Creamy White Bean Dip with Pan-Fried Tomato Sauce

Pasta puttanesca, but make it a (protein-rich) snack

Jan 26, 2025

At the end of a long, busy day, there’s really nothing I love more than a bowl of dip for dinner. Whether it’s a yogurty dressing with a big plate of crudités, a ramekin of bagna càuda with a bouquet of chicories, or a plate of hummus with pita, a meal you can eat with your fingers—and the very act of scooping up big bites of deliciousness—just makes food taste better.

Recently I’ve been craving bean dips. I’ve bookmarked recipes for Ottolenghi’s version with preserved lemons from the NYT and put sticky notes in cookbooks to mark dishes like whipped ricotta topped with chimichurri-napped beans. Eventually, I’ll probably try all of these variations. (I belong to a mail-order bean club, so this will give me lots of good ways to use up the legumes that arrive on my doorstep four times a year.)

But first, I thought I’d try making a bean dip topped with one of my favorite sauces: a pan-fried tomato sauce. This sauce is something I usually make to put on pasta with a dollop of ricotta—a last-minute dinner favorite that tastes like lasagna but comes together in a fraction of the time. It has many of the flavors of a piquant puttanesca sauce but is done in about 5 minutes; frying the ingredients in oil over high heat caramelizes them and draws out their moisture, giving them lots of flavor in very little time. (Continued below…)

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The same sauce is wonderful on this roughly mashed white bean dip, which has some yogurt mixed in for added creaminess (a trick from that Ottolenghi recipe). The strong flavors of the tomato and the green olives are a nice counterpoint to the mild beans, and the whole thing is wonderfully warming and comforting.

I ate this dip with pita, which was fantastic, but the dish’s Italian flavors would also lend themselves to piling bites onto bruschetta-style toasts, if you prefer. (You can also swap the olives for capers, or even add some finely chopped anchovy, to lean further into the puttanesca flavor profile.)

Creamy White Bean Dip with Pan-Fried Tomato Sauce

Serves 1 as a meal

3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1½ cups cooked or canned white beans, drained
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon Greek yogurt
¼ red onion, thinly sliced
3 whole canned tomatoes, drained
2 green olives, such as Castelvetrano, sliced
Pinch chile flakes (optional)
1 basil leaf, finely chopped
1 pita

Put the sliced garlic and 1½ tablespoons of the olive oil in a small pot and cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until the garlic is golden. Remove the pan from the heat and use a fork to smash the garlic up a bit.
Add the beans to the pot and return it to the heat. Cook the bean and garlic over medium, mashing the beans a bit with the back of a spoon until you have a rough paste. Season the mixture well with salt and pepper.
Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the yogurt. Transfer the dip to a serving bowl.
Heat the remaining 1½ tablespoons of the olive oil in a small pan over medium-high. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until it is softened and frizzled but not so brown that it starts to burn.
Hold one tomato at a time over the pan and squeeze it so that it breaks into small pieces that drop into the pan; the juice inside the tomatoes will also fall into the pan as you squeeze. Add the olives and chile (if using) and season with salt and pepper.
Raise the heat to high, and cook the tomato mixture, stirring occasionally but letting everything sit on the pan for a couple minutes at a time so that the tomato pieces can caramelize and the olive slices can brown; don’t let the chile flakes burn.
When the tomatoes are thoroughly cooked and look a little bit dried out, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the basil.
Toast the pita and cut it into wedges, then top the bean dip with the tomato mixture.

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