Four Middle Eastern-style dips to make your summer picky bits properly

In Britain, "picky bits” can mean anything from olives and crisps to an entire supermarket aisle arranged across a chopping board. At its best, though, this sort of eating is less about assembly than abundance - sharp, smoky, creamy and crunchy things designed to be passed around, dragged through and eaten in no particular order.

It is why dips make such useful summer food. They can be prepared ahead, require little ceremony and turn a loaf of bread and a handful of vegetables into something that feels like a proper spread.

The phrase may be relatively new, but the principle is considerably older: put several good things in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves. The tradition of serving numerous small dishes stretches across the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus and Central Asia, although the names, ingredients and customs vary enormously.

Mezze might be served at the beginning of a larger meal or become the meal itself, with yoghurt, cheese, vegetables, nuts, herbs, pickles and flatbreads building layers of flavour rather than following the rigid starter-main-pudding structure familiar in Britain.

These are dishes designed for lingering. Some are cool and creamy, others smoky, sharp or spiced; all make sense alongside bread, grilled vegetables, cold drinks and the kind of meal that unfolds gradually rather than arriving fully formed. It is perhaps no surprise that Britain has embraced its own looser, more informal version just as garden gatherings, grazing boards and heatwave suppers have become fixtures of summer entertaining.

That same spirit runs through Kiln in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley. The restaurant began in 2017 in a broken-down former garage, built by founder Rich Cullen and his team with borrowed tools, cold hands and no grander plan than to create somewhere serving good food and proper coffee. At first, it was a pottery studio with refreshments on the side. Gradually, the food and ceramics became inseparable: dishes cooked over fire, served on plates made in the building and shaped by the same attention to patience, texture and craft.

Kiln’s cooking takes its cues from the Middle East and Mediterranean without pretending to reproduce them exactly. Instead, Cullen brings those flavours into conversation with the north east and the British larder, using local produce and homegrown ingredients where they make sense. Apple cider vinegar replaces the more customary red wine vinegar in his tirokafteri, for example, while feta joins yoghurt in a sweet potato borani that Cullen freely describes as his own version rather than a traditional one.

The four recipes here make an excellent case for doing picky bits properly. Sweet potato borani is rich with date molasses, feta and toasted hazelnuts. Muhammara turns charred red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses into something smoky, sweet and deeply savoury. Green labneh, strained until thick and creamy, is bright with dill, parsley and coriander. Tirokafteri, meanwhile, brings feta, chilli and vinegar together in a dip with enough bite to stand up to grilled meat, vegetables or bread.

Make one for drinks, two for lunch or all four for the sort of supper that keeps expanding as people arrive. Just make sure there is enough bread.

Sweet potato borani"Borani simply means a yoghurt and vegetable dip. It’s seen traditionally across Levantine, Turkish, Caucasian and Central Asian cuisines, though it’s most often associated with being an ancient Persian dip. Ours isn’t a traditional borani - we use feta alongside the yoghurt, which isn’t typical of the dish.

"I enjoy having borani on the menu because it brings a sweetness and a lightness, and more vegetables to the table, which is always something to be celebrated.”

Serves: 4-6 as a sharing dish
Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: 40 minutes-1 hour

Ingredients:
5 sweet potatoes
Olive oil (or extra virgin), for coating and blending
Maldon sea salt, crushed
3 tbsp date molasses, plus extra to plate
1 tsp cumin
50ml lemon juice
4-5 garlic cloves, crushed
Seasoned yoghurt, to plate
Feta, a generous crumble, to plate
A few dates, finely sliced, to plate
Toasted hazelnuts, a nice handful (not too much), to plate

Method:
1. Prick the sweet potatoes all over. Coat them generously in olive oil and crushed Maldon salt, smothering it over the whole surface.
2. Place in a baking dish, uncovered, and roast at 185C for 40 minutes to an hour. Every 20 minutes, take the tray out and rotate the sweet potatoes so each side crisps evenly.
3. However long it takes, what you’re looking for is the sugars starting to bead out through the pricked holes and caramelise on the surface. Squeeze the sweet potato - if it’s soft and squishy all the way through, it’s ready.
4. Put the hot sweet potatoes straight into a food processor, skin on - leaving the skin on gives an extra depth of flavour, and if you blend for long enough you still get a really smooth borani with a deep colour.
5. Add the date molasses, cumin, lemon juice and garlic, then a good dose of olive oil, and blend, blend, blend. Date molasses gives a delicious, complex fruitiness with a treacly edge and a deep caramel note, enhancing the honey-caramel flavour that naturally comes from the sugar in the sweet potato.
6. To plate, spread the purée out on a plate. Add a good dose of date molasses over the top, along with some crumbled feta and yoghurt, then finish with finely sliced dates and toasted hazelnuts.

The Independent