Baba Ghannouj recipe

As you may know, we are Good Eats fans. There is something fascinating about learning the science and history about foods as you are learning to cook. I had recently seen an episode where Alton made baba ghannouj from eggplant, and decided to conquer this middle eastern appetizer. I grilled the eggplant as I was grilling sweet sausages that we had for dinner, so cooking the eggplant was no trouble at all. This is Alton Brown's recipe.

1 eggplant
2 cloves garlic
2 ounces fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
1/2 bunch parsley, leaves only
Salt and pepper

Pierce some holes in the skin of the eggplant (to avoid explosion) and grill over medium-high heat turning every 7 minutes, until the skin is blackened and the body is nice and soft. Total time for grilling is about 30 minutes. If you do not have a grill you can roast your eggplant in a 375 degree F oven for about 30 minutes. Remove eggplant from the grill and let cool.

Once the eggplant is cool enough to handle, peel away the skin and discard. Place the eggplant flesh in a colander and drain for 10 minutes. In a food processor, combine garlic, lemon juice, tahini and parsley and pulse to combine. Add the eggplant flesh. Season with salt and pepper and pulse to combine. Adjust the flavor with more Tahini or lemon juice if you prefer. If it's bitter, some sugar or honey will help.

A few notes from Sarah: I know you may not keep tahini in your pantry, but when you are looking for it at the grocery store, search in the aisle that has hummus & couscous. When in doubt, just ask, they should have it at a medium to large to grocery. The tahini I got was in a can and the consistency is like peanut butter. Although the recipe didn't say to, I did try to get all the seeds out of the eggplant before it drained. I didn't use quite as much garlic because it tends to give me headaches, but it was still tasty. I did add a touch of honey and that seemed to make the flavor richer. I used quite a bit of dried parsley because I didn't realize that my fresh. . .well, let's just say it wasn't fresh, so I had to toss it. I cut whole wheat pita into triangles and toasted them to get them crunchy. This was a tasty way to use eggplant, and Will really liked it, too.