Easy Peasy Baba Ganoush

 

This meal was entirely centered around the smallest thing on the dish.  The babaganoush!

If you want to make a real legit baba ganoush, David Lebovitz is your man.  I had read his recipe long ago and thought I could go off memory.  I totally botched it (forgetting almost every ingredient aside from the eggplant) but the main thing I took away from his recipe (and did implement in my version) was charring the skin first.

We have an electric coil stove which is not ideal, but I made it work.  Kyle came home well after my fun with the burners and immediately said “it smells like smoke…is something on fire in the kitchen?”

Well yes and no.

To his credit, charring the eggplant smelled like ass.  It made me wonder if I was doing it right.  But I kept going.

I used tongs to rotate it so all sides and portions were adequately blackened and burnt.

Then I put it on a sprayed baking sheet and cooked it in the oven for 1 hour at 400 degrees.  I flipped it at the 40 minute mark.

 

For smaller eggplant, you don’t need to cook it this long, but this was a pretty large one and I wanted to make sure it was super duper soft.  My main issue with eggplant is when it’s tough and chewy.  No bueno. 

 

As you can see from the two pics above, it was anything but tough.

After I let it rest and cool for a while, I opened it up (with my fingers – that’s how done it was) and (easily) separated the skin from the flesh.

 

Simple Eggplant Dip (Babaganoush) [vegan, gluten free]

Ingredients:

• 1 large globe eggplant, charred and cooked in the oven
• 3 tbsp tahini
• 1 tbsp garlic infused olive oil
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
• pinch red pepper flakes
• pinch salt
• [optional] 1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

Cook eggplant as detailed above.  Puree flesh with the rest of the ingredients in a food processor until you have desired consistency.  Whether you like it smooth or lumpy, that’s up to you.  Easy peasy. 

Serve as a dip with falafel and pita chips, use as a spread on a sandwich, or as a dressing on a salad, or sauce on a pasta.  The options are limitless!

I had it with falafel (Cedarlane from Costco) and a big salad. 

 

The salad was pathetically created from the very last nothingness of produce we had on hand.  Basically greens, carrots, tomatoes (only a few because they are from our garden), and bell peppers.  Not too exciting.  I topped it with truffle olive oil and TJ’s balsamic glaze.  Kinda boring, but oh well.

The next day I had some with Mary’s Gone crackers.  I also dipped some of the squash in it.

FYI, I thought I could eat the skin on this panpatty squash, but I was way wrong.  It’s crazy thick and hard.  Oops.  Kinda a pain to eat thanks to the way I chopped it.  I’m basically using my hands to bite out the flesh (after I dunk it in the babaganoush).  Such a lady. 

It’s really delish.  I roasted it with garlic infused olive oil and fresh rosemary from my uncle’s garden. 

Had I planned ahead I wouldn’t have salted it all so I could share it with P, but I forgot.  I steamed some zucchini for him instead and he took to it immediately.  There hasn’t been much he hasn’t taken to right away though.  Love my little mini hippie.

More snack plates.

 

Eat up patty cakes.