Baba Ganoush (my FAVORITE Eggplant Dip!) | Garden to Table Recipe

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hey y’ welcome to the farmers table my name is Jess I’m so glad you have tuned in to my channel here today where I am in my kitchen extremely excited for the recipe that I’m about to make I have picked these lovely eggplants from my garden this morning and I am going to be making something I’ve been thinking about since the freeze came last fall and killed the eggplants last year I’m going to be making some Baba Gan which is an amazing eggplant dip the video today is part of a collaboration hosted by my friend Chrissy over at nine little Aussies uh she has been here on the farmers table channel before as well as on roots and refuge uh her and her family moved from Australia to Texas a little over a year ago we met became fast friends and she is celebrating her H 100th video on YouTube by hosting this collaboration I’ll put a link to the playlist Down Below in the show notes there are several channels participating all sharing U Garden totable recipes and of course I had to throw in my Baba Gan recipe on this because I’ve been I’ve been talking this up so the pressure’s on for this to be good so we’ll jump right into this I have my oven preheated to 375° I am making quite a bit of babagan today now normally uh throughout the summer as the eggplants are getting ripe I will just make one eggplants worth at a time I’ll eat on it for a couple of days and then I’ll just make more more as I need it today I’m actually making a little bit more than usual because I know Maya will want to eat some I I tend to eat the same things over and over every day for the entirety of the growing season everybody else just gets excited about it when it’s new and sort of tapers off and goes back to their old favorite now previously I’ve I’ve tried babaan a lot of different ways I had it for the first time I don’t know 15 years ago there was a restaurant we used to go to that served it and that that’s what put it on my radar but since then I have tried lots of different ways of making it and now I kind of have a method that I sort of go with every time the first thing I do is I’m going to roast my eggplants um I like to leave them whole and uncut I put them on a baking sheet and I’m going to put them in the 375° oven the reason I don’t like cutting these is that they’re going to have a lot of moisture in them um after they cook some of it will still probably run out even with them being whole but if you cut them a lot of that moisture runs out and I just don’t feel like you get As Nice of a texture in your in dip so these are going in the oven um probably take about 40 minutes or so I’m just going to keep an eye on it and once they’re nice and shriveled and soft um I’ll pull them out I’ll let you know how long it takes all right I’m back in the kitchen my eggplants are cooked and cool enough to touch um this took about 45 minutes these are I would say medium eggplants and they’re not super large large but also not small when these came out of the oven they did not look this collapsed they were still kind of plump looking but I just squeezed them and could tell that they were really they were nice and soft pulled them out and as they’ve cooled they’ve sort of collapsed I’m going to set those aside uh you don’t have to wait for them to be cool enough to safely handle have I made batches of boba before where I burnt my fingers because I simply could not wait yes I have but obviously this is the ideal situation I was out watering the garden um I’ve got a bowl here that I’m going to mix this in I often do this in my food processor if I do it in my food processor I process the garlic with a tahini and lemon juice first and let that get good and blended into something of a paste and then add the add the eggplant in if you are using a larger and older eggplant the food processor can really help because eggplants can get a little fibrous in Parts when they’re a little bit older and that’s going to help it break it down if you don’t have one um you can take some scissors to it to cut up any fibrous bits I think these are young enough it’s not going to be an issue Baba Gan is served in a variety of different textures it’s all more or less the same ingredients you have eggplant you have tahini which is Sesame paste uh lemon juice garlic olive oil salt um and paprika is optional some people put a couple other things in it but that is kind of the most basic agreed upon ingredients list however some places will serve it very very smooth whereas some places or recipes make it more chunky and rustic I like both because it’s really the flavor I like so that’s going to come down to preference but today I decided to do this without any extra equipment so if you don’t have a food processor you can follow along the first thing I’m going to do is Crush about six garlic cloves into a bowl um if you don’t want to do three big eggplants or medium eggplants you could cut this in half also if you are not crazy about tons of garlic you can go lighter on this I eat garlic like vampires are a real threat I love garlic and I’m always going to do more than what a recipe calls for so I am putting about six cloves in I’m using a garlic press here you could just chop this up or as I said use the food processor if you have a mortar and pestle you could just crush the garlic thats whatever you want I do so that you don’t have any really big chunks oh this is tahini this is a key component in um making Boba ganish most brands of this will separate kind of like natural peanut butters and so you’ve got to mix them back together so that the oil is back with the paste it took me a really long time to start this channel um it was much requested from the 6 years of making gardening content on YouTube where people asked for recipes and cooking and I had a lot of issue with it and what really delayed me was that I don’t measure anything and so I feel like on every video I make I’m like I don’t typically measure this that’s cuz I don’t really usually measure anything unless I’m following like a baking recipe where like the Science Matters the thing I’d like for you to take from that I hope it’s not frustrating I do my best to like write down roundabout measurements but like make a recipe a couple of times and tweak it before you decide how you like I always start on the lower end of things and then taste it and then add more uh I am going to put about a thir of a cup of this tahini in with this amount of eggplant how do I decide that I don’t know it’s just round about the the amount that feels right when I cook things they don’t always turn out exactly the same every time they’re always good and I can taste them and make them how I want it to be and I realize it’s an issue if feel like never have had babagan you don’t know if you like it then you you make it you don’t know what it should be like but I’m going to say for this much eggplant about a third of a cup but I think it would probably taste good with a/4 a cup and it would probably taste good with a half of a cup so it it’s fine either way I’m going to add the juice of one lemon and I’m just mixing this in and mashing this down to make sure it’s fully Incorporated and now I’m going to scoop the insides out so I want you to see here the inside of this eggplant has quite a lot of seeds in it if this texture is really going to bother you harvest your eggplants really young or try to purchase eggplants that have been harvested young before they develop many seeds I do that sometimes I’ll have to go through more eggplants to make the babaan I’ll get a smoother texture but it doesn’t really bother me for there to be seeds in if it does bother you you may want to you know look at maybe doing it in the food processor but I’m going to just scoop the guts out of this eggplant directly into my bowl if any of the bits of skin break off that’s fine I’m just going to scrape them off and pull them out and I’m going to proceed to do this with all three eggplants all right I’ve got a little Chopper Masher thing I’m just going to use this sure I get this good and mixed now I’m going to put a pretty good bit of salt in here um at least a couple teaspoons I use Celtic Sea salt which is not as salty if you’re just using plain eyeye salt definitely start out a little lower and then taste it and work your way up I actually feel like this needs a little bit more tahini so when I write the recipe down I’m going to just write it down as half a cup to this much eggplant the tahini is what gives this more of a substantial kind of depth of flavor I think it was just a touch lacking now to finish this I drizzle olive oil on top sometimes whenever I go to eat it you know I pull this out of the fridge I will put even more olive oil on it and then I also like sprinkle paprika on top because I love paprika because it’s so Smoky and just adds a nice flavor another really great finish for this is toasted pine nuts or any toasted nuts you can eat this a lot like hummus um with like pita breads or with sliced up veggies um right now the cucumbers are coming in a lot and so eating it with sliced up cucumbers kind of a go-to for me but my most favorite way to eat Baba Gan is with homemade corn tortillas so we’re going to make a couple of those real quick too because I’ve been waiting for this since like November behind me I’ve got a little bit of lard melting and a cast iron skillet over medium heat and here I’ve got my mosa herina flour um this is my favorite flour for making tortillas and this is white corn and it’s treated with lime and so it’s got a little bit of that flavor in it again I don’t really measure um I’m just putting some of this flour in a bowl the kettle is never cool at our house I’ve raised a bunch of tea drinkers we all drink hot tea year round uh throughout the day and so I just heat the kettle back up because you want mix this with hot water I’m just going to put a little bit in and mix it I usually let this sit for you know until I’m able to handle it cuz that water was really hot it only takes like a minute or something for it to cool down tortilla press my viewers had pity on me last year because I was pressing my tortillas between baggies between my counter and a cutting board I mean I was just being resourceful this is a heck of a lot easier and this is not a huge investment um it’s worth it to get one if you think you may do this very much so right here I have these are just two halves of a Ziploc bag I just wash this and reuse it and I keep it with the tortilla press um it makes it a lot easier to get it off where it doesn’t get stuck to it I’m going to grab a ball of this it is kind of hot put it here and baggy on the top and press um I actually like my tortillas a little bit thicker I mean I’m not looking to get them super thin this is thin enough this is a very fast process it does not take very long at all so definitely don’t walk away from it flip it over all right just pulled this off I’m going to sprinkle a little bit of salt on it okay I’m actually going to make more of these Maya and the kids will have some but I figured I would do a little taste test for you guys and I’ll wrap the video up got my Baba G this lasts in the fridge for you know as long as you would expect fresh ingredients like this to last in the fridge I’ve never had it last without me eating it for more than a week um it always runs out but so I’ve never had spoil um I like to let my tortilla get a little crispy and then just dip it it’s hot and I definitely should probably wait but it’s so good I’m so happy I have my Baba ganish I hope you guys like this I’m going to dive in thank you for hanging out with me today if you have anything special you love to do with ban or if you have a similar recipe that you would like to share with me I’d love to hear it and if you do decide to give this a try let me know what you think thanks for hanging out with me I bless you until next time