Sunday, September 20, 2009

Baba Ganoush

There are so many different recipes for this out there, and mine's a composite of a lot of these.  It's a lighter version than many, but you can make this as fattening as you wish by loading up on the tahini.

2 lbs eggplant
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon salt
juice of two lemons
1 small bouquet of coriander leaves
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup tahini

Set the oven to broil.  Pierce each of the eggplants a few times with a fork and place them alongside the garlic cloves in a large baking dish under the broiler.  Roast until they go soft and the skin is wrinkled and leathery (about 15 minutes).  Remove the garlic cloves if they are soft; otherwise continue roasting.  Turn the eggplants over to roast the other side in the same way.  Your eggplants are ready when they look something like this "after" picture:



Remove the dish from the oven and allow to cool.  In the meantime, wash the coriander if necessary and separate the leaves from the stems.

Squeeze the garlic from their skins into the bowl of the food processor, taking care to remove any burned, hard bits that might have formed around the edges.  Add the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and coriander and blend well.  You should end up with a nice creamy liquid.

Once the eggplants are cool enough to handle, peel off their skins and stems.  Drop them into the food processor and blend thoroughly.  Let the food processor run on high speed for a minute or two to incorporate some air.

Pour the contents of the food processor into a large bowl.  Add the tahini with a spoon, stirring well.



Taste and add more salt if necessary, plus a few grinds of black pepper.  You can also add some ground cumin and coriander, if you like.  The final product is so delicious that I like to just eat it with a spoon.  It's also excellent as a dip for raw vegetables (sticks of celery, carrots, fennel...) or for crackers/pita chips.






1 comment:

  1. Looks great, I don't have a really good baba ganoush recipe in my repertoire yet, so I definitely want to try this while eggplant is still in season.
    I was interested to find your blog (via your comment on 101 Cookbooks), especially because of the similarities between us - my name is also Laura, I'm also an American living in Europe (Switzerland), and also recently started a blog with a vegetarian/vegan/sustainable perspective. I'm looking forward to your future posts! Meilleures salutations, Laura

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