I love this cool, creamy dip for bread or chips. It’s actually hard to stop eating the stuff.
Ingredients are as follows:
- 1 large seedless cucumber (about 2 cups of puree)
- 1 cup light sour cream
- 1 cup light cream cheese
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tsp dill
- Salt and pepper to taste
Blend the cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. This helps prevent big lumps of cream cheese in the finished dip.
In a blender or food processor, pulse the cucumber down to a loose puree. Some small chunks are fine. I left the skin on my cucumber, but you can peel it if you like. You can make the final product thicker or thinner based on the amount of water you leave in the cucumber puree – if you prefer a thicker dip, drain the cucumber for a few minutes before adding it in. Full-fat sour cream and cream cheese will also result in a thicker dip than the light stuff.
Stir the lemon juice and dill into the cucumber and then combine this mixture with the dairy mixture until well blended. Taste and add salt and pepper if desired.
I presented this in a bread bowl, which is a nice-looking way to serve dips or soups. Pick out a round loaf with a sturdy crust and cut the top off. Cut at an angle, so that your knife is tilted toward the center at a 45° angle. Pull the top apart into bite-sized pieces.
Carefully pour the dip into the bread bowl. You probably won’t fit all the dip into the bowl initially, but you can top it up later.
Gradually the dip will soften the bread bowl so it can be pulled apart and eaten, and in the meantime you and your guests can dip the pieces from the top of the loaf.
The finished product is kind of reminiscent of a tzatziki or cucumber raita, and in fact I used it as a substitute for tzatziki in lamb gyros, which I’ll post soon.
