Hi, I am Mohammed Karimy with Lebanese Taverna Catering Cooking Classes. Lebanese Taverna was established in 1979 in Arlington, Virginia, and over the years they expand—it's going to be eleven locations soon. Here at this particular location we offer cooking classes as well here. I am the cooking class instructor. I am originally from Afghanistan. I have learned the basic cooking at home. My mom is a wonderful cook, and the Lebanese cuisine, I learned at Lebanese Taverna.
Today we are making one of our signature dishes, Baba Ghanoush. It's very easy to make, its very healthy. You can always serve this with either Pita bread, or nowadays like people will serve this with vegetables, you know like, celery, cucumber, carrots or anything like that. It’s a very healthy dish. It has a history and especially the name, and it means something. It's really funny also. Baba means father and in Arabic they say Ganouj or in English Ghanoush means spoilt. Spoilt daddy, that’s what it means, Baba Ghanoush.
This is very basic, very easy, very simple and also of course very healthy to make, this dish. All we need is eggplant to start with. You have to make a slit, just puncture the skin. It doesn’t matter how deep as far as it is punctured. If you want smoky flavor, you can put this on the grill. Grill each side a little bit, then put it in a tray, and then put in the oven. You preheat your oven at 500, 475, 400, however you feel you comfortable. After 30 minutes you open the oven, you feel the eggplant. Make sure you feel the eggplant, not the tray, because you are going to burn your hand if you feel the tray.
So, after it's baked, it collapses, it's mushy. Take it out, turn it off, put it on top of the stove, let it cool down a little bit and then put the whole thing in the fridge, so it's nice and chilled. Some people, they also put this prior to baking, they put this on the grill to get smoky flavor too. If you don’t have a stove, you can do it on the grill or on the stove, gas stove. So, smoke, smoky flavor, put on the oven, make a slit, then bake it.
This size will probably take about 45 minutes, alright? So, once it's baked, you take it out, put on top of the stove, let it cool down and then you put in the fridge to get chilled. Next thing we are going to do is we are going to peel and chop the eggplant.
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