May I Interest You in A Party of the Dip Variety? - No. 2
And thoughts on cooking as a single human.
In this week's newsletter: Our featured guest is Lutza Petrin, an accountant, artist, and dip extraordinaire. We talk about her monthly “dip day” events, yeah that's right, dip day. Think potluck dinner party, but instead, everything is a dip. I know, it's a dream come true. AND it's a double-dip recipe week! Today, you’ll get a sweet treat: my spin on Lutza's favorite dip + dippable combo with a dark cocoa tahini dip and “churro” plantain chips.
Subscribe to get the second recipe of the week; a spicy tahini dip using gochujang…I know, it sounds delicious. So, you should do that right now. It’s the best way to ensure you don’t miss each week’s recipes, which are packed with flavor and are perfect for sprinkling over or setting a base for simple dishes you’re already making.
I'm so excited to share my first interview today, with a close friend who is bringing together a community in her new city literally through DIP. But first things first, can we acknowledge her celeb name? In all the years I've been friends with Lutza, I never realized how unique her name is. I feel like I should be hearing it coming from announcers for the summer Olympics or something. Like—“Olympic gold medalist, Lutza Petrin, nails another beam routine this week, triple flipping and sticking the mothing f*ing landing. wait a second, what is that…in her hands there?”—“I'll be damned. Is that…a churro in one hand and chocolate tahini dip in the other?! I think it is. And she doesn't even spill a bit on the mats...”
Alright, excuse my rambling detour, you’ll get the joke later. Lutza and I met during undergrad at Western Washington University where we both studied art. Although, Lutza, multi-talented as ever—did I mention she’s single? —didn't just study art, she also kicked some booty as an accounting major and is already a CPA, in a managing role at Benchling, a cloud-based platform for biotechnology research and development in San Francisco. She is probably one of the hardest workers I know. Born and raised in Issaquah, Washington, she grew up bouncing back and forth between her parents who split up when she was just 3 years old. As I'm sure many of us can relate—two single-parent households meant a lot of time with quick, easy, and cheap meals.
“Honestly, I don't remember too much of what we ate or what eating was like [growing up], which makes me think it just wasn't a very special thing in my household. But the few things I do remember is when I was young, we were really really poor and most of what had was kraft mac and cheese with ground beef in it, or ramen noodles because that's all we could afford.”
To my surprise, despite this challenge, her parents were individually quite excellent cooks in their realms; it just happened on more of a rare occasion.
“I mean there's a common phrase, nothing beats mom's home cooking for a reason.”
Her mom is Hungarian and connected Lutza to her heritage through the traditional recipes she had memorized. That's right—never writing them down, never following a recipe book, hundreds of Hungarian recipes are just camped out with a lil tent inside her brain. I bet those recipes are cute and have lil hammocks too. Now that she’s living on her own, Lutza wants to learn some of her mom’s dishes like chicken paprikash, goulash, or Hungarian fried chicken—which is basically a schnitzel—but…
“When [my mom] tried writing down measurements for us, nothing would turn out right. I mean, there’s a common phrase, nothing beats mom’s cooking for a reason…I even just went to Hungary with [her] and was so excited to have authentic dishes, but I still found myself saying, it wasn't as good as my mom's.”
It feels like every family has at least one amazing cook amongst them, who for whatever stretch of luck, does everything by feel. A pinch of this, a splash of that, and the secret sauce is hidden somewhere in the complex strands of their DNA, never to be extracted.
If you think that’s impressive, don't even get me started on her dad's side of things. Although he was working a lot, her dad would go all out on breakfasts on the weekend.
“He would make these really elaborate breakfasts like lemon ricotta pancakes, bacon, eggs benedict with caviar on top, German-oven pancakes. He's just very good at making breakfast—and then we'd do like Sunday night movies and order pizza. Do you feel like everyone in your family just has this one thing that they've cooked until they've perfected it and nothing else can compare? Because [his cooking] ruined ordering breakfasts out for me. Everyone at brunch is ordering eggs benedict and I just skip it because I know it won't be as good as my dad's.”
Lutza, I can't say I can relate because my family didn't cook much…unless you count that one time my grandpa blew up an egg in the microwave by trying to hard boil it that way. No? You don't count that…alright, who’s making the rules here?
Lutza's expertise is in making crepes. She also has a couple favorite recipes that she goes to when she wants to impress, including apple pie cinnamon rolls, which she describes as “a spin on a Cinnabon, with apple pie filling.” I'll link the Half-Baked Harvest recipe she uses because that sounds AMAZING.
Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for: let's talk dip day.
Driven by her move to San Francisco just a few short months ago, dip day served as a creamy foundation for a brand-new community of chips, crackers, and other fun characters in Lutza's new world. Moving to a new city and only knowing enough people to count on one hand can be intimidating, but instead of waiting on an opportunity to come to her, Lutza took it upon herself to arrange a monthly event. Think potluck dinner party, but with a twist; everything is a dip or a dippable. I know, it's a dream come true. No, really, did I fall asleep and wake up in a world where this exists? Dips? For dinner? Please excuse me while I look for flights to San Francisco.
As you can see from the super formal invite, there are only two rules; bring a dip and come hungry—but this is loose, the definition of dip includes store-bought, homemade, sweet, savory, and…wine?
“I try to make it something where we're all bringing interesting dips and getting creative with our food, but it helps with any barrier to entry. Say someone is really busy or it's their first dip day and they don't know anyone, they don’t know what to make, I tell them they can just bring wine. Wine is a dip.”
Lutza says one of the ways she's seen creativity develop is when someone, “either goes hard on the dip or hard on the dippable,” some examples include french toast sticks, pizza sticks, or mezze style dips like baba ghanoush or tzatziki.
And what is a dip dare, you ask? Well, it just gets better, this day. Dip dares are sort of an initiation to dip day.
“If it's your first time, the group will select one dip and one dippable and the new guest has to eat them together. In San Francisco, people have been getting SO excited about the dip dares, it's like their favorite part of the party. Like, as soon as someone says ok it's dip dare time, everyone gets pumped and there's a ton of laughing.”
Breaking the ice for the new guest, dip dares “add this really silly element that just makes dip day better than any dinner party.” As for the worst dip dare she's experienced thus far? A dolma dipped in a sweet greek yogurt sauce that included cinnamon, almond butter, and chocolate chips. “Yeah. You should try it sometime…” she laughs, “no. It was really gross.”
Aside from the dolma dipped in cinnamony-goodness, Lutza has developed a section of the evening to vote for the best dip combinations as well. A couple that she's created with positive feedback are churros and salted chocolate dip (which I've made my own spin on at the end of this post), apples, and the infamous greek yogurt cinnamon dip. For her next dip day, she plans to try making soft pretzels.
According to Lutza, she can't take all the credit for the idea though. A couple weeks before she left Seattle, the original creator (and possibly my future husband?) invited her to her first dip day.
“So, I went to his house and there's probably like 30 plus people there, all these bottles of wine and the kitchen island just covered with dips and dippables. To be fair, it was a lot of just hummus and tortilla chips, lazy dips, but then there were also a couple thoughtful and creative dips in the mix. Sweet, savory, you name it.”
This was an event that had grown over years and years, starting from a small girl’s group of 4, who enjoyed making dips and grew to reoccur every month and include partners, other roommates, friends, friends of friends and coworkers. It became the type of low-stakes event where you could “invite someone you've been they to hang out with, but maybe you don't know what to invite them to—you invite them to dip day.”
Dip day has inspired more than friendship, but also personal growth, true community, and a means to explore creativity through food. She says, “I've always wanted to improve my ability to bring people together, being more of the one-on-one friend rather than the group gatherer. And throughout the past year, with dip day, I've developed socially and felt growth in that area.” How heart-warming, dips, bringing us together.
Outside of her dip day excursions, crepes, and apple pie cinnamon rolls (again, yum!) Lutza describes her relationship with cooking as an adult as “trying.”
“It's the adjective I'd use to describe it. I see people who intuitively grab ingredients from their fridge and throw together a meal, but I just don't have that instinct. I’ll try recipe after recipe and tell myself I'll learn to cook that way. But I have such a small appetite, and I live alone, or mostly cook for myself, and find that when I make these recipes, I can't finish them. I end up with a lot of food waste. And just because the standard, or what I'm seeing on Instagram, is cooking this way—of making full meals with chicken and rice and vegetables and this and that, like every day, it doesn't mean it has to be my standard. I can just look for organic and healthy ingredients and make quick simple dishes that don't require all of that prep and it works for me.”
“I was finally able to accept, alright, my version of food is ok because it's what works for me.”
After studying nutrition and food sciences over the last year and having a lot of intentional conversations with clients about cooking, I hear this on repeat. You’re not alone Lutza! Every time, I hear this sentiment that people are struggling with preparing full meals as single young adults, not knowing how to "cook for one." Or that they’re trying to keep up with what feels like the norm, and don’t know what is healthy or best for their lifestyle.
My answer is: healthy is what can do consistently…while including vegetables, fruit, and protein. If you leave feeling satiated and with enough energy to complete the tasks and adventures of your day and it’s a repeatable meal for you, why compare to others? If your standard works for you, it doesn't matter how simple or complex it is.
“I tried Hello Fresh for all of this last year, and I liked that I didn't have to plan around food and recipes anymore. It was picked from this list and all the ingredients are handled, but with my lifestyle, always working or outside of the house climbing or socializing, there was still food waste because I wasn't home enough to eat the full meals. Moving to San Fran, I have found my happy place with food—I'm a fan of smoothies, avocado toast, simple things.”
Lutza's go-to smoothie includes mixed berries, greek yogurt, spinach, chia, flax, and hemp seeds. She thanks her mom for the call to fresh and organic produce and healthy-minded meals. “Growing up we were never allowed to have sugary cereals or anything—more of a honey-bunches-of-oats, or cheerios with banana kind of household. And my mom always looked for the best produce she could afford.”
I want to ask everyone that I highlight on Vegarie, why do you feel like food brings so many people together? And, in this particular case, why should more people have dip parties?
“Why does food bring people together? Oh, my, uh, I want to say something profound here. I have nothing profound to say. But ok, everyone needs food for survival, so your brain is excited about it, hence we all love food. Selfishly, I enjoy trying other people's cooking a lot more than my own, because there are a lot of people out there who are great at cooking. Culturally, it's also interesting to try foods that represent where your friends are from, I think it teaches you a lot about who they are without the words. As far as dip day, it’s just more light-hearted, and silly than any dinner party I've been to. It brings the bar down, and removes any stress, which just makes it repeatable. It allows you to focus on developing meaningful friendships.”
Thank you so much Lutza for taking time out of your busy week to talk with me about dip day and your relationship with food. I appreciate you more than you know!
And hey, maybe I’ll start a dip day here in Brooklyn… drop a comment if you want to join.
Dark Cocoa Tahini Dip + “Churro” Plantain Chips
Dark Cocoa Dip
Ingredients
1/3 c tahini
4 tbs dark cocoa powder
2 tbs honey
1/4 c water
salt to taste
Preparation:
Stir all ingredients together to combine. It’s that simple ;) Add more water or cocoa to your taste and desired level of thickness. Store in the fridge in an air-tight container. As it cools, it’s natural that the dip will thicken. Either keep thick, like a Nutella or thin it and use as a sauce on desserts.
“Churro” Plantain Chips
Ingredients
3 plantains (cut to 1/8” thickness, preferably using a Mandelin)
1 tbs cinnamon
1/8 c coconut sugar
1 1/2 tbs coconut oil
sprinkle with salt
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350F/176C.
Use Mandelin to slice all 3 plantains to about 1/8” thickness. Once all plantains are sliced, set up a station; 2 plates, one with lightly melted coconut oil and another with cinnamon and sugar mixed together. Dip plantains into coconut oil, followed by the cinnamon sugar mixture.
Place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Lightly salt. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool for a couple minutes before removing from the pan. These will be crispy and lightly browned!