Yotam Ottolenghi's Courgette Baba Ganoush

Amazing recipe from Plenty More by Yottam Ottolenghi. 

Short Summary

💖 Overall                👌👌👌👌

✌ Taste                   👌👌👌👌👌

👶 Kids Approved     Kind of

💪 Difficulty               Easy

Preparation 

The dish is easy to prepare, but it took longer than I expected to roast the zucchini. It is an easy dish to make ahead as an appetiser for a party. I did not have goat yoghurt and replaced with full fat greek yoghurt. 

Removing excess water is an important step to keep the dish from being too watery.

Easy sauce.

Careful not to let the sauce boil!

Pine nuts and butter. The perfect combination!

Toasted to perfection!

Ready to eat!

Taste and flavour

The taste of this dish is smooth and creamy from the butter and zucchini and spicy and salty from the blue cheese sauce. Make sure to season zucchini as well as I under-seasoned my dish. The zucchini on its own is rather bland and needs extra spice from other components of the dish.

Is it worth it?

Overall everyone loved the dish. My kids did not give this dish the top grade: my youngest thought the dish was too spicy (blue cheese is a bit much for her), while my oldest thought it was too bland (she picked up on my lack of seasoning on the zucchini). While it was not a full success, everyone recommended that I make this dish again. I also find that it takes a bit long to prepare this dish, so it is not suited for a weekday dish.

Courgette Baba Ganoush

Recipe from Plenty More by Yottam Ottolenghi. 

Ingredients

5 large courgettes (about 1.2kg in total)

80g goat’s yoghurt

15g Roquefort, coarsely grated

1 egg, lightly beaten

15g unsalted butter

20g pine nuts

½ tsp Urfa chilli flakes, or a pinch of normal chilli flakes if unavailable

1 tsp lemon juice

1 garlic clove, crushed

½ tsp za’atar, to finish

salt and black pepper

Directions

Preheat the grill to its highest setting. Place the courgettes on a baking parchment-lined baking tray and grill for 45 minutes, turning once or twice during the cooking, until the skin crisps and browns nicely. Remove from the grill and, once cool enough to handle, peel off the courgette skin, discard it and set the flesh aside in a colander to drain; you can also scoop out the flesh with a spoon. The courgettes can be served warm or at room temperature.

Place the goat’s yoghurt in a small saucepan with the Roquefort and egg. Heat very gently for about 3 minutes, stirring often. You want the yoghurt to heat through but not quite reach simmering point. Set aside and keep warm.

Melt the butter in a small frying pan with the pine nuts on a gentle heat for 3–4 minutes. Cook until the nuts turn golden-brown, stirring often. Stir in the chilli flakes and lemon juice and set aside.

To serve, put the courgette in a mixing bowl and add the garlic, ⅓ teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Gently mash everything together with a fork and then spread the mixture out on a large serving platter. Spoon the warm yoghurt sauce on top, followed by a drizzle of the warm chilli butter and pine nuts. Finish with a sprinkle of za’atar and serve at once.