I finally made baba ghanoush with my eggplant. We love our eggplant parmesan, but it was time to try something different.
I had tried making baba ghanoush years ago, and recall being disappointed at the lack of smoky flavor. So I decided to try again. Being a little lazy, I didn’t light up the smoker, but went for roasting the eggplant in the oven. My two eggplant were fairly small, less than 2 lbs. combined, so I popped them in the oven, whole on a baking sheet at 400°.
I planned to roast for up to 1.5 hours. At about 20 minutes, I heard this huge “CLANK” from the oven. When I went to look, one of the eggplant had burst (I never expected the racks themselves to move!).. I let them roast for another 1/2 hour, at which point the roasting eggplant smelled wonderful through out the house.
I pulled them from the oven and scraped the flesh from the crispy skin of the burst eggplant. I did have to slice open the non-exploded eggplant. I put the flesh in the food processor with:
- 3 T. olive oil,
- 2 t. minced garlic,
- 2 dashes of sea salt, and
- 2 t. lime juice.
1 t. of lime juice didn’t give it the tang I wanted, so I added another. I processed until smooth, but not paste-y.
It still seemed to be lacking something, so I added 1 T. horseradish, and THAT gave it some kick. I was worried that would increase the heat too much, but the 11 year old said it was good, so my work here is done!
I do think next time I will try the smoker to increase the smoky flavor, but this is good. More garlic herb flat bread, and we are on our way! 🙂
I think it’s very cool that your kids will eat all kind so of veggies. Seems like when they help make the dishes they are invested in liking it! I never knew what to do with these purple things when I got them in my box.
It is hit or miss whether they will try and like something, but I figure if I keep throwing it out there, they will at least be exposed to lots, and they are bound to like something, eventually.
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I never realized how popular Baba Ghanoush is. I just posted my own but using a canned version with a very smokey flavor. I learned from reading one of the other posts that you have to prick the eggplant with a fork so it doesn’t explode in the oven. That happened to me once too, many years ago with a potato. What a mess to clean up! Live and learn I always say. They don’t always tell you these things in a cookbook!
I should have thought of poking the skin. But the explosion was pretty exciting!