Baba ganoush

Method

1. Char the aubergines whole directly on a gas burner, a barbecue, or under a grill turned as high as it goes. Turn them every few minutes with tongs. They should look destroyed, blackened all over and collapsed, which takes 20 to 30 minutes on a flame.
2. Rest them in a covered bowl for 10 minutes. The trapped steam loosens the skin.
3. Split them and scoop the flesh out, leaving the blackened skin behind. A little burnt fleck is good; a lot is bitter.
4. Drain the flesh in a sieve for at least 30 minutes. Do not skip this. Aubergine holds a startling amount of bitter grey liquid, and the difference between a watery dip and a good one is that liquid going down the sink.
5. Beat, do not blend. A fork or a whisk keeps some texture. In a food processor it turns to grey paste and loses the character entirely.
6. Add tahini, lemon, garlic and salt, taste, and finish with oil, parsley and something jewelled on top.

Notes

• A grill or an oven gives you no smoke. If you have no gas flame, the honest answer is that you are making roasted aubergine dip, which is nice. A quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika or a couple of drops of liquid smoke is the pragmatic fix.
• The draining step is the one people skip and it is the one that matters most. Press the flesh gently against the sieve at the end.
• Less tahini than hummus. This should taste of smoke and aubergine, with the tahini in support. Recipes that push it to hummus levels lose the point.
• It keeps 4 days and the smoke gets stronger, not weaker.

Ingredient substitutions

• Pomegranate molasses stirred in at a teaspoon adds a sour depth common in Syrian versions and is well worth it if the bottle is open.
• Greek yogurt instead of some of the tahini makes a lighter, tangier dip, which is a Turkish direction rather than a Levantine one and no longer vegan.

Sources consulted

• Serious Eats: baba ganoush

Good with

• Smooth hummus
• Soft Greek pita: pocketless and stovetop-cooked
• Toum

From Christoph Mayer

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