Once upon a time…before baby, when “date nights” were plentiful and leisurely meals were savored without a second thought as to what we’d owe the sitter if we linger another 15 minutes, we regularly frequented our neighborhood Turkuaz on the Upper West Side. With its warmly-lit, tented ceilings and its vast array of hot and cold small plates (and a spouse who could order in Turkish, which worked rather well for me…think Jamie Lee Curtis’s character in A Fish Called Wanda…), Turkuaz always delivered a delicious escape from the bustling city.

When Turkuaz first opened, at the start of the meal, they served a dip of carrots with yogurt – yogurtlu havuc salatasi – with warm pide bread. Loved it so much I had to run home and duplicate. And today I’m duplicating with rainbow carrots to create 3 different colored carrot dips.

Ingredients

yogurt sauce:

• 4 cups of plain Greek yogurt
• 3-4 cloves of minced/crushed raw garlic
• 1 tsp salt (less or more, as desired)

carrots:

• 3 pounds of rainbow carrots, separated by color
• 5-6 tablespoons of olive oil

Instructions

yogurt sauce:

1. in large mixing bowl, mix yogurt, garlic, and salt
2. set aside

carrots:

1. separate carrots by color (e.g., yellows, purples, oranges) – you’ll be making 3 separate dips, so have 3 small mixing bowls on-hand
2. start with the orange carrots; in a food processor (another example of my culinary laziness – Turks would grate the carrots…but when I grate, I eat skin), finely chop orange carrots
3. saute finely chopped carrots in 1 ½ – 2 tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat to soften
4. put aside in small mixing bowl to cool
5. repeat for purple carrots…
6. repeat for yellow carrots…
7. after carrots have cooled, blend yogurt mixture to each of the softened carrot bowls, add additional salt to taste as needed
8. garnish with fresh dill (my dexterity for garnishing was never…well, just see below…but these dips are so pretty, they can withstand even the clumsiest hand!)