Preparing the Eggplant for Baba Ganoush

Hi, I am Mohammed Karimy with Lebanese Taverna Catering. Now, we are peeling and we are going to chop the eggplant.

Now, this is chilled, we've baked it for 45 minutes. You dont need that part. So, what you do is you cut it like this or you could follow the slit that we made it prior to baking. It's really easy. You see, it's cooked so nice and to separate this one from the skin, look you dont even need any tools or spoon or anything like that to do this. It comes very easily. This one you have to carefully fold, no, I am just kidding, you dont have to fold that. Now here, you are going to chop it very fine. Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. So, Baba Ghanoush is a little bit coarse. It's kind of chunky, but not very big chunks. So, you have to make sure you chop it really fine. It's traditionally done with hand, hand-chopped basically. Some people they dont like the seed, but what you could do is use a food processor, that way you also puree the seeds too, but traditionally, it's done with sharp knife and you just do it like this. See, chop, chop, chop. The finer you chop, the smaller itll get. So, see the way I am chopping it. Chop, chop, chop. Everything here and we put this part in a bowl here.

Again, if you dont like the seeds, what you could do is use food processor, and here we get the other half. This is really nice flavor. Make sure you get all of that out, that smoky flavor, thats from the eggplant, look at that, very good. Chop, chop, chop, it looks beautiful, and eggplant is nice, delicious, healthy. Look at that, chop, chop, chop. Again we want to make sure that it's chopped really fine, more chop. So, we want to make sure that it is not big chunks, small chunks, okay? This one I am going to add it to the bowl also. Alright, here everything goes in this bowl. Next thing we are going to do when we come back; we are going to chop the garlic.