I love learning about Middle Eastern cooking. I love the flavours, colours, mixture of savoury and sweet, and I also particularly like serving a table full of different plates of food where everyone can help themselves. As well as making flatbread, I like making simple, tasty, colourful dips. Here are two regulars on our table plus one that I invented yesterday.

Carrot and Caraway Dip

Nothing could be simpler than this tasty dip! This recipe comes from The Complete Book of Turkish Cooking by Ghillie Basan. This book is out of print, but Basan is a prolific author, so please hunt down her books. Here’s my take on it.

3 large carrots – peeled and thickly sliced

Steam or boil the carrots until tender. Drain and mash them coarsely.

Stir in 1/2 tsp caraway seeds, 1 tbsp olive oil, juice of 1/4 lemon, 1/4 tsp salt and some cracked black pepper.

That’s it! You can also leave out the lemon juice and instead serve it with yoghurt with some lemon juice and garlic mixed through. Basan garnishes with mint leaves but I’m not a fan of mint.

Beetroot Moutabel with Tahini

Here’s another brilliant and relatively simple dip. It requires a little more time but not much effort. The recipe is from the amazing Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume by Silvena Rowe –  a book that has one of the best cookbook covers ever.

2 medium beetroot
1/2 lemon
1-2 tbsp greek yoghurt
1 tbsp tahini
salt
Peel from one orange (optional)
Toasted walnuts (optional)

Bake the beetroot in the oven for about an hour at 180 C. I usually scrub them and bake them in their skins wrapped in foil. Then peel them with a teaspoon while warm (yes, wear gloves).

Put 1.5 of the beetroot, chopped into a food processor and keep the other half. Blitz with juice of 1/4 lemon, yoghurt, tahini and a pinch of salt. Grate the remaining beetroot and stir it through the mix (this adds texture to the dip).

With the recipe you can add more (or less) yoghurt, tahini and lemon juice to suit your taste.

If using orange peel, toast for one minute in a frypan, cool and place on top of the dip. If using walnuts, chop them and toast them in a pan and sprinkle on top of the dip.

The colour of this dip is amazing.

Charred Cauliflower and Onion Dip

Here’s the recipe that I made up last night.

1/4 large caulflower
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 medium onion
3 tbsp greek yoghurt
Juice of 1/4 lemon
1/2 tsp aleppo pepper flakes (or red pepper flakes) or 1/4 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp chopped garlic
Sea salt and cracked black pepper

Cut the cauliflower into medium-sized florets and mix with olive oil and 1 tsp salt. Bake at 200C for 20-25 min until it is starting to char on the outside (black not brown).

Cut the onion into about 3 thick slices. Cook in a frypan in olive oil on medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes until it starts to brown/char a bit on the outside. Chop the onion roughly.

Blitz the cauliflower and onion roughly in a food processor with the garlic and some cracked pepper. You want the mixture to be chunky, not smooth.

Add juice of 1/4 lemon, 1/2 tsp aleppo pepper flakes (or 1/4 tsp chilli flakes) and 3 tbsp yoghurt and mix with a spoon (you can mix it in the food processor but don’t overmix it.)

Once again, this is really simple and very tasty.