Monday, December 19, 2016

artichoke dip

This video is all over the place all at once. It zoomed to millions of views in a matter of days. Presently if you Google [artichoke dip] then three examples of this video show at top results. On YouTube as you type the first letters for query you are prompted with [artichoke dip gone bad].

And it's the stupidest thing. The most basic fattening ingredients imaginable, with minor adjustment it can be anything. Anything! Look at these ingredients and see how the profile can be altered to nearly anything.

* 1/2 cup mayonnaise
* 1/2 cup sour cream (switch out for yogurt)
* 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

(See? Right here, switch out  Parmesan for blue cheese, a lot less of that, and dilute with milk to desired viscosity and you have blue cheese dressing. And the best that you'll taste, by the way.)

* 14 oz. tin artichoke hearts (switch out for spinach, or roasted poblano peppers, roasted red bell peppers, cucumber along with yogurt would lead to tzatziki. Even salmon would make a fine dip. )
* 1/2 cup finely diced red onion
* 1 Tablespoon lemon juice.
* s/p to taste.

See? Basic as can be and harmless. Here's where you can get creative with chives, diced jalapeño, dill, ginger, hot catsup. One of Tony's favorite things used a LB of grated Velveeta cheese with these ingredients spread on slices of French bread and toasted. At parties people wait at the oven for the tray to come out. She called it confetti dip due to the little green and red bits. And they are really good.

It feels like I just now transported back to the 80's.

So all this means that somebody there at the studio dumped something into the mix. To punk the crew. Or to be mean. The woman says, "It's not supposed to look like this" so she sensed something was wrong.


On the other hand, it could have been a real mistake. But probably not.

One time at Tony's friend's house Tony pulled me aside to help her friend in the kitchen. She blew it with her guacamole and Tony told her that I could fix it. But the woman put something like a whole cup of lime juice from a jar. Had she used fresh limes the task of squeezing so many would have clued her that's way too much lime. And she didn't taste-test. She made so much of it the only way to fix it would be toss out 9/10 and start over with 10 more avocados, tomatoes and onions. Even very smart people really do make insensible mistakes.

I love this guy. People send him things to try. A lot of things. Most the time for advertisement. But not this time. He knows he's making a mistake by eating a whole teaspoon straight, he says so, but he tries anyway, his face is hilarious, and then stays willing to give Vegemite its full due respect.

4 comments:

ampersand said...

I learned from the Little Rascals that artichokes are frou-frou food for rich people.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Dip left out on a buffet table, interminably, for guests to scoop for themselves all willy-nilly as they may, is one of those things that is ubiquitous and yet kind of disgusting if you stop to think about it.

Like blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.

Please don't spray your saliva on my food.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I remember when salad bars first came out, and then the "sneeze guard" was invented soon afterwards.

But what took them so long?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The vegimite sandwich of the famed song by men at work came to mind.