Creamy dips make excellent party appetizers. They can be served in bowls with tortilla chips nearby, so guests can dip the chips into the bowls. Another serving suggestion is to spread the dip on toasted slices of French baguettes, garnished with small dices of red and yellow bell peppers or with halves of cherry tomatoes and parsley leaves. These nice mini-sandwiches will make your guests love your cooking talent and want to get invited by you more often. Yes, sometimes a simple spinach artichoke dip can do what other charms can't.

Ingredients:

• 10 ounces artichoke hearts, drained, chopped
• 10 ounces frozen spinach, thawed, chopped and very well drained
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise (you can replace it with low-fat mayonnaise)
• 1/2 cup sour cream or yogurt
• 1 cup Mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 4 small packs (4 ounces) of cream cheese
• Salt, pepper

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Serves: 8

How to cook the creamy spinach artichoke dip:

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and blend them until they become a paste. Beware that sometimes canned artichokes can have a strange flavor, so it’s always best to rinse them well and drain them before use, especially if you’re not going to bake the dip. Even if you do, you can still rinse the artichoke hearts, as it won’t take you long anyway. Pour the blend in a casserole, cover it and cook it in the oven (preheated at 350 F) for 25-30 minutes. Serve it with carrot or celery sticks, or with any other dipping such as toast, chips or sliced pita bread. You can refrigerate the dip and serve it the next day.

Using fresh spinach in your recipes will increase a little bit the preparation time, but the food will taste slightly better than if you used frozen or canned spinach. Fresh spinach can be cooked in many ways, but for making a dip, the best are steaming or microwaving.

This is a dip recipe based on fresh baby spinach and canned artichoke hearts:

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs fresh baby spinach leaves
• 1 can artichoke hearts, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• 1 average onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon Worcester sauce
• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream (low-fat is also fine, if you’re concerned about your heart health)
• 1/4 cup flour Cayenne pepper and salt according to taste

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Serves: 6

Cooking procedure:

Wash the spinach very well, then steam it or microwave it for maximum 2 minutes. Dry it very well and chop it. In a skillet, put the olive oil, add the onion and the garlic, sauté for 2-3 minutes, then add the flour. Cook it for one more minute stirring continuously. Let it stand for a few minutes, then add the Worcester sauce, the sour cream, the cottage cheese, the spinach and the artichokes. Cook it on low temperature, stirring gently, until the cheese melts completely into the mix. This will take about 8-10 minutes or maybe less, so don’t leave the pan unattended. Add salt and pepper, pour everything in a bowl and serve the dip hot with toast bread or tortilla chips and with salsa.

Hot spinach and artichoke dip with cheese ingredients:

• 1 can of artichoke hearts (buying them canned decreases preparation time), very well drained, chopped small. Frozen artichoke hearts can be used (thaw them before cooking)
• 1 cup frozen spinach, thawed, well drained, chopped
• 8 ounce cream cheese
• 2-3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
• 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise (get light mayo if you want a healthier version of this dip recipe)
• 1/2 cup sour cream (can be replaced with yogurt)
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled, minced (if you don’t have fresh garlic, you can replace it with garlic powder)
• Herbs and spices according to taste (use either basil or dried chili peppers flakes or parsley)
• Salt and pepper, according to taste

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

Serves: 8

Cooking procedure:

First of all, you need to preheat the oven to 350 F. Mix all creamy ingredients together in a bowl (the cream cheese, the sour cream, the mayonnaise), then add the spices, the garlic, the salt and the pepper and mix everything very well. Then add the spinach and the artichokes, stirring gently until you get a homogeneous mixture. Don’t stir too much, because if you do, you’ll transform the spinach and the artichoke pieces into a paste. If you don’t mind that, then it’s fine, but if you want to feel the separate foods textures, you’ll have to be gentle when stirring. Pour the composition in a baking dish previously greased with a teaspoon of olive oil. Make sure that the mixture doesn’t fill the baking dish up to the edge. Bake the food for 30 minutes, then take it out of the oven, top it with the grated Parmesan cheese and let it bake again for more 5 minutes. Serve hot.

Health tip: if you want to decrease the amount of fats in this spinach artichoke dip, you can leave out the sour cream and the cheese completely.