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!

Not very photogenic…

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!  🙂