Our State on a Plate focuses on quality WA produce and how it is sourced, cooked and served in local eateries around WA.

In partnership with Our State on a Plate, we hit the road to meet some of our business customers and primary producers to learn more about our homegrown goodness and how best to enjoy it.

A little bit about baba ghanoush

Baba Ghanoush is an eggplant dish, originating from the Levant cuisine, or the area occupied by the East Mediterranean, including modern day Greece, Syria-Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and Turkey.

Typically, the dish was served as a dip with rice or pita breads and along with other dipping dishes and appetisers. The star of the dish is eggplant, with the flavour coming from garlic and olive oil, which also make it almost silky in texture.

The dish is popular now in many Middle Eastern countries and further abroad, with different blends of herbs and spices being added depending on the cultural preference.

Fun fact! Baba ghanoush is also a vegetarian dish.

Tip! Baba ghanoush is made fresh and typically without preservatives so is best eaten within a week of preparing.

Tip! Eggplant is similar to mushrooms in that it takes on a lot of moisture. If it is overcooked the texture can get rubbery and once mashed, very sloppy.

Doing some entertaining soon? This is the perfect opportunity to put the eggplant right on the flame and cook up a delicious baba ghanoush.

Baba Ghanoush

Gas tip! You can do this on your barbecue or on a gas cook top. If you don’t use gas in your kitchen, you can prepare it on your barbecue. Just make sure you’ve got the Kwik-Gas ready to go.

Ingredients:

• 2 x eggplants
• 1 x garlic clove
• 50ml x lemon juice
• 50gm x tahini
• 1 tablespoon x water
• 30gm x sour cream
• salt

Method:

Tip! You can keep this in the fridge for 7 days, but serve at room temperature.

1. Put your garlic clove in the lemon juice and let it sit for 45 minutes.
2. Using a fork pierce the eggplant all over.
   put you gas flame on high and place the eggplant directly on flame.
3. Using long tongs turn every so often to cook evenly all over, this should take 45 minutes, they should be blistered and charred all over, let them cool down.
4. Cut the tops off the eggplant then cut down the middle and using a spoon scoop out all the inside try not to get much skin as it will taste bitter, once all the inside is scooped out place all the eggplant into a sieve to drain off any excess liquid, let it sit in the strainer for 5 minutes.
5. Place the eggplant on a cutting board and chop them up into very fine pieces.
6. Put the eggplant into a bowl add lemon juice (without the garlic clove, it’s there just to perfume the lemon juice), tahini water and sour cream and a pinch of salt.
7. Using a spoon mix all together till it is consistently mixed through, taste to see if it needs more salt.

The local name in gas and in your kitchen

For more kitchen inspiration and tips and tricks on using gas, check out our Kleenheat Kitchen recipes.