Tasty Thursday: Baba Ghanouj

Since about a month after my surgery I have had a yen for eggplant.  I may have eaten more baba ghanouj in the last few months than I did in the past five years so of course I wanted to try my hand at making it myself.  I've tried it two ways - baking the eggplant in the oven and roasting it on the barbecue.  I think I prefer the taste of the barbecue method and plan to use it until the part of the winter when it is so darned cold outside that I can't possibly imagine being out there for half an hour while I roast eggplants.  First, I have to ask, how gorgeous are these CSA eggplants roasting on my grill?

The roasting part is really easy, just turn your grill onto high, place the eggplants directly on the rack and grill on each side until charred.  The skin will break and change color.  The juice that drips out onto the grill will smell nice too.  Once you've charred your eggplant, remove it from the grill, allow to cool, then peel and discard the skin.  I'm not ashamed to say it smelled so good I tasted a bit of the skin before I discarded it.  Yummy.

I'm getting hungry just looking at the photo.  So glad there is a tasty jar of the finished product in my fridge waiting for me to dig in.  Here's a peek:

Ingredients:


2 eggplant, roasted, skin removed
3 tablespoons tahini
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon good cider vinegar (I like Bragg's)
3/4 teaspoon smoked salt
1/2 teaspoon of oil from the tahini jar


I tried mashing it together with a fork, however it didn't break up small enough so I dumped it into the chopper attachment of the stick blender and gave it a good spin to get it to the texture I wanted.  This is so yummy, I love the little bite the vinegar gives it.  I hope you'll give it a try and tell me what you think.

Enjoy!

Tasty Thursday: Baby Eggplant with Sprouted Red Lentils

This eggplant and lentil dish is what resulted from me not being able to resist a pint of gorgeous little organic baby eggplants and a failed experiment with sprouting red lentils.

You see, I sprout green lentils every week.  We use them in everything from salads to hummus.  I decided this week to see what would happen if I used red instead.  What I learned is that although they will sprout, the beans are so delicate that when you rinse them, as I do every two hours while I am awake, the sprouts come off. So with the lentils not suitable for further sprouting and the sweet little baby eggplants needing to be used ASAP, I set out to make something yummy and while it might not be attractive in the photo we sure did enjoy eating it.

Ingredients:

Half a Vidalia onion, chopped
Pint of adorable organic baby eggplant, cubed with stems removed
Four cloves of gorgeous CSA garlic, chopped
One cup of red lentils, soaked overnight, then rinsed every two (waking) hours for a day and a half
Water
sea salt and ground pepper to taste
1/3 tsp turmeric

In your largest cast iron pan brown the onion.  When the kitchen smells heavenly and the onion is done, deglaze the pan with some water.  Lower flame, add eggplant and garlic, cover for five minutes to soften.  Make sure you've got enough water that it steams and doesn't burn.  Next, add lentils, salt, pepper, turmeric and more water if the pan has gone dry.  Give a good stir then cover and cook for a few minutes to allow lentils to come to the same temperature as the vegetables.  Enjoy!

Serve over bed of rice, if desired.  My spouse had it with thick slices of toasted sourdough bread topped with soy-free Earth Balance, I had it with some nutritional yeast on top.  It got two thumbs up from everyone who ate it.