Rosemary, lemon, Parmesan cheese, white beans, fennel, garlic, and crostini.

Once the fennel are trimmed, we like to slice them in half through the root, and chop them like an onion.

You spread the fennel on a baking sheet, dress it in oil...

Don't forget the whole, unpeeled garlic cloves!

You season the fennel with salt and pepper before roasting.

While the fennel roasts, get everything else ready to go -- chop the rosemary...

... and zest and juice the lemon.

Doesn't that look tasty? Fennel was born to roast.

You heat a bunch of oil and infuse it with chopped garlic. Just as the garlic begins to brown...

You add the white beans (we used drained and rinsed beans from a can) and rosemary.

Here, I'm adding the simmered beans and their oil to the food processor.

Squeezing the roasted garlic from its skin.

Adding the fennel.

Pre-puree.

Adding some more oil, which helps emulsify the dip.

And cheese, which binds and scents the entire dip.

Taking a breather after all that dip excitement.

Now, the puree.

Voila! Dip!

After coating the dip with Parmesan cheese, it wends its way (with my assistance) to the oven.

And when it comes out, it looks like a dip meets gratin. The toasts await.

Lemon, sour cream, cream cheese, Spanish onion, and chives.

This recipe's a snap -- while the onions take some time to caramelize, there's no real work for you to do. Just get them started in the oil, then turn the heat down low, patiently wait, and occasionally stir. (See the next few slides for the slo-mo play-by-play.)

Stirring the onions to coat them in the oil.

It takes a long time for the liquid to cook off.

But once it does, the onions begin to take on color. See those nice brown bits? Keep going until those brown bits are threaded through the entire pot full of onions.

The rest of the ingredients -- sour cream, cream cheese, chives, lemon zest, and juice -- can all be measured and prepped while the onions cook.

Once the onions are ready, you add them to a food processor and layer in the rest of the ingredients.

Lemon zest!

Lemon juice.

A quick spin in the food processor and this is what it looks like. This is the moment to taste the dip and make sure the salt and acidity are to your liking.

I scraped the dip into a bowl.

Then folded in the chives.

Doesn't a shell-shaped dish just scream "Super Bowl"?