DELICIOUS Hot & Cold Tuna Chilli Dip

This hot and cold tuna dip is ridiculously tasty and easy to make. Tinned tuna is the base of this creamy, delicious dip. It can be served hot so that you get gooey cheese strings or it can be served cold. If you love tuna this is a pushy recipe Dear Reader!

Home made dips are so easy to make. I do buy dips when I'm short on time but I mostly make my own. All you really need is a food processor and you're 5 minutes away from a delicious dip! When you make a lot of dips at home yourself, I find myself surprised at the prices of dips, especially when you go to a nice deli.

Variations on this hot and cold tuna dip: use tinned salmon or use other flavours of tuna! Tinned tuna comes in a multitude of different flavours and this dip is versatile and you can easily use any of these. You want to use the oil too so that it isn't a dry dip.

The inspiration behind this dip came from Eva's delicious sounding recipe for a warm salmon dip and while I've already made a hot salmon dip, it wasn't with tinned fish. Then I remembered that I had two small jars of triple chilli tuna. I think I bought them during last year's lockdown although that's just a guess because I have no memory of actually purchasing them (lockdown 1.0 feels so long ago). I made two batches of this-one cold and one hot so I have both options available. It's amazing how few ingredients put together produce something so tasty.

So far, I find that I'm coping with the lockdown in a weird way. It is all very up and down. One day can be great while the other can be horrible and you wonder what's wrong with people. At night I look for things to distract myself but then I find myself doing so many things at once. There's double screening where you look at your phone while you watch tv but one evening, while I should be relaxing I found myself doing four things: I was watching tv, doom scrolling on my phone and then sitting back with a mask on my face and doing kegel exercises. No wonder I'm slightly overwhelmed!

So tell me Dear Reader, how is it going for you? Do you doom scroll? And do you do lots of things at once?

Hot & Cold Tuna Chilli Dip

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serves: Makes 2 cups

• 40g/1.7ozs. red onion
• 1 large clove garlic
• 1 tablespoon Japanese pickled ginger
• 200g/7ozs. triple chilli tuna in oil
• 1/2 block/125g/4ozs. cream cheese
• Salt and pepper to season
• 1 cup/100g/3.5ozs. grated mozzarella

Step 1 - Place the onion, garlic and pickled ginger into a food processor and blitz until fine. Add the tuna, reserving any little chillies but adding the tuna and oil and the cream cheese. Blitz until smooth. If you are serving this cold, top with the chillies and season with salt and pepper and serve with crackers.

Step 2 - If you are serving this hot add the mozzarella to the food processor and blend. Scoop into a large ramekin and bake at 180C/250F for 15-20 minutes. Place reserved chillies on top, season with salt and pepper and serve with crackers and scoop up those delicious cheese strings!