Showing posts with label dip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dip. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Easy Entertaining - Bone Marrow Pesto Spread



One of the recipes I was given to test for the Recipes and Ramblings Cookbook was called “Lovely Bones”. It’s a dish of roasted bone marrow with a radish salad, served with some warm sourdough bread. And it was pretty remarkable. The flavours and textures all worked really well together. Lance and I devoured the dish eagerly! However, on the recommendation of a butcher, I bought whole bone marrow shaft pieces instead of cut in half lengthwise to make flat, open pieces. And it was really, really messy to eat. And I’m a grub to start with. It wasn’t really the type of meal you could eat in polite company, but it was designed to be a shared entrĂ©e. It's so dramatic being served marrow in the bone like that! So, I recommend trying that recipe by getting the cookbook. (It's available at Fresh Provisions, Beaufort St Books and Planet Books)


I had 6 pieces of marrow bone leftover after making that dish and knowing that Lance probably didn’t want to be up to his elbows in marrow juices again, I thought I would change things up a bit. I’ve still kept some of the original flavours of lemon, parsley, smoked paprika and garlic, but I’ve changed it into a pesto-style spread. Much more polite to eat in mixed company and so delicious. The rich oiliness of the bone marrow means you don’t need to add the traditional olive oil or nuts to the pesto. And you can remove the marrow much more cleanly in your kitchen than at a dinner table. I used a fondue fork to poke in and around the hole to remove the marrow as I don’t have a marrow spoon (and, in fact, didn’t know that such a thing even existed until very recently!)


It only takes about 30 minutes to make, and is quite the fancypants dinner party appetiser!



Bone Marrow Pesto Spread
(adapted from Lovely Bones in Recipes and Ramblings Volume 3)
6x 5cm marrow bone shafts
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp smoked paprika
Sea salt and fresh black pepper to taste ( a good pinch of each)
2 bunches parsley, with the big part of the stalk removed
Juice of one lemon
¼ tsp hot English mustard
½ tbsp. capers
Sourdough to serve


Preheat the oven to 200C


In a small casserole dish, place the bone marrow shafts with the holes facing up. Mix the minced garlic, smoked paprika, a good pinch of salt and pepper in a small bowl and sprinkle over the top of the bone pieces. Pop in the oven.


In a food processor, blitz the parsley, lemon juice, mustard and capers until quite finely chopped but still some texture to it. You might need to scrape down the sides of your processor a few times.


When the bone marrow starts to pull away from the sides of the bone, after around 20 minutes, remove from the oven and place the sourdough loaf in to warm up.


Using a fondue fork or other long thing implement, poke out all of the marrow into the casserole dish, getting all of the flavoured garlic too. Discard the bones.


Add all of the parsley mixture into the casserole dish with the marrow, and mix well with a fork, breaking the marrow up. This should be enough to warm through the whole spread. 

Check for seasoning.


Cut the sourdough into slices, put the marrow pesto spread into a nice serving bowl and serve!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips

Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips - White Bean Dip and Roast Beet Dip

On a ‘oh-my-god-these-are-so-cute-AND-on-sale’ whim…I bought a set of individual casserole dishes. And I LOVE them. But to justify my purchase of said cute-but-not-entirely-necessary dishes, I want to use them all of the time. We were having people over for some casual drinks one cold night and I thought of the perfect plan for using the casseroles and having a delicious snack to go with said drinks. Hot dips. In my experience, if you get served a hot dip it’s invariably cheese based. Often served in a cobb loaf. Nothing terribly wrong with that…but we were having mac and cheese for dinner. Didn’t want to over-do the cheese. Plus one attendee doesn’t really do cheese. My mind was blown when I was first served warm hummus – essentially chick pea mash and now it’s become a frequent side dish in my house. Which made me think of my white bean dip. I love it because it only contains a handful of ingredients, all of which are always in my pantry so it can be made in under 5 minutes when unexpected guests come around. That is pretty much flavoured white bean mash if you heat it up!

Knowing a few of my readers are vegan, and already rebelling against the hot cheese dip in my head, I thought I would make the second dip vegan too, seeing as my first one was by sheer coincidence. I had some roasted beets waiting for me in the fridge and basically came to the same conclusion as with the white bean dip. I could make a beetroot mash and serve it as a dip. To the beets I added coconut cream to help loosen the mixture while adding that sweetness that pairs beautifully with the earthiness of beetroot, and then chia seeds to help it gel and give it a lovely texture.

Pop both in casserole dishes, heat in the oven for 30 minutes and voila!

Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips - White Bean Dip and Roast Beet Dip


White Bean Dip

One tin white beans
5 sundried tomatoes in olive oil
1 tsp mixed dried Italian herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, parsley)
1-2 tsp sriracha (to taste)
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 150C

In a food processor, combine the white beans, sundried tomatoes, sriracha and herbs. Process until a smooth paste. Add olive oil from the tomatoes if you need more liquid to form a proper dip consistency. Taste and add salt and pepper.

Put in a casserole dish and heat for 30 minutes or until warm through.

Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips - White Bean Dip and Roast Beet Dip

 Roast Beet Dip

2 roasted beetroots
¼ cup coconut cream
¼ tsp caraway seeds
2 tbsp chia seeds
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 150C

Chop the beets into quarters and add to your food processor with the coconut cream and caraway seeds. Process until smooth. It will be fairly liquid at this point. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the chia seeds and pulse to distribute.

Put in a casserole dish and leave to sit for 15 minutes while the chia seeds absorb some of the liquid and makes it a more dip-like texture. Heat in the oven for 30 minutes or until completely warm through.

Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips - White Bean Dip and Roast Beet Dip
Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips - White Bean Dip and Roast Beet Dip
Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips - White Bean Dip and Roast Beet Dip