Finally, the letter B!

OK, so it's been awhile since my last post. A lot has been going on, but I'm not going to come up with a million excuses as to why I haven't posted anything new until now. I'm just gonna go ahead and jump right in. So, here we are at the letter "B".
 After looking through a bunch of cookbooks and a food dictionary, I decided to go with "Baba Ghanoush". I love BG and usually buy it from the store pre-made. However, I thought it couldn't be that difficult to make. There's generally only about 6 ingredients: eggplant, tahini, parsley, garlic, lemon and olive oil. Though depending on where you find the recipe, the ingredients may vary. Here is a picture of my ingredients (minus the olive oil):

Now what is tahini, you may ask? Well, it's basically ground up sesame seeds. Much like the consistency of peanut butter. I know some people use it as such, so I tasted it and I have to say - it tastes nothing like peanut butter! I am not sure what other uses I will have for tahini, but I guess I'll have to come up with something since I had to buy a whole jar of the stuff. I found it in the organic section of my local grocers. This is the brand that I used: 

After I had all the basic ingredients assembled I roasted the eggplant over my gas burner. I think I should have just roasted it in the oven because doing it this way proved to be a pain. You have to turn it several times so the skin doesn't burn. You don't want the flame too high. And once the eggplant started to cook down it got kind of floppy and was hard to manage over the burner. I say just roast it in the oven, it's easier.

Once I had the eggplant roasted, I submerged it in a bowl of cold water. This helped make it easier to peel. While the eggplant was cooling, I chopped the parsley and garlic. When the eggplant was cool enough to touch, I peeled it and put the flesh into my food processor. I pulsed it until it had this consistency:

Now, in hindsight I wish I had just blended the eggplant, parsley and garlic in the food processor instead of taking the time to chop and mince. It would have made things a lot easier. I chopped about 3/4 cup parsley and minced 1 garlic clove
I scooped the eggplant out of the processor and added the parsley and garlic, squeezed about 1/2 a lemon, and a tablespoon of tahini. This is what it looked like all in the bowl before I stirred:

After I had all the ingredients in the bowl, I gently stirred them all together. I tasted it and added a touch more tahini and a little more lemon juice. I wish I had used less parsley because it almost seemed to overwhelm it - perhaps because I only used one eggplant? I am not really sure. I covered the dish with foil and put it in the fridge. While that was doing it's thing I cut up some whole wheat pita bread into triangles and spread them on a baking sheet. I sprinkled them with olive oil and sea salt and baked them in the oven at 375 for about 5-7 minutes. (Be careful with the pita chips, they cook quickly, especially if your pita bread is thin). As soon as the pita bread was baked and cooled, I took the Baba Ghanoush out of the fridge and drizzled it with some olive oil. This is what it looked like without the olive oil:

I have to say it wasn't too bad, though as I mentioned before, I wish I had blended everything in the food processor, so the texture was a little smoother.

Anyway, this was my foray into the world of middle eastern cuisine. I wouldn't call it a complete flop nor would I call it a huge success.

Hopefully with each post I get better and better (in cooking and in writing). I welcome any suggestions to this as I am just starting out!

Thanks for reading and happy eating!