CrockPot Baba Ganoush Recipe

Day 291.

It's Fondue Friday! I found this recipe while I was perusing Alanna's A Veggie Venture site for eggplant recipes.

I was sold by the name. I had heard of baba ganoush before, but had no idea what it was. Alanna shared that it's pretty much an eggplant hummus.

mmmm. hummus.

I love me some hummus. I love it so much I don't care a bit how that sentence breaks every rule in the grammar book (is there a grammar book?). I blame Chris Jordan for my hummus addiction.

The Ingredients.
adapted from A Veggie Venture

--1 large eggplant (if you're fancy you can call it aubergine)
--2 cloves garlic
--1 lemon, juiced
--2 T tahini (sesame paste, in the peanut butter aisle, but NOT at Trader Joe's. weird.)
--1 T dried parsley flakes, or 1/3 cup fresh parsley leaves
--salt and pepper to taste

The Directions.

Wash and dry your eggplant, and poke it a few times with a fork.

Plop it into your crockpot (you'll need probably at least a 3 quart for it to fit properly) and cook on high for 3 hours.

After cooking, the eggplant skin will be crinkled and the flesh inside will have shrunk a bit. This is good.

Carefully (use tongs. trust me. my fingers ache while I'm typing this.) remove the eggplant and cut in half with a knife. Scrape out any big chunks of seeds.

Get out the blender.

Using a spoon, remove the flesh from the eggplant skin and drop it (the flesh, not the skin) into the blender. Add the garlic cloves, lemon juice, and tahini. Add a pinch each of salt and pepper.

Blend. Add additional lemon, salt or pepper as needed.

Serve with your favorite fresh veggies, crackers, pita bread, or brown rice tortilla wedges.

The Verdict.

This was tasty. I brought it to a play date up the street and none of the kids tried it.

Adam thought it could use more lemon and salt. The other dad thought it could use more heat, and the other mom thought it could use another garlic clove.

But we still ate it all...

I will make this again. The hardest thing was finding the tahini---I was surprised that Safeway carried it, and Trader Joe's did not.