Recipe: Whipped Feta Dip and Chili Butter Burst Tomatoes

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I have been lucky to have a fantastic crop of cherry tomatoes in my backyard garden this year. Even as the weather is beginning to cool here, there are still tons of little tomatoes on the vine! And I think the best way to enjoy sun-ripened, homegrown tomatoes is to keep things simple, so I have been using them raw in caprese-ish salads or giving them just a little bit of time in the skillet, just until they char or burst and turn into something jammy and wonderful.

In my household, a big bowl of tomatoes, something creamy, and some flatbread to scoop it all up is perfectly acceptable as a meal. This recipe pulls from a couple of my existing recipes to make this garden-grown celebration:

• If you are coming to this recipe in the winter, check out my recipe for Garlicky Whipped Feta with a Citrus Fennel Salad. It’s my original blog post for this same whipped feta dip but at the time I paired it with the more wintery flavors of bright juicy citrus segments and earthy, spice-like fennel.

• If you love tomatoes and want to make a more substantial meal with this idea, check out my recipe for Turkish Eggs with Charred Tomatoes and Sweet Pepper. This was originally where I developed this idea for combining burst tomatoes and chili butter, inspired by a Turkish egg dish called çılbır. I use Maras chili flakes from Spice Tribe for the chili butter (the original recipe was sponsored by them but this one is not).

How to Make Whipped Feta Dip and Chili Butter Burst Tomatoes

Ingredients for the feta dip

8 oz feta (domestic is fine)
2–4 garlic cloves
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup 2% Greek yogurt

Ingredients for the Burst Tomatoes

about 1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup salted butter, divided in half
2 tsp Maras Chile Flakes*
salt to taste

For Serving

herb oil, pesto, or chimichurri (optional)
fresh herbs, such as thyme and basil
toasts, crostini, or flatbread

*This is one of my favorite products from my friends at Spice Tribe but if you are looking for an alternative I have found that harissa chili blend works well.

Procedure

To make the feta dip, break the feta into chunks and add to the bowl of a food processor. Add garlic and olive oil. Process until a homogenous paste forms. Add the yogurt and process until smooth.

In a skillet, melt half of the butter on medium-high. Add the tomatoes and season with a bit of salt. Reduce the heat to medium if the butter starts to brown. Cook the tomatoes until about half of them have burst.

Reduce the heat to medium-low, and add the rest of the butter. As the butter starts to bubble along the edges, add the chile flakes. Stir the contents of the skillet gently. Cook until the butter starts to foam and the chili becomes fragrant

Scoop the feta dip into a serving bowl, using the back of a spoon to create some areas for the chili butter to pool. Pour the tomatoes and chili butter on top.

Add a drizzle of herby oil, if desired. Top with fresh herbs and serve with toasts, crostini, or flatbread.

Recipe: Garlicky Whipped Feta Dip (with a Citrus Fennel Salad)

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I have been on a real feta kick lately. Maybe I have been brainwashed by that baked feta pasta that went viral on TikTok (which, by the way is tasty and also really nice on toast instead of pasta too.) But the crappy cheap stuff from Trader Joe’s is actually super versatile and I find that it’s a cheese that keeps remarkably well in my fridge even when it’s a small nubbin I forget about for a while. Sometimes I get real lazy and just microwave it a little bit to soften before attacking it with a tiny whisk and it becomes a pretty decent spread on toast, but recently I have also decided to bust out the food processor and make a proper whipped feta dip. And after enjoying it a couple of times, I admit that it is worth the extra effort and dishwashing (which, the latter is done by Spouse anyway).

So, here is my whipped feta dip recipe by way of the food processor. Like I think of all dip recipes, this is meant to be just guidelines. Your feta may be softer and more watery than mine. You may want something thicker than what you see in the photos. Like toast, I do not think dip recipes should lock you into the belief that you need to measure everything to get it right. The only thing I can confirm is that this is what worked very nicely for me on the day that I took these photos, topping my dip with my newfound and latecoming appreciation for citrus and serving with lots of crostini on the side.

The feta dip is also a great base for fancy toasts, or on bagels. Or with crudités. Obviously it is good with anything that creamy dips are good with, which is everything.

How to Make Garlicky Whipped Feta Dip (with a Citrus Fennel Salad)

Ingredients for the feta dip

8 oz feta (domestic is fine)
2–4 garlic cloves
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup 2% Greek yogurt

Ingredients for the citrus salad

1 small blood orange
1 small cara cara orange
1 bulb of baby fennel, thinly shaved
some fennel fronds, to taste
3–4 kumquats, thinly sliced
1 sprig of basil leaves, thinly sliced
extra virgin olive oil
freshly cracked pepper

For Serving

toasts or crostini

Procedure

To make the feta dip, break the feta into chunks and add to the bowl of a food processor. Add garlic and olive oil. Process until a homogenous paste forms. Add the yogurt and process until smooth. Scoop into a serving bowl, using the back of a spoon to create some areas for oil to pool.

To make the salad, use a sharp knife to carefully slice off the peel and pith from both oranges. Then cut out the segments, leaving the skin that contains the segments behind.

Place the orange segments on top of the feta dip. Scatter the shaved fennel and kumquat slices on top. Garnish with the fennel fronds and the basil, then drizzle olive oil over everything and crack some black pepper on it.

Serve with your dippers of choice.

Recipe: Ginger Scallion Garlic Oil

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Ginger scallion oil is something I remember my mom making to serve with her chicken rice. I don’t want to call it Hainanese chicken rice because her version was a lot more casual and homestyle and she did not follow the precise poaching method for Hainanese chicken rice. But she would basically boil the whole chicken and cleaver it into smaller pieces for serving with chicken rice and the broth on the side. Occasionally she would make a ginger scallion oil sauce as a condiment and that make the meal so much more exciting. The sharp bite of raw ginger was cooked away but what remained was its fresh spicy flavor; that plus the scallions added just enough flavor boost to the boiled chicken without taking away from the fact that the dish was a celebration of simple flavors.

I tried making my mom’s recipe for her ginger scallion paste, which I, at some point in college, wrote on a little grocery list notepad paper and tucked into my notebook of other handwritten recipes I collected from my mom’s cookbook collection. For some reason, when I made this recipe it didn’t turn out how I remembered. The recipe said to fry the ginger until it was dry, and the result ended up being a bunch of fibrous clumps.

Eventually I experimented with another technique that I had learned while researching how to make chili oil, and encountered again when learning how to make simple sauces for biang biang noodles. In both cases, spices or aromatics are piled up in a bowl and then almost-smoking hot oil is poured on top to bloom them and bring their flavors to life. I tried this approach with the ginger scallion oil idea (adding garlic along the way because damn do I love garlic) and it totally gave me the consistency I wanted. Something you could drizzle over jook, spoon over a plate of chicken rice, or toss with noodles.

In the photo above, my ginger scallion garlic oil is an accompaniment to duck tacos I made from a roast duck that I bought at Yung Kee Restaurant in Oakland Chinatown. Other accompaniments are Asian pear slices tossed in sushi rice seasoning and gochugaru, crispy fried rice noodles, scallions, and cilantro.

How to Make Ginger Scallion Garlic Oil

Ingredients

a big fat 4-inch finger of ginger, peeled and grated*
3 scallions, thinly sliced
3–4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 generous pinches coarse Kosher salt, or to taste
1/2 cup avocado oil, or some other neutral high smoke point oil

*Do not include the long fibers that get stuck to the grater. The texture of your grated ginger should look pulpy but not stringy.

Procedure

Place the ginger on a paper towel and gently squeeze out most of the liquid. You do not need to wring tightly, but squeeze until the ginger looks like a moist paste with no excess moisture.

Combine the ginger, scallions, garlic, and salt in a heat-safe bowl.

Heat the oil until it is almost smoking. (The oil is hot enough if you toss in a small piece of scallion and it sizzles up right away.) Carefully pour the hot oil over the aromatics (there will be some bubbling). When the sizzling stops, stir everything together. Make this at least 20 minutes in advance to allow time for the flavors to infuse into the oil. It keeps fine in the fridge for a few days.