Eggplant is creamy, smokey and delicious

It's no secret I'm not the biggest

Fan of eggplant, but they know how to treat it in the levant: destroy it with fire.

Baba ghanoush is not pretty but it delicious.

Grill some flatbread with it and you've got a crowd-pleasing meatless meal that you can do outside. This is not quite the traditional West Asian pita bread. I want something crispier to use for dipping. Here's the dough. 3/4 of a cup of water, 175mL. A teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of yeast, a teaspoon of salt, and I'm doing about a quarter cup of plain yoghurt, a big spoonful. If you don't to dairy you can just replace that with more water.

And I'm doing some cornmeal, maybe half a cup, 60g. This will give the bread great flavor at texture that's much more cracker-like. The rest will just be normal bread flour, as much as I can stir in, which will probably end up being be two cups, max, 140g. I'll just leave that covered to hydrate and autolyse and all of that for about 20 minutes. Time now to knead, which is not really about developing gluten. The autolyse pretty much did that. It's really about jamming as much flour in here as it'll take. Flatbreads like this are generally a pretty dry, stiff dough — that's what makes them hold up so well on a grill or in a tandoor.

A wet dough would just droop through the bars or fall off. Don't freak out if the dough seems rough, like that. That's the yogurt. The acid in yogurt messes with the gluten a bit. But it tastes real good. That's taken all the flour it's gonna take. Time to let it rise for an hour or two. When it's real puffy I'll divide it into maybe six little balls, roll those out smooth and let them proof for about a half hour.

A second rise improves flavor and texture and makes them much easier to roll out flat. I've got some parchment papers and I'll cut them in half. You'll see why. A little flour on top and just roll it basically as thin as I reasonably can. Then plop it on a parchment sheet, and repeat. "So splatty. And wiggle it.". Here's another thing you can do if you want — just dock the bread with a fork.

This will get you lots of little bubbles instead of one big bubble, like a pocket pita. Thanks to the paper I've got a compact stack that I can just throw in the fridge until. I'm ready to grill.

If they're cold they'll be easier to handle.

Time to start a fire. You could certainly do this meal on a gas grill or in a very hot oven, ideally under the broiler. But charcoal is definitely the best. It's gonna get us some smokey flavor and probably the highest heat you can easily generate at home.

My lit coals go down and then I'm gonna cover them with a lot more unlit coals. I need enough fuel to roast the eggplant for a long time and then to bake the bread. Grate on top, and then you need so many eggplants to make just one little bowl of baba ghanoush. I've got five big ones and I could have used more. I'd say get yourself six or seven pounds, 3 kilos raw eggplant to feed like four people as the main dish. I think it's better to cover the grill. My air vents are wide open. But the lid will still restrict oxygen flow to the fire and keep the eggplant skin from burning right off before the inside is done.

Better stay nearby, just for safety.

Ok, every now and then you might flip these around, shuffle their positions because the fire probably is not even. I should have pierced these with a knife before we started and you're about to see why. "Woo!".

Yeah, that one just exploded from internal steam pressure.

That's not a problem for the eggplant,

But it is a problem for you if you happen to be standing nearby.

You'll get burned.

Another reason to keep the lid on. While I'm waiting I can get the other ingredients ready. To me, baba ghanoush is chiefly a garlic delivery system. Some people would think this is an obscene amount given that it's gonna be pretty much raw in the final dish, but I'm a fan of mild obscenity. People often grate this to get it really fine. I think grating garlic is usually pain. I'm just gonna grind it down with some salt. Pretty smooth paste, that is.

You can also dip vegetables in baba ghanoush, like cucumber. Very delicious as well and probably a lot healthier. You might need to replenish your fuel, which is easy enough to do if you have tongs. The name of the game here is to just completely destroy the eggplant. Just incinerate it. You gotta break down that inner flesh until it's really dark and creamy and dry. We gotta get out most of the water. That's looking pretty good in there after like 45 minutes.

I'm gonna leave the lid off now so that the fire can get a ton of oxygen and I can literally burn the skins to a crisp. If they're crispy the eggplant will be firmer, easier to pick up, and easier to scoop out. Nice and smokey and crispy. Done. I'll put the lid on to keep the remaining fuel from burning too fast. We need it for the bread. Pop them open with the knife and let them steam out for a few minutes, and then you can just go in with a spoon and scoop our the flesh. I think this is way easier than trying to peel the skin off the flesh, which I've seen people do.

It's no big deal if you get a few little bits of burned skin in there. They'll actually taste quite nice. It's just probably not the healthiest thing to put in your body, so minimize burnt skin. And you'll note I have scooped all of this into a tea towel, because now I'm going to ball it up, give it a squeeze and feed the plant with that excess juice. You don't have to get the pulp bone dry, but do what you can. You can do this in a salad spinner instead. Ok, that looks pretty disgusting but it's gonna get better. I'll cut my lemon in half and chop up some cilantro but you could use parsley.

I'll start with just half of that lemon juice and maybe half of my garlic.

A big pinch of salt and give

That a preliminary stir.

Time to start adding the fatty ingredients, and this you want to do gradually. That's tahini — toasted sesame paste. We are now building an emulsion, which requires adding the fat little by little and stirring really aggressively. You could do this in the food processor but I think that makes the dip a little too smooth, monsoon. Now let's do some olive oil, same deal, really beat it in, and then do it again. You generally do 2 or 3 times as much olive oil compared to the tahini.

Stir stir stir then give it a taste. I'ma go in with the other half of the lemon and all of my garlic. The garlic actually does cook a little if the eggplant is still hot. And more tahini for that nutty note, love that. Stir stir, taste again. More salt. And then I'll finish it with more olive oil, little by little. You can see this is starting to exhibit a characteristic trait of elusions where it actually gets stiff and thicker the more liquid fat you stir in.

If you tried to dump it in all at once it would take way more physical agitation to get the fat bashed up into tiny little droplets and coated in emulsifiers and water. The emulsifiers are in the vegetable matter — mucilage in the eggplant, saponins in the garlic, there's lots of them. Super creamy. Put in as much fresh herb as you want. You can do spices — cumin, coriander, sumac would be awesome — but I think it's better when you can really taste the flavor of the roasted eggplant, which is relatively subtle.. In a bowl, and it's never gonna be pretty, but you can smooth off the top. Some people make little designs in the surface. And you can do the humus truck of floating a nice, pretty film of oil on top.

Ok, time for the bread. That fire is still plenty hot. I'll scrape off the bars and fetch my stack of doughs. Peel them off the paper and plop them down, which is super easy to do when they're cold and firm. Look at those bubbles. Whoops, I should have flipped that one a little sooner. If you want the bread to be somewhat soft, pull these when they still look a little doughy. I want the crispy and crackery to contrast with the soft dip, so I'm baking these like all the way.

Here's the dough we did not dock with the fork. Check out how you get one giant steam bubble in the middle — that's how you make pocket pita, just with a wetter dough. Again, if you want them soft, pull them before they look done. But also if you want them soft, don't put the cornmeal in the dough. Alright, you're done. Everybody can gather round, rip and dip. It's great how much smokey flavor translates into the dip, and that bread stays nice and crispy even when inundated. Hey, btw, did you know that baba ghanoush is Arabic for flirty dad? Look it up if you don't believe me. That's what it is...