Yesterday’s it’s just allergies acting up turned into today’s shit, I have a cold. A doozy of a cold. I’ll spare you the details of a non-stop running nose with a moustache and beard. Yes, a doozy of a cold.
I tried staying in bed but lying prone does not help the aforementioned issue. Against my protesting body’s wishes, I got up.
We all know that I’m not a great patient. Victor has learned to just let me be. When I’m ready to be civil, I’m civil. So after a cup of coffee and a check of the email, I was bordering civility. We decided to head out to the garden and see if there was anything worth salvaging since we’re pulling it all out tomorrow.
The tomatoes were pretty worthless, we had a dozen bell peppers, a big handful of tabasco peppers, a few jalapeños, and a dozen eggplants. Twelve more flippin’ eggplants. I like eggplant. I like eggplant a lot. I just wasn’t ready to see another dozen of them after the season we’ve had. I’m reasonably certain that had I felt better, seeing a dozen eggplants on a glorious sunny day would have made my culinary heart swell. Today, it was @#$%& eggplants…
But I also wasn’t about to let them go to waste.
I knew that with this many eggplants, whatever I made had to be something that I could can. As I already have my caponata and other eggplant things downstairs, I needed something different. I hadn’t made baba ghanoush in a while, so baba, it was.
The USDA does not recommend canning baba ghanoush because it’s too thick and there are dangers of it not reaching temperature. I did find a site where a woman regularly cans hers at 10 lbs pressure for 45 minutes with no problems.
I decided to go for it.
The recipe is fairly basic, except I like some spice in mine so I added some tabasco peppers. I had to have Victor keep tasting it since the aforementioned cold was blocking my ability to taste properly.
Baba Ghanoush
- 10 lbs eggplant
- 1 full head garlic
- 1 cup tahini
- 8 tabasco peppers
- 1 cup olive oil
- 2 tbsp sumac
- 2/3 cup lemon juice
- salt & pepper
Roast eggplants on grill until collapsing. Cool slightly and then place pulp in a colander to drain for about 30 minutes.
Process in batches with food processor, adding bits of the various ingredients as you go. Mix everything well and place in 8 oz jars.
Process at 10 lbs pressure for 45 minutes.
It came out just fine. A dozen 12 oz jars now await some chips…
Part of the fun of making these things is creating labels for them. I usually do a Google search for different antique labels and then manipulate them for my own use. They’re old, public domain images that usually have no relation to what it is I change them to. Plus, I’m not selling anything, not making any money from any of this. It’s all fun.
Sadly, I can’t use a stick-on label on textured jars, so these have a label tied to them. I had thought of doing a round label on the metal lid, but decided I didn’t want to cut out circles. Maybe I’ll buy some round labels one of these days and see how they work…
In the meantime, though, the baba ghanoush came out great – even with my limited tasting ability.
Now… if I could only stop coughing…