This light and fresh tasting dip is great with vegetables but also good with a bit of day-old French stick bread sliced into bite size pieces. The dip has a subtle, light taste that won't interfere with other foods. Great for hors d'oeuvre, appetizers or buffets.

Ingredients
1 large red pepper
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tsp lemon juice
3/4 cup plain yogurt
salt and pepper to taste

How to make it
1) Start up your oven broiler and set to high. Let it get hot.

2) Trim the stem of the pepper and place on a baking sheet. Broil until nicely blackened on all sides, turning throughout the process.

Rookie mistake: The point of broiling the pepper is to remove the skin and roast the pepper. After a couple of minutes the skin will bubble and become easier to remove. DO NOT remove the peppers from the oven until 70-80% of the skin in blackened. Remember, you're not only trying to remove the skin, you're trying to roast the pepper for the flavour. Let them cook.

3) Transfer the pepper to a bowl and seal in plastic wrap. Let cool. This will steam them a bit and the skin will come off easier.

4) When the peppers are cool enough to handle, rub off the skin. Remove the seeds and skin over a bowl to catch the juices.

5) Put the peppers in a food processor with the mustard, garlic and lemon juice. Strain out the seeds and add the juice from the peppers. Process until smooth.

6) Add the yogurt and blend until smooth. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

The results
The above recipe should make about 1 1/4 cups of dip. The first time I made it I used 4 red peppers and had to quadruple the rest of the recipe. I ended up with around 4 cups or 1 litre of dip.

This is a nice, light dip. You could dip almost any vegetable but the flavour of the veg might overwhelm the dip. If you like the red pepper taste and want to enjoy it, use some stale (or stale-ish) bread to dip, which is my favourite.

Variations
I'm a garlic fan. I don't think 1 clove per red pepper was enough. The first time I made this, I doubled the amount of garlic and it was still too little for me. If you like garlic, try 3-4 cloves per red pepper.

You could also double the amount of red peppers in this recipe. Maybe some like the subtle red pepper flavour, but I'm more of a brute force type of guy and the more roasted red pepper flavour, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

The Dijon is a bit light in this recipe too. Try doubling the amount if you like that flavour, but remember that it will easily overwhelm the peppers and you'll end up with a mustard dip.

sources:
The LCBO magazine for Jan 2006
A couple of mods from my Chef brain

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