This fabulous creamy eggplant dip of Middle Eastern origin has recently become popular in the West. The exact recipe will vary from country to country, and you may want to adjust the amounts of any of these ingredients to suit your personal taste.
Required Ingredients:
- 1 large eggplant
- 1 lime or lemon
- Garlic
- Tahini (or sesame seeds)
- Sea salt
Recommended Ingredients:
- fresh herbs such as basil, rosemary, dill, chives, parsley, cilantro
Optional Ingredients:
- Sweet paprika
- Spicy peppers
- A drizzle of your favourite oil, such as grapeseed oil, avocado oil or extra virgin olive oil
- Water
Required Equipment:
- Fork
- Food processor or high speed blender
- A heat source: Toaster oven, barbeque or gas stove
How to Make Baba Ganoush
The first step in making Baba Ganoush is to wash the eggplant and then use a fork to poke holes in one side of the eggplant. These tiny holes will allow the steam to exit the eggplant when it’s in the oven. You get four tiny holes for each time you stab the eggplant, so if you stab it twenty times, you will have eighty tiny holes. Now place the stabbed eggplant on a baking sheet with the holes facing up and put the baking sheet in your toaster oven. Or, put the eggplant directly on the barbeque grill with the holes facing up until it is lightly charred.
After about ten or twenty minutes depending on your heat source, remove the eggplant, let it cool a few minutes, then chop it into pieces and transfer it to the food processor or high speed blender. Obviously remove the hard leaf at the top prior to blending. Now suqeeze the juice of one lime into the blender or food processor. Add two or three garlic cloves, a couple of tablespoons of tahini, and a pinch of himalayan sea salt. Blend these ingredients to a homogenous mixture.
Now comes the most important part: observe the taste and texture of what you’ve made and decide whether it needs some fine tuning. You may want to add another squirt of lime juice, another pinch of salt, some more tahini, or a drizzle of oil. If you want a creamier texture, you can add a few drops of water or some more or lime juice.
Once you have your decadent Babaganoush fully blended, transfer it to a serving bowl and top it with a drizzle of your favourite oil and the finely-chopped fresh herbs of your choice.
You can serve it with carrot or celery sticks, or in the traditional way, with fresh homemade pita bread.