Southwestern Baba Ganoush

Yes, it's entirely fictional. This is another variety of eggplant mush, but this time different from the Mediterranean mushes I've posted before. It's smoky, creamy, spicy, tangy, salty. It's equally at home on a tortilla chip, a cracker, and a slice of rustic bread.

Here it should be mentioned that mashing roasted eggplants is a time-honored tradition, the food of kings. Take for instance this fascinating YouTube documentary about re-creating a 15th-century Moorish eggplant recipe from a cookbook that belonged to the chef for Ferdinand I, King of Naples. (Watch it with closed captioning to see English subtitles.) I tip my hat to a friend who shared this link with me recently, and now I'm dying to read the poem in which two women compete for who knows the most eggplant recipes. But on a less intellectual note, this video is just plain eggplant porn.

My Southwestern Baba is not quite as exquisite as a 15th-century eggplant masterpiece drizzled with flowers. It's that appetizer you bring in a tupperware to the party and everyone says, "what is that stuff?" and you flip your hair and say "oh that? it's delectable mush" or maybe "some weird thing that's not a real dish but it tastes better than it looks." It's addictive.

This recipe makes about 5x this amount, but what a cute widdwe bowlie.

Ingredients
1 large eggplant, halved and roasted with olive oil at 380°
2 hatch chiles, roasted whole until blackened
1 jalapeño, see above
3 cloves garlic, chopped
a 2-inch chunk of chevre (soft goat cheese)
two generous dollops of Greek yogurt
smallish blip of mayo (optional for extra creaminess)
~1/2 tsp chipotle in adobo sauce or chipotle-flavored hot sauce (adjust to taste based on desired spice level; I used quite a bit more than this)
~1 tsp Cholula
~1/2 tsp ground cumin
~1/2 tsp ground paprika {you guys know I hate measuring quantities. It's a rustic blog. Use however much looks right and that goes for everything always}
olive oil
squeeze of fresh lime
chopped cilantro
2 chopped scallions
salt and pepper to taste (recommended: use smoked salt!)

Method 
Start by roasting the eggplants and various chiles in the oven at 380° until the eggplant is mushy-soft and chiles are blackened. Remove the skins once the roasted things have cooled. Chop with a knife until roughly mashed.

Before.

After.

Put the mush in a small mixing bowl.

In a small pan, fry the garlic in a generous quantity of olive oil. Watch it like a hawk and don't let it burn. When it looks slighly golden, add cumin and paprika and fry for one more minute or less; don't let the spices burn either! Pour the hot oil and garlic into the mush.

The fragrant part.

Mix in the remaining ingredients, first the goat cheese to let it dissolve into the mush, then the other items. Add a squeeze of lime, salt, and any additional hot sauce to taste. Mix in fresh greenery right at the end and serve with green things scattered on top. Eat warm or cold on top of any carb-like thing you desire.

Goat cheese, orchid cheese? NOOO no more puns no more.