatoes and pesto, it came to represent the cosmopolitan sunny optimism of New Labour." Felicity Coake

And yes it's mainstream when it hits the supermarket. Which is one reason supermarkets are such fascinating places in which to study social change. And when the supermarket starts pushing ways to make your own - using their products of course - those recipes that Sainsbury's posted noted where to find the ingredients on their shelves - then it has become truly mainstream.

So why do people still buy them rather than make their own? I confess I have not really bought any, so don't really know what the shop bought brands taste like. I have eaten a few at other people's houses, but, although perfectly acceptable they are never as good as home-made.

"in dips, there is no debate: you should make your own. Unless you have access to an amazing north African/Mexican deli, anything you buy will be but a pale shadow of the dips that, with minimal practice, you can whizz up at home." Tony Naylor

And this is from a writer who maintains that in general he is not against shop-bought food - it's not better or worse than home-made, just different. Not dips though.

I'm sure the shop-bought variety has come a long way from those that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall writes about:

"For many, they conjure up images of student parties when all it took for a good time was a few boxes of wine, some six-packs of beer, bags of crisps and a selection of dips in little plastic compartments. Acidic salsas, suspiciously gloopy avocado mush and mysterious combinations of cheap grated cheese, sour cream and dusty flecks of dried herbs may have lined the stomach, but they did little to excite the palate." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

And from the few that I have tasted I do think that there is some faint background taste of something artificial, even musty. So well done all those foodie magazines for trying to make people make their own. Maybe it's the washing up that's stopping them.

And I do wonder why the English speaking world had nothing simila. i really can't think of anything other than fish pastes - we did have them. Maybe meat pastes too. They came in little jars, but we spread them on toast. We didn't dip things into them. Interesting.

As to what you eat them with - now that's a whole other question. And a bit of a paradox, for so many of the things that are served with them are unhealthy, even though the dips themselves are potentially very healthy. Yes I know you should try raw veggies to eat with them, but somehow they are not quite as good as warm pitta bread are they?