Smooth cheese dip with breadsticks
What stands in for hummus and crudités on this diet
Easily doubled. The dip keeps two days covered in the fridge, or one day if you are having chemotherapy. The breadsticks are best eaten fresh.
This is the book's answer to hummus and a bowl of crudités, neither of which belongs anywhere near this diet. Cream cheese loosened with yoghurt gets you most of the way to the same texture, and a single clove of garlic, crushed and cooked down in butter until it has lost all of its bite, gives it the savoury note that plain cream cheese lacks on its own. Cook the garlic properly. Soft enough to smear against the side of the pan is what you want, not the raw crunch it has straight from the bulb, which is exactly the texture this diet cannot manage. Serve it with plain breadsticks for dipping, or spread it straight onto toast if chewing is easier that way.
Ingredients
Contains: Gluten, Milk
- 10 gbutter
- 1 clovegarlic, peeled and crushed to a paste
- 150 gcream cheese, plain
- 50 gsmooth yoghurt
- salt
- 12white breadsticks, plain grissini, to serve
Method
Melt the butter in a small pan over the lowest heat. Add the garlic and cook gently for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring, until it has softened right into the butter and you can smear it against the side of the pan with no grain left in it. Tip it onto a saucer to cool.
A minute longer over the heat than feels necessary is worth it. Any bite left in the garlic will sit oddly in an otherwise smooth dip.
Beat the cream cheese in a bowl until smooth and loosened, then beat in the yoghurt a spoon at a time until the mixture is soft enough to fall from a spoon.
Stir in the cooled garlic and a pinch of salt, and taste.
Spoon into a small bowl and serve with the breadsticks alongside for dipping.
Watch-points
- Crush the garlic before it goes in the pan and cook it until it is completely soft. Raw or crisp garlic is off the list, and a chopped clove leaves pieces in a dip that is meant to be smooth.
- No chives, dill or other chopped herbs stirred in. Keep the dip plain.
- Plain white breadsticks only, not a seeded or wholegrain kind.
Stoma note: The breadsticks are white bread in another shape, so they firm output up rather than loosening it.
Make it more nourishing
- Beat in a tablespoon of mascarpone for a richer dip.
- Use full-fat cream cheese, and swap the 50 g of yoghurt for 50 g of double cream.
- Beat 15 g of softened butter into the dip along with the cooked garlic.
Swaps
- Instead of white breadsticks, use crustless white toast, cut into fingers
- easier to manage if the breadsticks feel too dry or too much work to chew