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Caviar dip with dill sour cream and crisp sourdough chips

Caviar Dip with Sourdough Chips

A Nordic caviar dip — cold sour cream with dill and shallot, roe in the middle, crisp sourdough chips to scoop.
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Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Cooling 20 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Servings: 6 servings
Course: Appetizer, Snack
Cuisine: Nordic, Scandinavian
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

Bread chips
  • 1 leftover sourdough baguette about 250 g / 9 oz — yield depends on the length of your loaf
  • 2 tbsp neutral oil rapeseed, sunflower or light olive oil
  • Maldon sea salt for sprinkling
Dill cream
  • 250 g full-fat sour cream 1 cup, crème fraîche works too
  • 2 tbsp shallot finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp fresh dill finely chopped
  • freshly ground black pepper to taste
Roe and garnish
  • 100 g roe of your choice 3½ oz — trout, salmon, whitefish or lumpfish; see the post on choosing
  • 1 tbsp chives or spring onion tops thinly sliced

Equipment

  • Mother-of-pearl caviar spoon Metal gives roe a faint metallic taste. Mother-of-pearl, bone or plastic doesn't. A cheap fix for something that genuinely matters.
  • Small serving bowl or tin stand Roe should stay cold on the table — a small bowl set over ice buys you an hour.
  • Serrated bread knife Slices a day-old baguette thin and clean without tearing the crumb.
  • Sheet pan + parchment You need a single layer with space between the slices, so a full-size pan matters.
  • Oil bottle with a drizzle spout You want a light, even trickle over one side — glugging from the bottle gives you soggy patches.
  • Wire rack For cooling the chips without trapping steam underneath.

Method
 

  1. Preheat. Heat the oven to 340°F (170°C).
  2. Slice thin. Slice the baguette on a slight angle into thin slices, about ⅛ inch (3–4 mm). Thin is what makes them snap rather than crunch.
  3. Oil and salt. Lay the slices in a single layer on a parchment-lined sheet pan, drizzle lightly with oil over one side only, and sprinkle with Maldon salt. Don't overlap them — the salt should land while the oil is still wet so it holds.
  4. Bake. Bake for 12–18 minutes, until golden and dry all the way through. Rotate the pan halfway if your oven runs uneven. Timing varies a lot with how stale the bread is, how thick you cut it and how your oven runs — go by the chip, not the clock.
  5. Snap test. Test one before you take the tray out: break it in half. It should snap cleanly. If it bends at all, give it a few more minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
  6. Make the cream. Stir the sour cream with the shallot, dill and black pepper. No salt. Let it sit for 10 minutes so the shallot softens into the cream.
  7. Serve one of two ways. As a dip: spread the cream in a shallow bowl or on a plate and spoon the roe into the middle, so every scoop picks up both. As a plated appetizer: bring the cream, the chips and a small bowl of roe over ice to the table and let people build their own — a chip, a spoonful of cream, roe on top. Finish either version with chives.

Notes

Chef's tip: don't salt the cream. The salt comes from the Maldon on the chips and from the roe on top, and it arrives in bursts rather than evenly through the cream. Season the cream on top of all that and the whole thing flattens. Taste it alone and it seems under-seasoned; taste it on a chip with roe and it's exactly right.
  • No roe? Salt the cream lightly to compensate.
  • Storage: chips keep airtight at room temperature for about 5 days. The cream is best the same day. Once opened, roe should be eaten within two days.