Chris gave me a copy of Mandy Lee's The Art of Escapism Cooking for Christmas, and she had a recipe in it called Smoky Daddy. I've changed the recipe enough (because I simply didn't have many of the ingredients and my techniques are much lazier than hers!) that I feel confident it's my own recipe now, but I want to be clear that her book is amazing and you should buy it, and also, I would never have tried to make baba ghanoush without reading her book.
This baba ghanoush has been deemed the best baba ghanoush they have ever had by three different people - i.e, the three people who have tried it, so I am excited to share it with you all. :P
Ingredients
2 eggplants (equal to about 2 pounds)
3 stalks green onions
2 garlic cloves, peeled and grated
3 Tbsp Greek Yogurt (Recommend 2 Good Yogurt)
2 Tbsp Tahini
2 tsp juice from pickled jalapenos
1 lime, juiced
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp sesame chili oil
For seasoning:
1 tsp whole cumin seed
1 tsp whole fennel seed
1 tsp peppercorns
For topping:
Olive oil
Chili sambol oil (up to you)
crushed red pepper flakes
Take the seasoning ingredients and toast them together in a skillet until fragrant. That should take about 3-4 minutes. Pop them in a spice/coffee grinder, and grind! Set it aside.
Wash and dry the eggplants, drizzle a little olive oil and salt over them. Heat a cast iron skillet to high. Place eggplants in skillet. Now scorch every single millimeter of the eggplants. Keep turning! You might have some blow-outs. It's ok! I did, and the baba ghanoush still turned out lovely. Get them nice and charred. Transfer the eggplants to a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let them sit.
Grate the green onions, or chop them and use your spice grinder again to get that grated green onion.
In a large bowl, add together the green onions, garlic, yogurt, tahini, jalapeno juice, lime juice, fish sauce, chili oil, and whisk till you no longer have lumps. Add in about 1/3 of the spices, continue whisking.
By now, the eggplants should be cooled. There is liquid in the bottom of the bowl. Good! Save it!
Chop off the stems, and peel off the skins. You'll have black flakes all over. If some gets left behind, that's fine. Just adds to the amazing taste. But don't leave huge unedible black skin on the aubergines!
Put the eggplants in the blender, pulse it a bit. Add in the yogurt mixture, and blend till smooth.
Pour your baba ghanoush into the serving dish. Season with salt and more of your spice mixture to taste.
Take your chili sambol and swirl it into the baba ghanoush, all artistic like. (I realize this is not artistic like. But now it's eaten, and I can't rephotograph. Dear reader, you deserve better photos. Sorry about that!)
Mix 1 part eggplant juice left in the bottom of your bowl to 2 parts extra virgin olive oil. Say 1 tbsp eggplant juice to every two Tbsp olive oil. Whisk it together, then drizzle over the baba ghanoush. Add crushed red pepper flakes to make it even hotter! (Or don't.)
I originally created this to serve on a lamb burger. Serving size is 2 Tbsp. There should be about 20 servings made with two eggplants. I also served it by itself, scooped up with Mission Street Taco tortillas, I'll fry those up so they are more pita bread like. So good!
Nutritional Information is made on CarbManager Recipe App.
5 gm Total Carbs
2 gm Fiber
3 gm Net Carbs
4 gm fat
1 gm protein
58 calories Obviously, this is good for days when you have a few extra carbs to spare, can easily be incorporated in a Keto Diet, but don't go hog wild! (You'll want to.) I think the fish sauce makes it extra umami.
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