Tasty Thursday: Baba Ghanouj

Since about a month after my surgery I have had a yen for eggplant.  I may have eaten more baba ghanouj in the last few months than I did in the past five years so of course I wanted to try my hand at making it myself.  I've tried it two ways - baking the eggplant in the oven and roasting it on the barbecue.  I think I prefer the taste of the barbecue method and plan to use it until the part of the winter when it is so darned cold outside that I can't possibly imagine being out there for half an hour while I roast eggplants.  First, I have to ask, how gorgeous are these CSA eggplants roasting on my grill?

The roasting part is really easy, just turn your grill onto high, place the eggplants directly on the rack and grill on each side until charred.  The skin will break and change color.  The juice that drips out onto the grill will smell nice too.  Once you've charred your eggplant, remove it from the grill, allow to cool, then peel and discard the skin.  I'm not ashamed to say it smelled so good I tasted a bit of the skin before I discarded it.  Yummy.

I'm getting hungry just looking at the photo.  So glad there is a tasty jar of the finished product in my fridge waiting for me to dig in.  Here's a peek:

Ingredients:


2 eggplant, roasted, skin removed
3 tablespoons tahini
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon good cider vinegar (I like Bragg's)
3/4 teaspoon smoked salt
1/2 teaspoon of oil from the tahini jar


I tried mashing it together with a fork, however it didn't break up small enough so I dumped it into the chopper attachment of the stick blender and gave it a good spin to get it to the texture I wanted.  This is so yummy, I love the little bite the vinegar gives it.  I hope you'll give it a try and tell me what you think.

Enjoy!