I am chewing a stomach tablet right now helping with pain because I ate this dip. I know that I shouldn’t have eaten something with hot peppers. But I had to taste it of course and then I couldn’t stop having more than just a bit to taste because it was so good! Ahh, sacrificing my stomach hasn’t been such a pleasure for a while…

 

 

I’ve seen a variety of this dip on many different websites and blogs. The ingredients were more or less the same in every one of them and mostly there was mayonnaise used in the dip. I wanted to try my hands at this dip (because I LOVE artichoke hearts). However, I wanted to skip mayonnaise since it has slightly overpowering taste and since I feel it makes everything much heavier (it doesn’t mean i don’t like mayonnaise though..). I also got the idea of roasting the garlic from All Recipes website and it was well worth increasing the time to make this recipe with 30 extra minutes.

 

 

 

So instead of mayonnaise and some other heavy sauces in many recipes, I used a combination of three types of cheese and sour cream. Then I added a little bit of “hot” taste using 2 kinds of peppers and some ground black pepper. The result, with oozing cheeses, made this dip fit for a feast!

 

 

You can enjoy this dip with crusty fresh bread, crackers or plain grissini (like I did), other (your favourite) kinds of bread (for instance, it is very tasty with rye bread too) or with fresh, raw or steamed vegetables, like raw carrots, or steamed broccoli etc. Yum indeed!
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Ingredients:

 

Difficulty:  ★☆☆ (Easy)
(serves 6-8, baked in 20x30cm oven dish)

 

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

 

4 garlic cloves, skin on
150 gr. spinach*
300 gr. artichoke hearts from can, finely chopped
2 jalapeño peppers, finely chopped**
2 red chili peppers, finely chopped***
2 1/2 dl and 5 tsp (or 1 cup and 5 tsp) sour cream
2 1/2 dl (or 1 cup) grated mozzarella cheese
1/2 dl and 2 tbsp (or 1/3 cup) grated parmesan cheese
1 package, 200 gr., plain cream cheese
pinch of black pepper
(optional) salt to taste****

 

*You can use 150 gr. fresh spinach and finely chop it, or you can buy frozen finely chopped spinach, thaw and drain it – after thawing and draining, it should make 150 gr. so you must buy the packages accordingly. I used frozen spinach, and I got this amount from 2 packs of spinach each 200 gr.
**You can skip this if you don’t want the dip to be hot (or you can use only 1 pepper to make it milder).
***Same case s jalapeños.
****I didn’t need to add any salt because the cheeses were salty enough. But if you want it saltier, add some extra salt.

 

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1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

 

2. Put garlic cloves with skin on in a small ramekin or other oven dish and roast in the oven for 30 minutes, until they get soft enough to be squeezed out of their skin. When roasted enough, take out of the oven to let them cool while preparing other ingredients. Keep the oven on.

 

 

3. In a medium bowl, put all the remaining ingredients and mix well.

 

 

 

4. Squeeze garlic cloves out of their skin into the mixture and mix well. The reason why you see a blue hand in the photo is not because I suddenly became a smurf but because I didn’t want garlic smell in my hand!

 

 

 

 

 

5. Transfer the mixture into the oven dish and smoothen the surface. Bake in the oven, in medium rack, for 30 minutes, until it starts to brown on the sides and cheese starts bubbling. Serve warm, right out of the oven. Enjoy!