🍆Egg-cellent Baba Ganoush

My mom came inside with her garden's last eggplant of the season, and Baba Ganoush popped right into my head. I've been meaning to try out a recipe, and as soon as I found that Serious Eats had one (of course they do), I scanned the ingredient list. Really simple and common ingredients that we already had. All I needed was another eggplant, tahini, and pita bread.

I had baba ganoush once before at a middle eastern restaurant called Marhaba in Lambertville, PA. They spell it BABAGHANNOUGH on their menu. Not sure if that's a typo or a different spelling .... On Wikipedia I'm seeing Baba ghanoush (UK: /ˌbɑːbə ɡæˈnuːʃ/, US: /- ɡəˈnuːʃ, - ɡəˈnuːʒ/; Arabic: بابا غنوج‎, romanized: bābā ġannūj), also spelled baba ganoush or baba ghanouj. Bonus: This place has belly dancers 💃🏻

Anyway, my attempt was so delicious, as are all of Kenji's recipes.

^ There's the recipe. You can scroll through right here on my page. Looks simple. Took me quite awhile... like an hour and a half. Worth it.

As you can see, I changed my mind on execution a few times. Ideally I would have liked to stay with the cooling rack technique, but the rack was not holding up well to the direct flame. I switched to our stove top cast iron griddle, but it was difficult to get the bottom of the eggplants to make contact with the surface unless I held them there with my tongs. Toward the end, I ended up slicing the eggplants in half and broiling them. The whole process took about 45 minutes. Next time, I'm either going to bake them from the start or use a grill.

While the eggplants were roasting, I prepared the other ingredients. The recipe is for 3 eggplants, but I had 2 so I adjusted my measurements.

These photos are less than pretty, but that's mushed eggplant for ya. The first photo is after I scooped all of the flesh from the skins into a strainer. My eggplant was pretty seedy, so I did my best to separate them without compromising all of the fruit.

The middle photo is after I used a salad spinner to remove excess water and seeds. I then added the lemon and garlic and attempted to make a paste.

The photo on the right is after I added the tahini and extra virgin olive oil. By rigorously stirring while pouring, the ingredients were able to emulsify. I ended up scooping the shlop onto a cutting board and running my knife through it just to smooth it out a bit and break down the bigger chunks. I also added sea salt.

I finished by topping the baba ganoush with more extra virgin olive oil and fresh parsley from the garden.

I warmed the pita bread on the cast iron flat top and sliced it into 6 wedges.

Takeaways:

1. Use a grill or roast the eggplant halves in the oven face down.

2. Possibly use a food processor next time for a smoother dip.

3. Roast the garlic for a deeper, sweeter component.

4. Look for thinner eggplants with less seeds. Now it's time to put my leftover tahini to use! Kalamata Hummus next...?