Monday, September 19, 2011

The Besto Pesto

I think I am in love with pesto. Not the conventional kind which is just basil, pinenuts, parmesan and olive oil. The kind I love is a radical experiment involving all kinds of greens. Chinese green pesto... Think about it, and contemplate the many amazing ways and ingredients you can add to your pesto. Here is a little bit I just sourced from wikipedia regarding the origins of pesto:

"Pesto (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpesto], Genoese[ˈpestu]) is a sauce originating in Genoa in the Liguria region of northern Italy (pesto alla genovese), and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, basil and pine nuts blended with olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano e Fiore Sardo (pecorino sardo).[1] The name is the contracted past participle of the Genoese word pestâ (Italian: pestare), which means to pound, to crush, in reference to the original method of preparation, with marble mortar and wooden pestle. However, the ingredients in a traditionally made pesto are not "pounded" but "ground" with a circular motion of the pestle in the mortar. This same Latin root through Old French also gave rise to the English word pestle.



I know that basil is delicious but why let that limit your desire for alternatively delicious flavours in your cheese, nut and green dip. Plus pine nuts are expensive. I find a lot of store bought pestos add in parsley to bulk it up. This is just wrong. Not that I don't like parsley, I just find the flavours contrasting and the parsley tends to dominate. Anyway I just made an awesome spicy rocket, walnut and parmesan pesto which is currently rocking my world. Unfortunately I was unable to source any organic ingredients for this one. However it is still very delicious and nutritious. I like to eat pesto on toast with my poached eggs most mornings. If not pesto, usually an avocado concoction involving lime, chilli/tabasco, and either coriander or ground cumin. Delightful.

Happy dipping <3D!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The beginning of an era...

Hello Dip Lovers!

Dips are possibly my favourite food group. And I think they belong in their own classification as they are a food unto themselves which essentially combine all the food groups... often resulting in any random mix of fruits, vegetables, legumes, dairy and meat/seafood. This is why I love them. You can put any variety of ingredients together and blend them up to create magical, easy to eat, culinary delights. Consequently I have established my own dip company where I would like to share my concoctions with the world, well my local area anyway.

My flagship dip has always been hummus, or hommus, or houmus, or humus. You can spell it in almost as many ways as you can make it. Which is what I like to do. I have made about ten different types of hummus over the years, almost none of which ever really taste the same as I love to experiment with flavours. Then comes the variety of pestos, salsas, eggplant, spinach and dairy based dips. I came up with a list of dips for people to choose from which is on the facebook group also called Devins Delicious Dips but realised that I am probably just going to keep creating new dips and experimenting then refining the best ones.

So please leave dip suggestion comments or anything you want really and I shall endeavour to follow up on them. I always like a good dip challenge. In fact my friend Audrina has sent me a dessert dip challenge which I shall soon be embarking on. I shall post the results soon.

Happy Dipping!

Dev.