What's with dips? | Imamother

amother

Burgundy

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 3:34 pm

When I was in seminary almost 20 years ago I ate a Friday night meal by a sefardi family in Netivot. The husband made hamotzie on 2 huge homemade pitas and then they served the most amazing dip course ever.
They brought out tons of homemade salatim and dips - probably 20 different ones, and then the wife took out these huge plates and put a scoop of each dip onto each plate. She handed each person a homemade pita and a plate of all the dips.
It was so delicious! I can't remember anything else about the meal but that dip course was unforgettable!

dee's mommy

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 7:55 pm

In our family, we have a saying: "Only you can prevent challah kugels."

(I make challah kugels out of leftover challah to prevent waste, but I don't think anyone really loves them.)

A little homemade spread/ dip goes a long way to helping us eat up the challah, so we don't have any leftover. I tend to either make babaganoush (eggplant, tahinni, lemon juice and spices), guacamole (avocado, tomato, lemon juice, spices) or hummas (chickpeas, water, olive oil, lemon juice, spices.) All great on their own as salads, and tastes great on challah we are eating anyway.

dankbar

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 9:14 pm

I think it started out in Israel to rather save money on fish, that was expensive there. They crushed some tomatoes & didn' t need to buy so much fish. Same way gefilte was started to save money on fish slices. Same way herring was started to save money on fish. Nowadays, all these became huge business ventures & expenses. ( very expensive if bought & not homemade)

Amarante

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 9:36 pm

dankbar wrote:

Gefilte fish was not originally made as a cost saving recipe. Gefllte means stuffed and the original authentic recipe had the minced fish cooked INSIDE the whole fish. Eventually the stuffing became more popular than the "stuffed fish" and so it was served on its own. I have very old Yiddish cookbook which has a recipe for authentic "stuffed fish".

Until relatively recently fish was very inexpensive - especially as compared to beef. This would have been true back in Eastern Europe and Russia where traditional cuisine used freshwater fish which would have been abundant in the 19th century. I believe carp and whitefish are both freshwater fish that were native to Eastern Europe.

I am not that old and I can trace the astounding rise in the cost of fish just in the last 20 years but fish back in the 19th century and early 20th century was cheap.

nicole81

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 9:53 pm

amother [ Khaki ] wrote:

I’m 1000000% with you

Challah dipped in mayo. Challah challah challah

Who needs it?

I don’t believe in dips.

I don't believe in mayo 😂 I make tomato dip and we serve hummus, sometimes matbucha, and I occasionally make a black olive spread. My kids love my challah and after spending years trying to limit the amount of challahs at my table, I just go for broke and put out huge loaves (oftentimes with sweet crumb toppings) and the dips they love and increase their oneg shabbat.

We can be healthy and balanced at every other meal during the week.

amother

Fuchsia

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 9:54 pm

I hate the whole dips thing. All together, many people are eating 1/2c of mayo (spread in the dips) + 5 pieces of challa and THEN a full meal. And then they wonder why they have acid reflux and constipation and exhaustion.
Even people that are eating olive oil based dips are still consuming WAY too much of it for it to be healthy.

Mommyg8

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 9:57 pm

dankbar wrote:

I think gefilte fish was started because of the bones in fish. Because on Shabbos there are shaylos of boreir....

amother

Scarlet

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 10:07 pm

Amarante wrote:

Homemade is very different than commercially prepared because it is cheaper to make it with higher quantities of oil and mayo.

But any dip made with mayo or oil as a major ingredient is not particularly healthy. Even the healthy homemade dips are not intended to be eaten in large quantities but as a smallish portion. Take a look at calories for a serving which is generally two Tablespoons which is a very small amount measured as a level tablespoon which is how quantities are measured. Most people are taking at least 1/3 cup if not more as a serving.

As others have posted, Israeli salatim are a completely different type of food consisting generally of lots of veggies chopped with flavorings and a small amount of oil. The heavier oilier more caloric stuff would be eaten as a small component rather than all of the options being like that.

Although plain mayo for challah is also Israeli.

When my mother was growing up, the dip was rendered schmaltz shock

...Not any healthier than mayonnaise, and goes back more than 20 years

dankbar

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 11:09 pm

With gefilte, they only used little bit of fish & mixed it with lots of challah/fillings/flour whatever so they were able to feed entire family only using little fish.

There are still people that reserve sliced fish only for parents & children can only get the gefilte fish to eat. There are some cheap rolls ( even bought) where entire roll can feed a whole family as opposed to same price, spending on one slice alone.

nylon

Sat, Oct 19 2019, 11:54 pm

Stretching the fish came later. Amarante has the history correct. Gefilte fish was originally quite a complicated dish, and used freshwater fishes which were fairly inexpensive at the time. I'm always shocked at how much stores charge for pike & whitefish now--even when I was little, it was not expensive. The reason we didn't have homemade fish every week was effort, not cost. (My mother loathes making gefilte fish and was only willing to do it a few times a year, but she was also a snob about buying it ready made.)

Once it became fish balls, then it could be stretched, and poorer families could have it also.

As for dips--I didn't grow up with them. I don't serve them every week. If I serve a dip & salad course it's in place of something else. I am most likely to serve them in summer when the vegetables are good and we don't want hot soup anyway.

Amarante

Sun, Oct 20 2019, 12:22 am

nylon wrote:

There was almost no filler in the gefilte fish that my Bubbe and mother made. But you are correct that it was a lot of work and so it was only made for very special occasions. It became a bit less work because a few of the fishmongers would grind up the fish after you bought the whole fish.

But until fairly recently fish for gefilte fish was relatively cheap but good takeout gefilte fish would have been much more expensive. The cost of it just didn’t enter into calculations because beef was much more expensive and even chicken was more expensive than fish. And in Europe, beef would have been even more expensive than fish since cattle is expensive to breed and slaughter versus catching fish in the numerous rivers of Poland and Russia.

We would laugh at my Bubbe who said you had to get whitefish with red eyes but then a famous chef years later advised that when buying whitefish you should check the eyes to see if they were bright and red. So she was right.

Gefilte fish is actually very similar to the classic French quenelles.

sky

Sun, Oct 20 2019, 12:34 am

cnc wrote:

Olive and tomato dips are loaded with oil and eggplant dip is loaded with either oil or mayo depending on how you make it .

No oil or mayo is necessary.

I just blend tomatoes, garlic, salt and paprika. It’s delicious. No one misses the oil or mayo.

Eggplant can be roasted and mixed with tahini.

Techina is wholesome. Also chummus. You can try making other flavor chummus. Like beets with tahini.

qt'sMOM

Sun, Oct 20 2019, 2:43 am

FranticFrummie wrote:

Lymnok's mom got me into using a dip made from fine olive oil, zatar, and sea salt. It's delicious, and you only need a tiny amount. People fight over it on the table!

Recipe with measurements, please! Does it need to be made in advance so the oil absorbs the flavor of the spices? How would one eat it so that they get the flavor of the spices and not just oily challah since the spices, I assume, would be sinking to the bottom once on your plate? Do you know of other spices that mix nicely with oil? Would a roasted garlic infused oil work? How would that be made? Thanks!

yo'ma

Sun, Oct 20 2019, 9:24 am

thunderstorm wrote:

It is a newish phenomenon(last 25 years). The idea actually is adopted from Israel where charif and Salatim are served as part of the seuda.
It was Americanized with a much larger assortment of dips and it turned into a business venture.
I stopped serving fish. My family enjoys the dip and challah instead. I make both the challah and dips myself but in all honesty (my DH agrees with me ) it’s very unhealthy. But it became the favorite part of the meal. So I haven’t stopped it. I limit four dips per meal so that it doesn’t get too crazy.

I got married a little over 20 years ago. I didn't grow up with dips, but my dh wanted. His father was brought up in Israel, so they must have had. No one I knew had any sort of dips. We mostly had techina.

I also stopped serving fish. I serve dips, challah, and salads. I used to serve fish with that course, but then no one would eat the chicken, so I stopped with the fish and a few minutes after the salad course, I bring out the chicken, so they're overlapping. I very often eat a dip with chicken, not necessarily challah.