Babaganoush

You know how eggplants are like, one of my favourite things of all? Well, one of the easiest ways to cook it, and one where it won't try and soak up a whole pan of cooking oil, is to roast it or flame grill it. I usually go for roasting it in the oven as it's dead easy - just put it in the oven (in a pan to catch any escaping juices) and just leave it till the whole thing is black and collapsing. The best thing about doing it this way - or even better, the flame grilled way, is that the eggplant takes on this wonderful smoky flavour and the flesh is just super soft and perfect for pureeing into diving but dreary-coloured Babaganoush. The name alone is worth our admiration and will forgive the greyish colour, but just wait till you try it with some bread or fresh vegetables - just magic.



Today I'm also giving you recipes for a few other mezze type dishes I like to make - or more specifically, like to eat. The dolmades are a little more fiddly than the other dishes but it doesn't take too long if you just make a few like I did. If you make a heap for a party, get some good music on or get someone to help you so you don't die of boredom.

Babaganoush
I'm pretty sure it was my old school friend Josey who introduced this to me when we were at uni in Wellington. That's right - carpet-hung, cushion-strewn kebab shops were a real excitement after having no such luxuries in our home town. I actually miss Wellington kebabs - the felafel at the Perth ones seems to be dry and over-spiced for my liking. But I'm not giving a felafel recipe today (another day, ok?) I just got on a babaganoush-related tangent.



1 eggplant
big dollop (2 T?) tahini- I use the un-hulled stuff
juice of 1 lemon
parsley and olives or tomato slices to garnish

Cook eggplant at the top of a hot oven (grill setting if poss) until the skin is blistered and black and they are soft - I turned mine over just once while it was cooking. Or you can cook on BBQ grill or over charcoal - very good. Peel them - the skin, once slit with a knife will come off very easily. Discard the skin. Rinse the flesh and squeeze out as much of the juice as possible. Chop roughly. (In the photo you can see I've chopped before drying out juice - it looks a bit like dead octopus don't you think?



Put the flesh in a food processor or blender with the crushed garlic and a little salt. Add the tahini and lemon juice alternately, blending a few seconds in between each addition. TASTE! Add more of whatever you think it needs and possibly a pinch of cumin, if you like. Pour this 'cream' out into a bowl and garnish with the parsley and olives or tomato slices. In the photo here I just added olive oil which was really unnecessary and later (top photo) when we'd eaten some and I put the remainder in a bowl with parsley.