On the fourth glorious day of eating Green Olive Dip, while sitting on our front porch in our Victorian neighborhood, I realized what is so intriguing about this dip. And why I love David Leite’s cookbook The New Portuguese Table and the Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

To my non-Portuguese palate, evolved from a one part mid-Western, one part Southern, but entirely anchovy-free diet, there is something ever so slightly repulsive about this addictive dip, made with six anchovies (and since I doubled the recipe for a dinner party, my batch had twelve anchovies).

Yes, addictive. If its assertive anchovy flavor repulses, its attractions are even stronger. Won over, you will find yourself wanting another helping, and then another. I understand how David Leite could eat an entire bowl of this dip himself, as he did when first encountering it at a restaurant in Portugal.

That is why I love David Leite’s cookbook. By selecting the most delicious recipes of his family’s homeland—and presumably those which will be the appealing to the American eater—he has made me a lover of Portuguese cuisine and challenged my palate. And I love the Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club because it gets me and all its members to explore new foods and cooking techniques from around the world.

If you are like me, as I was prior to my Green Olive Dip experience, you like anchovies but only when used in the faintest amount—one or two to add a je ne sais quoi (now called umami) to food. To reboot your taste buds, I suggest you work your way through a few batches of Green Olive Dip. That’s what I plan to do. And in the meantime, on the road to upping your anchovy limit, it’s kind of fun to be conscious of its push-me, PULL-me effect. After all, some of the greatest art, the art that is most alluring, has a dark and mysterious underpinning.

(Note: I liked the dip best after it had sat for two days in the fridge. By then the flavor of the green olives had permeated the dip, balancing the anchovies. This dip can be enjoyed with crackers or bread, but I think it’s best with some good, rustic bread.)