Appetizers: Dips; White Bean Dip

White Bean Dip

This recipe is really all about the roasted garlic.

This is the amount we make for six to eight people but of course there is never only one dip on the table.

1 cup of white beans soaked over night

Rinse your soaked beans, to make sure there are no funky beans.

Cover beans by about one inch of water (you can always add more water, more easily then reducing any extra water out)-

3-5 cloves of garlic whole.

Bring to a quick boil, then simmer them for about two hours, with the lid on during this time they will get soft and break down a bit.

While the beans are cooking:

take a whole head of garlic, cut the tip of the top off and lightly cover with about 2-3 tablespoons of water then

  caramelize (actually I should write 'sweeten' as you are not actually adding an sugar)  the head by baking it in the oven (we use an enclosed terracotta pot made for this purpose) at 175 c. for about 40-50 minutes.  (Zok will tell you that you can "smell" when the garlic is ready).
Then puree your garlic and beans together, sometimes I add a bit of lemon juice when I have a fresh lemon on hand, you can add water if you think the dip is too thick.

The trick to cooking beans quickly is to rapidly boil them.
While, I prefer the slow cook on beans to make beans for my burritos, and also for the recipe here, I will and do make beans quickly on short notice. I find that the flavor isn't as rich when I do a quick boil though.

For instance, I boiled both black beans and kidney beans recently to make chili.
I rinsed the beans, covered the 2 cups of beans with about 6 cups of water (enough so they would stick in anyway as I was just going to drain them and start again when I started my chili).

To compensate for the short time, I did boil them with:
3 Bay leaves
1 small onion chopped
2 gloves of garlic sliced
1 tsp of olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Sweet paprika sprinkled on top before serving

I did a high, fast boil for 10 minutes then a consistent slow boil for the rest of the hour.  Then I drained them (they were cooked but unbroken) and added them into my chili recipe as if they had been canned not fresh beans.