Baba Ganoush in 30-Minutes

This is one of the great alternatives to a traditional hummus made with chickpeas and tahini. Like its cousin, Baba Ganoush is a staple found throughout the Middle East.  Most traditional recipes call for cooking the eggplant in a hot oven, grill or in a hot pan. The eggplant is often left whole while cooking, then peeled once the flesh inside has softened and the entire eggplant collapses.

I’ve made it this way before and I was always disappointed with the yield because I thought there was simply too much of the flesh (and taste) left on the peel which is discarded. So, I began searching for alternatives in cooking the eggplant.

I came across one recipe which left the peel mostly intact. This procedure calls for slicing the eggplant, then sautéing part of it in oil until browned. The remainder of the eggplant is added to the cooked eggplant and the contents are cooked in a bit more oil.  It sounded a bit oily to me and I was suspicious.

Finally, I decided to simply eliminate pre-cooking the eggplant altogether, although I preserved the partial peeling of the eggplant step.  The version I came up with uses a pressure cooker to lock in flavor and aroma…and only takes 8 minutes to cook.  It yields a very soft and velvety dip…especially if you use a high-speed blender like a Vitamix to blend the eggplant, garlic, lemon juice and tahini.  This method also protects the integrity of the olive oil because the temperature never rises above 120°C. In practice, you can substitute other oils (like hemp or flax seed), or simply reduce the entire fat content altogether.  Let your taste buds guide you in your preparation.

You can follow the same basic procedure without using a pressure cooker by using a pot with a tight-fitting lid and cooking the eggplant about 30 minutes.  You can also substitute some or all the garlic with garlic puree to produce a sweeter flavor. Yield: 4-6 servings