May I suggest dipner?
Jalapeño popper dip, spicy crab & artichoke dip and Armenian blistered eggplant dip inside.
This is an installment of Like Gold, a food newsletter written by Dayana Sarkisova. If you’d like to subscribe and stay a while, click the button below.
Admittedly, when the pandemic’s first wave of “I don’t want to cook anymore” swept us, I couldn’t relate. Cooking is my very favorite thing to do in the world and the ability to do even more of it was a silver lining I welcomed.
The farmer’s markets of spring turned into the seafood boils of summer turned into the soups and roasts of fall. The holidays then came along and I threw myself into tradition, cooking food from my childhood — recipes that reminded me there was a time I enjoyed these dishes with so much less weighing down my heart.
But despite the fact that my Christmas tree is still upright and aglow on February 6, the holidays and their inspiration are a faraway memory. We entered 2021 staring down the barrel of a new year, wondering which fresh horrors await us (turns out, it’s many) and I’m left pondering: What the fuck do I cook now?
Enter: dipner.
I say this about many things, but I really think it’s difficult to mess up a good dip. Toss together any combination of: cheese; cream cheese; sour cream; mayonnaise; seasoning; proteins and vegetables, then make it bubble! Dip a chip into it! How could that end poorly?
That’s why I’ve found it to be the ideal anti-cooking-cooking assignment in the pandemic. Dip for dinner — or “dipner,” as my friend Jack coined it in a conversation a while back — is my unsolicited advice to you. Yes, you — gazing with a dead look in your eyes at the refrigerator, wondering why, after a long day of work, the ingredients staring back at you aren’t a meal.
Sharing these recipes is loosely pegged to the Super Bowl this weekend, though I like spooning molten dairy lava into my mouth any day of the year:
Jalapeño popper dip
6 jalapeños, halved and seeded
8 oz cream cheese (1 standard package), softened
5 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, grated
6 slices thick cut bacon
2 scallions, thinly sliced
Salt and black pepper to taste
Broil jalapeños in oven for ten minutes, flipping once halfway through.
While the jalapeños cook, in a medium bowl combine: cream cheese, mozzarella and parmesan, sour cream, mayonnaise, garlic, salt and pepper.
Remove jalapeños from oven and set oven temperature to 350 degrees. Once the peppers have cooled, use the tip of a knife or your fingers to peel and remove as much blistered skin as possible. Roughly chop the peppers, add to the bowl and mix well.
Spread the mixture evenly into an 8x8 or 8-inch round oven-safe dish. Bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until dip is browned at the edges and slightly bubbly. In the meantime, cook bacon slices until they’re very browned and crispy.
Remove dip from oven. Top with crumbled bacon and scallions. Serve with chips.
Notes: The spiciness of this dip depends on how many jalapeño seeds you leave in. I found that leaving the seeds of one of the six jalapeños had a pleasant heat, but it’s totally subjective. Go easy on the salt for this one; the crumbled bacon on top provides a lot.
Spicy crab & artichoke dip
8 oz lump crab meat
4 artichokes from a can, roughly chopped
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
6 oz shredded Monterey Jack cheese
2 oz grated parmesan cheese
2 cloves garlic, minced or grated
1/2 fresh jalapeño, diced or grated
2 teaspoons Crystal hot sauce (or your favorite hot sauce, but it should be Crystal)
Few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
2 scallions, thinly sliced
Salt, black pepper, red pepper and smoked paprika to taste
Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl, reserving a handful of shredded Monterey Jack cheese. Mix well.
Spread the mixture evenly into an 8x8 or 8-inch round oven-safe dish. Top with remaining cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Broil on high for 2 additional minutes, or until top has darkened slightly and edges are bubbling. Keep an eye on it!
Top with scallions. Serve with chips, bread and vegetables, or spoon directly into mouth.
Armenian blistered eggplant dip
Whenever I’m home in Michigan, we make sure to dedicate a dinner to khorovats, or Armenian barbecue. My dad fires up the mangal, or outdoor spit, and we spear lamb, pork, chicken and traditional vegetable accompaniments. This recipe, published in The Washington Post in December 2019, is my dip rendition of the whole-roasted eggplant we cook over the flames.
Pick up my tab
Reading: Sorry! I’m going to be that annoying person that recommends a piece I wrote myself. My profile of Mosquito Supper Club ran in print as the display of The Washington Post’s food section on January 6. I was planning on bragging about it in the moment but we, uh, all got a little preoccupied that day.
Listening: Lovely Day by Bill Withers is one of my dad’s favorite songs of all time. Recently I decided to dive headfirst into Withers’ full discography in honor of that and now I can’t seem to listen to anything else.
Donating: Feed the People Mutual Aid and Fuel The People.
Obsessing over: ✨BATHTOK!✨ Which is, apparently a thing. I’m averaging more baths per week than I care to admit in the pandemic so it was only natural I fall deep, deep into this niche TikTok rabbit hole. Please, just look at that towel warmer.
Upcoming newsletters
Somewhere between the holidays, an insurrection, the militarization of DC and a presidential inauguration, I lost focus on my humble little newsletter. But we’re back, baby, and here’s what I have planned in the coming weeks: Lady and the Tramp spaghetti and meatballs for Valentine’s Day; a beloved Uyghur dish from my mom’s side of the family; recipe swaps for your go-to dinners; Armenian pilaf for Easter; my favorite seafood stew for spring; and more.
I thought for a second that you were giving us a wonderful mashup of nachos and Armo eggplant dip. Which I now need to make.