There are some cookbooks that suck you in, instantly inspiring you to make every single recipe in the book. Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, is one of these. (I’m certainly not the first person to feel this way.) Recipes for butternut squash with tahini spread, chicken with caramelized onion and cardamom rice, and khachapuri called my name. But it was the recipe for puréed beets with yogurt and za’atar that really caught my eye. I love beets. I’ve always found pickled beets in a salad to be a delightful surprise, and roasted beets are sweeter and deeper. Since I found this recipe, I’ve made this dip at least five times. Every time it disappears within a day or two.

I know that beets can be a bit scary to cook with. Yes, they bleed and can get on everything (your shirt, the table, the chair, the counter, your sweater). And yes, roasting them takes a while. But really, you just throw the beets into a pot (preferably a Dutch oven, but any pot with a lid or aluminum foil will do), add some olive oil, and let them do their thing. You may want to turn them once or twice, but that’s it. (And if that still sounds too hard, just use canned beets.) The rest of the recipe is a breeze – add everything to a food processor and let it whirl!