Eggplant, pita, homemade tahini

Baba ghanoush is a favorite word of a Japanese television show presenter. He keeps using the word without relevance because the sound of the word is funny, especially when persistently overused inappropriately. I have to admit it is rather funny even without knowing what baba ghanoush is, we expect the presenter doesn't know either. For some reason I visualized something exotic and lumpy. 

I was disappointed to search baba ghanoush images and realize it's all just brown sludge. The ingredients look the same as for hummus except eggplant is substituted for chickpeas. The homogeneity made me unhappy. My version would be different.  

Need pita.

Pita dough:

*  1 cup warm water

*  1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast

*  1/2 teaspoon sugar

*  3 cups A/P flour

*  1 level teaspoon salt

Mix everything except salt and half the flour. This produces a wet spongy environment with sufficient fast food to thrill any self-respecting yeast cell out of stasis. The sponge becomes alive and smells of fermentation, it coheres in a stringy mucus-y fashion, the salt and remaining flour is added and a proper dryer dough ball is formed. 

Hours elapsed. Oh, let's say two hours, I don't know for sure, time's not my bag. 

We're not worried about the dough rising to double as with regular bread. Pita is closer to pizza bread. It uses leavened dough, but it goes into the oven in smashed form unconcerned about it rising as bread rises. When baked, fried in this case, an internal bubble forms by moisture turning to steam between two thin dough skins that are two bread disks connected at the rim and that can be cut into and filled. Here we are ignoring that useful property of pita and using it as ordinary flour tortillas. 

One small eggplant. This is a single serving

Problem: Both baba ghanoush and humus call for tahini, a sesame seed paste, and I don't have any. 

About a year ago I was curious about tahini, needed for hummus, so I bought two jars and compared them. One was better than the other but neither was very good. I expected tahini to taste profoundly of sesame but it tasted more like peanut butter. They seem interchangeable to me. 

Toasted sesame seed oil is a lot stronger than sesame seed paste. 

Better to use peanut butter + toasted sesame seed oil for increased sesame seed flavor.

I processed toasted sesame seeds to tahini twice. One of my tahini was more flavorful than the other. Both were better than the commercial varieties by about 100%. The reason I made two is because I didn't know the difference between husked sesame seeds and unhusked sesame seeds. 

Whole Foods provides bulk bins for both husked and unhusked sesame seeds. They look exactly alike without a magnifying glass. Oddly, the staff that day could not answer: Does 'husked' mean the seed has retained its husk or that the husk has been removed? Does 'unhusked' mean the seed is huskless, or that the seeds have not been processed? One was slightly more expensive than the other so I took that to mean they were processed further. 

See tahini comparison top photo here. 

Whatever I decided that day, the seeds I brought home were unhusked, husked as a verb, they were unprocessed and so still had their husks, but I did not know that. I toasted them. They smelled extraordinary in the pan. I blended the seeds in a jar with an emersion blender. They absorbed the olive oil immediately. I added more olive oil. The seed husks absorbed it. 

So I added more olive oil. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the oil. 

So I added more olive oil. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the oil.

So I added more olive oil. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the oil.

So I added more olive oil. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the oil.

So I added more olive oil. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the oil.

So I thought, "Dude, this seems like a lot of oil" But the mixture is still way way way too thick so I added water instead of oil and the husks immediately absorbed it. 

So I added more water. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the water.

So I added more water. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the water.

So I added more water. The sesame seed husks immediately absorbed the water.

So then I thought, "This is ridiculous," and I stopped. With all that olive oil and water, it is still the most delicious tahini I have ever tasted. Far better sesame-tasting than any commercial I've tried, and I suppose it is worth the effort. 

But wait, there's more!  Now that I know the difference between husked and unhusked, I did it again with the husked sesame seeds. Those seeds absorbed a lot less oil and water, but the tahini didn't taste quite as rustically authentic. 

Almond butter is the same sort of thing. All three taste and behave similarly, tahini, peanut butter, almond butter. 

I do want sesame seed flavor in this and I do have sesame seed oil which is quite strong, but instead I toast about 1/4 cup of husked sesame seeds.

Molcajete. 

This smashed sesame seed is moist and grainy. You can see how easy this is. With just a little bit of olive oil, BANG, dayitiz, tahini. 

This eggplant with tahini is surprisingly good. I used onion. The fresh tomato is a nice touch. We cannot call this baba ghanoush because it is not homogenous brown sludge. 

Eggplant:

*  eggplant, sliced in half and singed one way or another as chiles are singed. Baked upside down to soft. Scraped. Skin discarded. 

*  diced onion

*  crushed garlic

*  olive oil

*  salt / pepper

*  cumin

*  dry chile flakes 

*  tahini (Or anything along these lines, sesame seed oil is a good option) 

*  lemon juice

*  cilantro, basil, herb of your choice.

Conclusion:  Delicious. Could use chiles.