Good morning folks.
This week I decided to take a turn to the east and try out some Fire Roasted Baba Ganoush. A few weeks back, Michelle and I took a detour through town on our way back from my granddaughters birthday party. We decided to tryout a Mediterranean quick food place near Emory University. “Quick” food is walking in and ordering at the counter instead of driving up to the drive through and getting your food through a window. I ordered a kabob plate and Michelle had a vegetarian plate, she had a wonderful mixture of very tasty small dishes and one of them was a baba ganoush, I had never had baba ganoush before and she let me have a taste. I liked it. After she shared it, she told me that it was essentially roasted eggplant – you know that big purple thing that few of us know what to do with. Every year I plant eggplant in my garden and then “suffer” through eating it. I have never been a big fan of it to be honest. This baba ganoush stuff was really good, so much so that I decided right there to learn how to make it.
As normal I did some searching, reading and comparing recipes, trying to come up with something that sounded tasty, this is what I came up with.
Fire Roasted Babaganoush for Man Food Mondays
Prep
Cook
Total
Yield 4
Ingredients
- 2 medium eggplants
- 1/4 cup tahini
- 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- juice from 2 lemons
- Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Rinse the eggplants and place whole on your grill at medium high heat.
- You are wanting to char the eggplant so you need to turn the eggplants so that all sides get heat.
- As the eggplant cooks it will start to vent “steam” and then deflate. It should take around 15 minutes to char the eggplant if your grill is hot enough.
- Once the eggplant is done remove the outer peel and discard. This will be fairly easy. Transfer the pulp to a food processor or a blender.
- Add the tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley, salt and pepper and puree until smooth.
- Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
Courses Appetiser
Cuisine Middle Eastern
This is a very basic recipe, you can adjust this by adding garlic, cumin. paprika or any other thing that strikes your fancy. The neat thing about this is it is vegan if you have someone in your household that has that diet. We have a vegetarian here and this will be perfect for him. We served this with pita bread a swirl of olive oil on top and a little extra parsley for good looks……
Quick thoughts here – if you have a gas stove you “could” use it to grill the egg plant or just do it in the oven. This recipe will make enough for 4 people which surprised me…I thought that given the size of the eggplants there would be more.
Michelle and I agree this was better than the baba ganoush we had at the quick food place. Now, I have something else I can do with those big purple things growing in my garden. 🙂
Have a great week!
Take care,
Steve
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