Raw Baba Ghanoush

Let's be honest - People like making/eating Baba Ghanoush because saying Baba Ghanoush is incredibly fun! Mine is adapted from the recipe on RawAmazing. You'll find many variations of Baba Ghanoush on the Net. Essentially, Baba Ghanoush is eggplant with sesame, garlic, lemon.

Baba Ghanoush

Serving: 1/2 cup

Prep work:
Peel the eggplants. Cut roughly and put it overnight in the freezer. Remove from the freezer approximately two hours before you want to begin making Baba Ghanoush. This is to improve the texture of raw eggplants - No one likes eating them raw! As best I know, freezing does not degrade the enzymes in fruits/veggies. So this is still considered raw.

If you're not bothered about the whole raw food thing, then just roast the eggplants over an open flame to get that charred burnt flavor; cool them off; and then blitz them along with the other ingredients.

Ingredients:

• Two medium sized baby eggplants (I used the small Indian variety)
• 1 tablespoon of Tahini
• Juice from half a lemon
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 5-6 cashews (Optional)
• Dash of olive/sesame oil
• Salt to taste

To make:

• In a mixer, blitz all the ingredients till its a smooth paste.
• Serve with crackers

Frozen eggplant being thawed

 

Notice how the texture has changed



Eggplant and Tahini Pizza on Indian Naan Bread

As discussed, here's my version of an eggplant and tahini pizza made atop a day-old Indian naan bread.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 a naan bread
• 1 medium sized baby eggplant/aubergine, sliced into thin discs
• Handful of veggies - peppers, cabbage, spinach etc
• 1 table spoon of Tahini paste
• teaspoon of olive oil
• Pinch of dry basil

To make:
On a sliver of the naan bread, spread the tahini paste all over.

Then, lay some green leafy vegetables, then the peppers and cabbage on top.

Lay the eggplant discs on top.

Drizzle a little olive oil on top along with the basil.

Bake in an oven at 250 degrees celcius for 15-20 minutes.

Servings: 1 sliver of pizza - But be warned that the tahini makes this quite a filling snack/lunch.

Verdict: To be honest, I preferred the earlier pizza I'd made. The eggplant gave it quite a bitter aftertaste. Plus, it wasnt the most portable of lunches -The eggplant discs kept slipping out. Next time, I'll make Baba Ghanoush (simply put, its just tahini mixed with eggplant. Blend it all up to make a paste). And then lay the veggies on top of the Baba Ghanoush paste. 

Salads Galore

I'm giving my blender a break and using up my abundant, organic harvest from Sunday. So, salads it is! Yesterday it was my Veggie Delight Salad, and today for lunch I had my Carrot Salad with Tahini Sauce.

Veggie Delight Salad:

Toss together:

• Baby lettuce
• Red pepper
• Yellow pepper
• Green pepper
• Black and green olives
• Cucumber slices
• Red cabbage
• Dried basil

I added some of the salty water from the olives and left it overnight in the refrigerator -So I didnt need any dressing.

Carrot Tahini Salad

• 2 Whole Organic Carrots
• Some asparagus ends
• Sunflower seeds
• Handful of raisins
• Handful of black olives
• 1 tablespoon of tahini paste

To make:

• Cut the carrots into thin strips.
• Boil the asparagus for 3-5 minutes and immediately submerge into icy water to retain the color and stop the cooking.
• Toss the carrots, asparagus, olives and raisins together. Then add the dressing before you eat it. The sunflower seeds go in last for the crunch.
• Dressing: Add some water and lime juice to your tahini paste and mix it together till there are no lumps.

Note that the tahini is going to make the salad extremely filling (I still have 1/3rd of my salad from lunch left over!), so you may want to reduce the portions.
Also note that the tahini dressing will dry up as the day goes on. It wont go bad, but the salad's a lot yummier when the dressing is still liquid.

Tahini Time

So...I've been meaning to make Tahini for the last few days now but reaching home tired at 8.30 pm or later really zaps my culinary intentions. I already bought 1/2 pound of white unhulled sesame seeds (plus, poppy seeds, walnuts, and black salt) from Crawford market last weekend when I was showing someone around town - Gosh they are expensive!! So what I am going to do is use half the sesame seeds to make my dates+some seed bars. The other half I'll try my hand at making Tahini.

As far as dishes go, this one really is just too simple. Just two basic ingredients: sesame seeds and oil. However, as with all good things in life, no one seems to agree on the exact amounts of each of these ingredients. Proportions will vary widely the more you look it up on the net. To make tahini sauce, just add more water, lime and a garlic clove.

Here's a fairly decent recipe - However, I will be making my raw - so no roasting beforehand.