Baba Ghanoush Recipe
Baba ghanoush takes a backseat to hummus all too often (perhaps because second-rate globe eggplants result in second-rate dip). But make it with the flavorful Japanese or Chinese eggplant and you may never dip your pita chip in hummus again.
This recipe was featured as part of our story on summer dips.
- 2 pounds Japanese eggplants
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for garnish
- 1/4 cup tahini
- 2 medium garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped Italian parsley leaves, for garnish
- Heat the broiler to high and arrange a rack in the middle. Split eggplants lengthwise and place cut side up on a baking sheet. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of the olive oil evenly over eggplant and broil until well browned, about 15 to 20 minutes. Set aside until cool enough to handle.
- Scoop out eggplant flesh and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade attachment. Add tahini, garlic, lemon juice, and salt. Process until smooth, about 30 seconds.
- Transfer to a shallow dish, drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with parsley. Serve at room temperature or chilled with toasted pita wedges or pita chips.
It will work
I love a good Baba Ghanoush recipe. I think this one qualifies.
Blah ignore my comment. What I meant was add more creamy non-traditional ingedients to make Baba Ganoush less "healthful". Maybe some Greek Yogurt?
Would it work to make a hybrid hummus and say, like add Tahini to the Baba Ghanoush? Because offhand that sounds tasty to me.
As it happens, globe eggplant can be used for baba ghanoush very effectively. One of the secrets of great baba ghanoush is to roast the eggplant over hot coals - making this an even more desirable summer dip. Having made delicious baba ghanoush for 20 years, I can attest to this method of using roasted eggplant vs the oven-baked ingredient. Also, I fear readers may discover that the amount of olive oil will prove insufficient for 2 lbs of eggplant as the vegetable is notorious as a sponge for oil. I garnish with paprika, rather than parsley, but that is a minor difference.
About the tahini question: We make our own tahini regularly at The New Deli, and it's not difficult if you have a coffee grinder. Even small electric ones work well; they can spin the seeds up into a paste. (Food processors will not do this- we tried.) Our giant coffee grinder got converted into a sesame grinder when we discovered the falafel sandwich was more popular than the coffee...It works great! HOWEVER: You could still get that tahini flavor by using toasted sesame oil (found in the Asian section of grocery stores). Yes, it's cheating a bit, but it works perfectly. And the sesame oil's handy for so many other recipes too.
Totally necessary! I keep a jar in the fridge and it lasts forever (if I don't use it up first).
Is Tahini totally necessary?
I just did this the other day with large eggplants from my garden. The used a recipe from "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" as a guideline. The tips in the recipe that I think was helpful was 1. to poke the eggplant in several places with a sharp knife prior to broiling 2. after peeling, put eggplant in a small holed colander and cut the flesh with a sharp knife and mash with a fork to drain the bitter juices from the eggplant 3. I added the optional cumin. Also, my eggplant had many seeds, so I discarded a lot of the seeds. I thought the mashing of the eggplant with the fork gave the dip a nice texture. The rest of the recipe was pretty much the same as this recipe.
Baba ganooj (or whatever spelling) makes a very good summer lunch if you put a big scoop of it on top of a plateful of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, and add oil and vinegar.
My way (I learned it from my grandmother, whose second husband was an Egyptian cook) is to take the eggplant (common globe eggplant, not the Japanese) - and turn on the (gas) burner, using tongs to char the skin of the eggplant all over. Then put it into a very hot oven and roast it (whole) until it's soft, at which point I scrape all the pulp out (which often has smoky little flakes of charred skin falling into it, giving it a nice flavor) - and blend it in my mini-prep, with garlic, tahini, and lemon juice. (Often I place a few of the cloves - lightly coated with olive oil - onto the baking tray with the eggplant, for a roasted garlic flavor, but I also add more raw garlic as well, since I like it really garlicky). I garnish it with a pattern of drizzled olive oil, and sprinkle cayenne pepper on top of the oil design, add some chopped italian parsley to complete the design, and serve with toasted pita wedges.
I'va had pretty good luck making great baba ghanoush even with pretty mediocre globe eggplants - the key, in my experience, is cooking the eggplant right. A broiler will work fine, but a grill is better. The best baba is made from eggplant grilled slow over charcoal, though a gas grill is still preferable to an oven. Oven, still ok, but the grill adds something. It's also important to cook long enough to get the eggplant good and soft. I don't rely so much on time as on look and feel - the eggplant should be so soft that it collapses and looks like a balloon full of pudding. When you cut it open, the insides should more or less fall out in a squishy mess. It's a simple dish with few ingredients. Take good care of your eggplant, and make sure everything else is of good quality (bad tahini, especially, can ruin this dish) and you will end up with something great. Hummus and baba ghanoush both are really simple to make and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't tried it before to give it a go.
made it last night for dinner. loved it. the hummus paled in comparison. will try camper88 tips next time. i think roasted garlic will add more punch to the dish. almost was not a great baba fan before this.
Four things: Consider placing the eggplants cut side down and place them right under the broiler for 25-30 minutes, until the skin is charred. This keeps the egglpants moist and imparts a smoky flavor. When you scrape the meat out of the eggplant halves try to make sure that you also taking out some of the browned interior skin, at least as a scraping if not the skin itself. The smoky flavor really adds to the dish. Consider roasting about 4-6 cloves of garlic for 30 minutes at 350-400 and use roasted instead of raw garlic. If that's not garicky enough consider supplementing the roasted garlic with a small uncooked clove that's been through a micro-plane. Consider foregoing the food processor, it's hardly necessary. Finely chop each half of each eggplant on a cutting board, going north and south and east and west a few times, and you're done with the chopping (except for the parsley). The benefit of this is that the consistency becomes fluffy rather than "dip-like." Roasted garlic doesn't need to be chopped, just well mixed-in. Consider that serving it warm also works very well when it's freshly made (hotter than room temperature). The fresher and warmer, the fluffier.