Dip It, Spread It, Spoon It: Baba Ganoush

The other day my gardener friend Steve asked me if I had any good eggplant recipes. He had a ton of the purple princes and didn’t know what to do with them all. But I couldn’t really think of a recipe I loved. Which is weird, because one of my all time favorite foods is made with eggplant: baba ganoush. I use it as a dip, a spread, and eat it straight-up with a spoon. So, I figured it was about time I made my own (I also wanted to give Steve a recipe!).

I looked at a ton of recipes for baba before getting in the kitchen. I was surprised at how much they varied in terms of the amount of tahini used. Some called for as little as two tablespoons, which seems way too little for a tahini-freak like me. As you’ll see, I used a bit more than two tablespoons. Feel free to scale back if you want, but I think the more the tahini the better.

A big note about this recipe. As I was cooking…charring the eggplants (sort of scary at first), roasting, cooling, and scooping…I thought to myself: 1. this is taking forever and  2. I am never making this again. I do love cooking, but I’m also not that patient in the kitchen. And this recipe requires some patience. But then I finished the last step of the recipe, turned off my blender, and tried the first scoop…I literally did a little dance and yelled OH YEAH! I really had never felt more proud of anything I’d made before. It was a process, yes. But now that I’ve done it, it doesn’t seem so bad, because the result is so darn good. I hope you try it, and do a little dance too. Let me know how it goes!

{ Baba Ganoush } 

3 medium eggplants or 1 huge one and two little ones (that’s what I did)
1/2 lemon juiced
1/2 cup tahini
1 clove garlic (more if you like it super garlicky)
Dash of cayenne pepper
Celtic salt to taste
Parsley to garnish

Preheat your oven to 350. Take a fork and poke the eggplant a few times (like you would a baked potato). Turn on your gas burner and place the eggplant directly on top of the flame. Turn the eggplant to make sure each side gets charred evenly (this gives it the smoky flavor). Place your charred eggplants in the oven on a parchment-lined cookie sheet for 20-40 minutes until they are completely soft. Remove from the oven and let cool. Cut open the eggplants and scoop out the insides. Blend your eggplant, lemon juice, salt, garlic, tahini, and cayenne until smooth. Garnish with parsley and more cayenne.

You can use this as a dip or even make open-faced baba ganoush sandwiches (like I did) topped with sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and parsley. YUM.

OPP NOTES:

If using an open flame to char these suckers freaks you out, no worries. You can skip this step or try broiling them. I can’t guarantee the same smoky flavor as the recipe above, but you’ll get pretty close.

And I know there might be some eggplant purists out there that are gonna say I should have used only big purple guys. But I wanted to experiment a little. I loved mixing the different colors, shapes, and sizes. This did mean that each one had a different cooking time (only by a few minutes). So if you decide to mix them up too, I just wanted to give you a heads up.