Baba Ganoush 1

If you aren’t familiar with Baba Ganoush you will love it after making it just once. Baba Ganoush is a dip made from 5 simple ingredients : eggplant, tahini paste, garlic, lemon, and salt.

 This dish is Levantine meaning “pampered papa” or “coy daddy”.  I love serving this with some grilled pita bread for dipping but tonight I made it a dip for a Springdell veggie platter.  It would be perfect this time of year with a mix of pita and veggies!  I have brought this to summer barbecues and it has always been a hit.

Since this dip is based on the eggplant, we start there.  I have seen many ways of preparing the eggplant such as grilling and baking but I choose to broil mine.  I start by Slicing the eggplant about 1/4 inch thick, spread it out on a large surface and sprinkle it with salt.

Place the salted eggplant in a colander and let it sit there for at least 10 minutes.  You do this to draw some of the moisture out of the eggplant as well as some of the bitterness.  While this is resting, turn on the broiler in your oven, high to warm up.

When the resting time is up you will see moisture has gathered on the surface of all of the slices of eggplant.  This needs to removed.  Pat the slice of eggplant front and back with a clean towel of paper towel.

This is time I was able to remove a ton of liquid, so much that I could ring out the paper towel when I was done!

 Next you place the sliced eggplant in a single layer on a lined and sprayed sheet.  Give it a drizzle of oil as well and pop them into the broiler for 5 minutes, rotate the tray or trays and broil another 5 minutes until roasted and toasty brown.  Check out this beautiful color…

While they are still hot, stack them and wrap them in foil for 5 minutes.  This helps remove the skin from the eggplant and softens the flesh a bit more too.

The skin should be able to be easily removed and the eggplant very tender.  It’s fine to leave on some of the skin, I remove half to three quarters of the skin when I make this.

The rest of this is a piece of cake.  Add one large clove of garlic to your food processor with the juice of one lemon and two tablespoons of tahini paste. For those of you who are not familiar, tahini paste is actually a paste made from toasted and ground sesame seeds.  Process this until almost smooth and creamy, Baba Ganoush usually has a bit of texture to it so don’t process it too much.

Joining the party tonight were a handful of heirloom cherry tomatoes, a green pepper, summer squash, and zucchini.  Enjoy!