Baba Ghanoush - Smokey, Roast Aubergine/Brinjal/Egg-plant Dip

Organic aubergine / eggplant / brinjal ripe for the plucking and ready to harvest

When I first arrived in the Middle East, Baba Ghanoush was a dish with which I was not enamoured, until I discovered the difference between restaurant food and the home-cooked variety. Mary, a Christian Lebanese and mother of Elie, one of my art students, undertook to teach me how to make it, while Hadeel, a Muslim originally from Nablus, but now Jordanian, and an adult art student, acted as translator.

At the time, I had recently found myself in Saudi Arabia, jobless, childless and - for a very short period of time, friendless, but the initiation of the foodies channel gave me plenty of the last. At that time, we were living in a 38 unit compound of two basic horse-shoe shapes of double-storey units all facing into one another, one full of small children and close community living, an Austenian world of expatriate women, where leisure was ours but oil money was not precisely sloshing around; we mostly occupied the lower-earning end of the highly-skilled expatriate work-force. 

Rather than focusing on what I didn't have, I decided instead to use whatever came most readily to hand. What I had in abundance was acres of leisure time and that most delightful of all riches - people. There were children swinging in the tiny playground, children at every corner, boys tumbling out of houses, running towards the small area they'd appropriated as a playing field and shouting out: "Soccer Match: The Muslims Against the Christians!" (and when queried as to why that was proposed, somewhat disingenuously responded, "Well, it used to be The Arabs Against the World, but since Elie's arrived, well, he's not very good at soccer, so when we realised he was a Christian, we felt we'd have a better chance of winning if he was on the other side").

Organic aubergine / eggplant / brinjal freshly harvested from our monkey-proof cage

The trick with this dish is absolute freshness, and it is quick and simple to make with a few readily assembled ingredients. Baba ganoush makes a lovely starter, or accompaniment to a meal. It is an essential part of a meze platter, and whether you know it as baba ghanoush or muttabal, moutabal or egg plant salad, it is equally delicious. 

Time needed is about ½ an hour to 1 ½ hours (if you do it traditionally). For roasting (½ hour) and soaking (1 hour – or 5 minutes if you are in a hurry). However, it requires an absolute, absolute minimum of effort, so can be undertaken simultaneous to other dishes; the only specialist equipment you will need is a pestle and mortar to crush the garlic. 

Baba Ghanoush Recipe 

2 very large aubergines (egg-plants)

1 extremely large, or 3 smaller cloves of garlic

Salt

Juice of one lemon

4 Tablespoons Tahina (from a tin)

Olive oil

With small sharp knife, cut a number of 10 cm long strips length-wise down the aubergine, to the depth of one small fingertip. This is to let the air out of them when cooking, lest they explode. Do not de-stalk. You can place them directly onto the gas stove itself (not a recommended option, given the ash that will result):

Note the green slits made in the aubergine/eggplant/brinjal so it does not explode 

Or place them in a pan on a plate on the stove, at its highest level (no water or oil added), and roast, letting each side burn before turning it over:

Aubergine/eggplant/brinjal well-roasted and ready to skin

You can also roast them in the oven, under the grill but this way is less fuss, quicker – and you are less likely to burn your fingers! This is also why you leave their stalks on. You have to keep turning them over into they are cooked right through (deflated to at least half their original size). The skin will be burnt black, it will sound hollow when you tap it with your fingertips, and when you hold it by the stalk it will be all soft and limp and squelchy.

Final method (and easiest), however, it will not give you that glorious smoked taste, is simply to roast them in the convection microwave oven, until done. What I would then advocate, given that the smokiness is very much part of the desired flavour, is to blacken on the gas stove first, and then pop into the microwave for the real roasting.

Once thoroughly roasted, until soft and mushy, wash them under cold water and peel the aubergines, working from the top:

Peeling the roasted aubergine/brinjal/eggplant

Next, soak them for an hour in fresh cold water with a tiny bit of lemon juice added to it (it looks fairly stringy and disgusting at this stage, all cold and yucky, but do not let this deter you). Soaking in water and lemon juice will stain the greyish, dingy aubergine white, which is traditionally very important in terms of how it looks, but if you are in a hurry you can simply soak quickly and squeeze the water out since it apparently won’t change its taste much.

Do not worry about the seeds when making Baba Ghanoush, they matter not a whit

Chop aubergine up finely with a knife. Crush garlic, add salt, lemon juice and tahina to the chopped aubergine. Taste and add a bit more of this and a trifle more of that – until you are perfectly satisfied. If you have made it in advance, put in sealed container in refrigerator to chill it. If serving immediately, drizzle olive oil on top, and serve as a dip with pita bread.

The most off-putting element of this dish is when it is roasted too long, and the smokey taste is overwhelming. It is therefore important to peel it properly, so there is a minimum of blackened bits left.

Serve with hot pita bread, as per Ammar's trick of freezing fresh pita and then placing it, still frozen, into the oven on grill for about two to three minutes. Do not defrost frozen  pita in the microwave, since all it does is make it leathery and cracked.

Aubergine or egg-plant or brinjal flower: paper-petalled and purple