Peanut sauce dip

We had vegetable spring roll with peanut sauce dip few days back from a Vietnamese restaurant  and it tasted really good, especially the dipping sauce. It was a kind of sweet peanut sauce. Though I am not a peanut butter lover, I wanted to come up with a copycat recipe for the dipping sauce at home. Below is the recipe of the same. It tastes very similar to the restaurant version we had.

Ingredients:

1. Peanut butter, creamy - 4 tbs
2. Honey - 2 tbs
3. Sriracha sauce - 1 tsp
4. Sweet balsamic vinegar - 1 tbs
5. Soya sauce -  2tbs
6. Salt to taste

Note:

• If you cannot find Sriracha sauce, use red chilli sauce. (not the sweet one)

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients well. Adjust the water according to the consistency you like.

See the recipe for Vegetable spring roll here.

Tomato Salsa

Tomato salsa is a very handy sauce/dip to go with nachos, wraps, salads etc etc! It goes really well with most of the things.. So whenever we prepare it at home, i make sure that i will have some extra to store it in fridge for later use and it has never gone wasted :)

Ingredients:

1. Tomato, chopped (canned tomato) - 1 can
2. Tomato puree (canned) - 1/2 can
3. Jalapeno pepper, chopped - 1/2(adjust it according to your spice level)
4. Lime juice - 1 tbs
5. Salt to taste
6. Garlic, chopped - 1 clove
7. Onion, chopped - 2 tbs
8. Coriander leaves, chopped - 1 tbs
9. Cumin powder - 1/2 tsp
10. Sugar - 1/4 tsp

Note:

• We don't want to puree salsa completely. Hence pulsing in the blender will do the trick
• Store it in an airtight container in fridge for later use
• According to my husband it tastes best on the next day

Method:
Add all the ingredients in a blender and pulse it 2 or 3 times

Tada... that is it.. salsa is ready to be served!

Hummus

Hummus is a protien packed bread spread or pita dip which is very easy to make at home. I have made 2 batches of hummus at home already, it turned out to be a huge success too. Most of the recipes I saw online called for raw garlic in hummus. But I thought it might be overwhelming for me to have raw garlic taste in hummus so I chose to use the garlic in brine instead. Also I had few bottles of unused garlic in brine bottles at home. :)
Hummus goes very well with toasted brown bread with a dash of nandos sauce or normal ketchup. Here goes my recipe for hummus.

Ingredients:

1. Chana/chickpeas cooked - 1 cup
2. Olive oil - 3tbs
3. Garlic in brine- 8 cloves
4. Tahini paste- 1tbs

Directions:

1. In a blender, make a paste of the above. If the mixture is too thick be generous to add more olive oil. 

*store hummus in an airtight container with olive oil as top layer for hummus. 

*for my third batch of hummus, I tried with roasted garlic(8 cloves), but it turned out to be too garlicky. So I suggest to use lesser amount of garlic if you are using roasted garlic or raw garlic. Also add salt to hummus if raw or roasted garlic is used