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Sep. 7th, 2008 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikFour days in a row where I've been productive on research things. I guess I'm not dropping out of grad school this week. I'm also trying to make a point of stopping earlier if my back is bothering me, and doing fun things that don't involve computers - which mostly means martial arts or cooking.
So today I made four eggplants worth of caponata (about two and a half quarts), and three eggplants worth of baba ganoush (about a cup and a half). Okay, so the capanata has a lot of non-eggplant stuff in it. But it's still at least half eggplant by volume. K was commenting on my unusual style of eggplant preparation for the baba ganoush... I'm still not sure it really is unusual (I've been making baba ganoush for over twenty years now, and it seems usual to me.)
Baba Ganoush
Take a bunch of eggplants - at least two large ones, or a similar volume of smaller ones.
Roast the heck out of them. Specifically stick them full of holes (forks are for whimps, I use a boning knife) and then roast them on medium heat (say, 350) until they collapse like leaky inner tube. This will probably take about and hour and a half - I'm not that careful about temperature, but I usually try to stick them in the oven when I have something else cooking. I miss the brick oven... The point here is that it's almost as much a partial drying as a roasting. We are making concentrated essence of eggplant.
Allow eggplants to cool. Slit the skins, and scoop out the insides.
Mix insides with fresh garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and salt to taste. Some people add tahini (I figure if you prepare it right, the eggplant is flavorful enough that olive oil alone is a better complement). You can puree this in a food processor, but my favorite thing to do is blend it with a pastry cutter - you get a smooth silky texture, but you don't process the heck out of it.
So today I made four eggplants worth of caponata (about two and a half quarts), and three eggplants worth of baba ganoush (about a cup and a half). Okay, so the capanata has a lot of non-eggplant stuff in it. But it's still at least half eggplant by volume. K was commenting on my unusual style of eggplant preparation for the baba ganoush... I'm still not sure it really is unusual (I've been making baba ganoush for over twenty years now, and it seems usual to me.)
Baba Ganoush
Take a bunch of eggplants - at least two large ones, or a similar volume of smaller ones.
Roast the heck out of them. Specifically stick them full of holes (forks are for whimps, I use a boning knife) and then roast them on medium heat (say, 350) until they collapse like leaky inner tube. This will probably take about and hour and a half - I'm not that careful about temperature, but I usually try to stick them in the oven when I have something else cooking. I miss the brick oven... The point here is that it's almost as much a partial drying as a roasting. We are making concentrated essence of eggplant.
Allow eggplants to cool. Slit the skins, and scoop out the insides.
Mix insides with fresh garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and salt to taste. Some people add tahini (I figure if you prepare it right, the eggplant is flavorful enough that olive oil alone is a better complement). You can puree this in a food processor, but my favorite thing to do is blend it with a pastry cutter - you get a smooth silky texture, but you don't process the heck out of it.
