How to make the perfect party dip

Here's what I love eating: food that tastes good. I realize taste is a matter of taste, but after preparing this ubiquitously adored spinach dip at numerous Golden Globe soirees and Grammy get-togethers, I feel confident you too could serve this at your Oscar bash to glowing reviews. The following recipe is for one batch. For the record, I can eat one batch in one sitting. A short sitting. So for parties? You might want to double it.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• cuisinart, block of frozen spinach, one lemon, one clove of garlic, mayonnaise, one can of artichoke hearts, fresh dill, salt, pepper, crudite, mini stoned wheat thins

1. 

   After purchasing your dip ingredients, leave the frozen spinach in the sink until completely thawed. Either squeeze out the excess water with your hands or put the whole, wet glob of spinach into a tea towel and twist until your arms feel shaky. Then bung all of it into your Cuisinart--fitted with the regular chopping blade.

2. 

   Casually chop one clove of garlic and throw it in--if you plop it in whole, the pieces are too big and the garlicky-ness won't uniformly spread through the dip.

3. 

   Drain your can artichoke hearts (which were in water, not oil) and throw them in. Whole, chopped, whatevs.

4. 

   Squeeze in the juice of a half a lemon, a hearty handful of fresh, chopped dill, a cup of mayonnaise, and salt and pepper to taste. Although the other ingredients are screaming for salt, you won't need as much as you might think because the mayo does most of the salt-work. Blend away until no chunks remain and serve immediately with your favorite crudite--I like carrots, endive, red peppers, celery and grape tomatoes. Alternatively, served with a small stoned-wheat cracker.

Tips & Warnings

• Uchhh. Yes, you can use dried dill. If you must. But if you can, spring for the 47 cent fresh dill. I know you're already making a trip for those hearts, anyway. Live a little.
• For the carrots, please also go CRAZY and get regular length, not those wretched stumps people like because they're so "easy". It's true. They're easy. They're also flavorless and don't actually taste of carrot, but more like bland, orange thumbs.
• Even though this dip is GREEN! and has healthy crap like ARTICHOKES! in it, it's still basically like eating a blob of fat with a few extra bits that are good for you. So once you've eaten that first entire batch on your own in front of Heroes, realize that you've just consumed a cup of Hellman's. Enjoy!

[forsythepjones]

on 1/22/2007 I'm used to HOT spinach and artichoke dip. Like what they serve at TGI Fridays.