Baba Ganoush

I have a hate hate relationship with eggplant.  I hate it.  Except for baba ganoush and maybe two other preparations.  This stems mostly from my youth where my mother, an avid gardener, grew eggplant.  One per year would have been good for me, but alas, eggplants grow in larger numbers.

My problem with them stems from their texture when they are cooked, which happens to be the basis of baba ganoush.

I guess my issue was that I couldn't get used to a vegetable that you can't pick up with a fork, and that texture!

Mum put it in her ratatouille which I hated until I learned to make it myself with a great deal of modifications on the original that I had been served as a child.  I'll write about ratatouille later.  On to baba ganoush.

I was recently asked to make baba ganoush for a friend who was having a gathering at his home.  He wanted to have a version much like a local restaurant serves that has a smokey quality to it.    

One day for lunch I visited the restaurant that my friend had mentioned and tried their version.  My conclusion was that this would be easy.

Here is my recipe:

2 whole large eggplants

2 medium cloves of garlic

1 tsp kosher salt

White pepper

1 oz fresh lemon juice

2 T toasted sesame oil

1 T olive oil

Heat your oven to 400F.

When preparing baba ganoush in the traditional way, you puncture the eggplant's skin with a fork a few times and roast it whole.  I lightly salted the pieces of eggplant and drizzled them with a little olive oil.

In order to get that smokey flavor that was requested I chose to quarter the eggplant lengthwise and roast it until the flesh wash was soft and had started to pick up some color, about 20 minutes.

While the eggplant is roasting, rough chop the eggplant, add the salt and crush to combination into a paste with your knife.  If you have a sauté pan with a clean, flat bottom, use that.  Much faster.

Once the desired caramelization has been achieved, pull the eggplant from the oven and cool slightly.  Scrape the flesh away from the skin.  You don't want it to get cold because this step which is normally simple becomes harder to do when the roasted eggplant is cold.

Once the flesh has been removed, place it into a colander and let some of the excess liquid drain.  If you skip this step, your final product is likely to be too loose.

After the eggplant has drained, put it into your food processor with the garlic/kosher salt mixture, sesame oil and lemon juice.  Process until smooth and check your seasoning.  Your done!

Side note: Am I the only person out there that bristles at the amount of stickers that are on our produce these days?  I detest those things for a few reasons, the extra step that it takes to remove them, the cost that I assume it has added to our produce and most importantly, the fact that I don't always catch all of them and have to hunt through a pile for prepped vegetables to find the pieces!

About 7-8 years ago I received a 25# sack of red onions that had two stickers on each piece.  One to identify it as a red onion, the other was an advertisement for a movie.  I am glad that did not become a trend!

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