Party, Party, Party!

With all the great food we are getting from the farm, it seems only right to share some of it with friends, so today's blog features party food. Yes, indeed, your friends will eat some of your eggplant and zucchini if you just know how to serve it as a zesty dip. (Jeez, that sounds like something out of Betty Crocker, or that Mad Man show.)

In the picture, that's Baba Ghanoush, spicy eggplant dip, at left, and Zucchini Dip with Cocktail Rye at right. The Zucchini Dip with Cocktail Rye recipe is in the Asparagus to Zucchini cookbook, though I'll try to get it posted soon, too. Here's the Baba Ghanoush recipe.


Baba Ghanoush

1 large eggplant
1/4 cup tahini
3 mincedgarlic cloves
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 pinch ground cumin
salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Then, you need to first roast/blacken the eggplant skin. You can do this on a grill, or over the flame of a gas stove burner, or under the broiler. Prick the eggplant’s skin with a fork in several places and grill or broil the eggplant for 10 to 15 minutes, or hold it with a fork over a gas flame, until the skin blackens and blisters.

Put the eggplant on a baking sheet and bake until very soft, about 25 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool slightly, and peel off and discard the skin. Place the eggplant flesh in a bowl and, using a fork, mash the eggplant to a paste. At this point, you can add the other ingredients in the bowl and mash it up, or if you have a food processor, put all the ingredients together in it and blend.

Transfer the mixture to a serving bowl and spread with the back of a spoon to form a shallow well. Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with parsley, and arrange black olives all around the top to make it fancy for that party. Serve at room temperature with pita bread, pita chips, or tortilla chips.