I Love Eggplant

When I was a kid the word eggplant made me giggle. I’m like, “what kind of a plant grows an egg? must be delicious though.. can I get one scrambled with butter and cheddar..”Mom didn’t know how to cook eggplant (I learned how to cook because… well, growing up she was not so good) so it turned out that I had to wait until much later in life to really enjoy the diversity of the nightshade. But, NOW I love them so much..love em’ grilled, smoked, fried, baked and mashed. I love them in Indian food, Greek, Mediterranean or Thai.. I love all the varieties of them from Italian to Japanese. Eggplant has a nice semi-bitter earthy flavor with a starchy mouth feel. It can take the place of potatoes or rice as part of a meal or is good simply as a dip like the one pictured above. Many years a go when I worked at a French restaurant we had this thing called “eggplant caviar” harumph! Such highbrow names. It was a puree with roast eggplant, caper, garlic, lemon and parsley. The one I made is with tahini and lemon. It is super simple to make and is a great dip to have on hand for when you have the munchies or when you are entertaining guests.Give it a shot and I bet that you too will scream from the mountain tops “I love eggplant!”Happy eats..Chef Stephen from HOG

Eggplant Sesame Dip

Serves 10 people

Ingredients

1 large eggplant
2 tablespoons tahini
juice of 1 lemon
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Instructions
Roast the eggplant in a 475ºF oven until soft in the center and charred on the outside. When cool, peel off skin and purée in an electric blender with the remaining ingredients. Add water as needed to achieve a smooth consistency, and fold in parsley.To ServeGarnish the eggplant sesame dip with extra virgin olive oil and sesame seeds. Garnish the red pepper walnut dip with toasted walnut pieces and extra virgin olive oil.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Sides & Snacks , chopped parsley, cloves garlic, extra virgin olive oil, japanese eggplant, sesame seeds, tahini, walnut pieces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.