Each week we celebrate the love of a good snack, with genius ideas for eating for pure pleasure – either solo or with friends .
We’re snack mad. We used to schedule three square meals a day and anything we ate in-between was considered a slip-up, a foible, a sign we were screwing up our lives. Now, our cosmopolitan lifestyles dictate that we have a whole suite of snacks on hand; supermarkets are dense with wasabi peas, salted caramel rice cakes and houmous.
Occasionally, we might fixate on the Instagrams of the organised and discover that meal planning is one of many things we should be doing. Our dinners would surely be slicker and our lives more correct if only we would work harder on Sundays, stacking our fridges with boxes of boiled eggs, cooked couscous and cut cucumber. And yet. And yet...
Yes, hold on to your batch-cooked hats – I say it’s time to celebrate the snack. I’m a big fan of meals, but I don’t always love to give up my Sunday in the name of weekly square ones. I enjoy a bits-and-bobs approach to dining, eating as I feel, making food that’s fun as well as functional. To be honest, I am never happier to be a person in the world than when I decide to eat an entire bag of Manomasa corn chips instead of lunch.
So each week I’ll be dedicating this column to something that’s perfect to snack on. It will include everything from delicious olive-y things on cocktail sticks to liberally, evenly buttered popcorn with strategic seasonings to make your Netflix binges pop a little more. And mango smoothie ice lollies – because it will be summer soon.
The first snack on my agenda, however, is a dip, but it’s not houmous. It’s the opposite of one of those mini snackpots of houmous you might pop in your tote bag alongside a novel you’re not really enjoying. This is a big bowl of warm, creamy, cheesy dip It’s a snack that screams generosity and it’s not just for you, but for eight or so of your best people. You might eat it while you watch a film or have a chat. Or you might just eat it because you’re alive and you don’t really fancy that stew you studiously made last Sunday.
The cheesy roasted onion dip:
Ingredients
375g mixed red and brown onions sliced
35ml olive oil, plus a little extra
1⁄2 tsp picked thyme leaves
1 head of garlic
280g cream cheese
180g sour cream
75g mozzarella, torn to shreds
65g Gruyère, grated
Sea salt
Black pepper
Plenty of crostini, to serve
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/ 160oC Fan/ Gas Mark 4.
Pile the sliced onions into a small oven dish. Toss with the oil, thyme and two big pinches of salt.
Lop the top from the head of garlic so the cloves are exposed. Rub the exposed ends with a drizzle more oil, then make a gap in your onion-scape and slot the bulb in snugly, cut side down.
Roast for 50-55 minutes, tossing the onions halfway through. By the end, some onions will be crispy and charred but most will be jammy.
Squeeze the garlic out of the bulb on to a chopping board and mash it with a fork. Next to it, finely chop the onions.
In a large saucepan set over a low heat, combine the cream cheese and sour cream and stir until even. Add the mozzarella, Gruyère and several twists of black pepper and keep stirring until everything’s melted into a creamy dream.
Stir through the garlic and onions.
Tip the dip into a bowl and dive in...