Angelina Hue

AB loves pickles, especially pickled cucumbers. After making do with the tiny and tart French cornichons for the last couple of years, he decided to make his own.

Last weekend, we bought a bag of baby cucumbers and a bunch of dill at a Turkish supermarket. Turns out that he only needed a few swigs of dill for the pickles.

What do you do when you have too much dill?

After a quick search on the Internet, I decided to make some lemon braised chicken and mint pesto using a recipe that I found on The Kitchn. I’m not a big fan of beans but the amazing photo of the dish on The Kitchn was enough to convince me to try the recipe.

Instead of putting the Dutch cast iron pot in the oven, I put this heavyweight on the stove and let the beans simmer for two hours. It was worth the wait, including soaking the white beans overnight.

I love the light lemony flavour infused with the scent of dill and the mint pesto was the perfect finishing touch with its fresh, green taste. This is an ideal meal for a warm summer day, as long as you can take a siesta afterwards as it can be very filling! Be sure to have several slices of good white bread to soak up the delicious bean sauce.

This photo was taken the following day when we ate some of the leftover lemon braised chicken and beans for brunch.

Now, after making a huge pot of white beans with chicken and lemon, the bunch of dill had only diminished slightly. In addition, we ended up with plenty of beans which we ate over several meals as a side dish.

What do you do when you have too much dill AND white beans?

After a quick look inside the fridge, I realised that there was also quite a bit of spinach, more of the delicious mint pesto as well as one fresh artichoke. So I searched again on the Internet and found a recipe for a spinach, artichoke and white bean dip.

In the end, I didn’t use any artichoke. My improvised dip was made up of leftover white beans in lemon sauce, mint pesto, a handful of dill fronds, spinach and a dash of lemon juice, salt and pepper. After blending everything in the food processor, I spread the dip over thin slices of bread and put them into the oven to bake for about 15 minutes.

While I didn’t follow a recipe to make this dip, this impromptu dish turned out very well. The minty, lemony and fresh flavours were great together and made for a tasty snack when served on toasted bread.

In the end, I had to toss out the remaining dill as it had turned yellow. So no more problem with having too much dill. Except that I now have a huge jar of white bean, spinach, mint and lemon dip that I’ll have to finish all by myself over the next few days!