Roasted Eggplant and Garlic Hummus

1 Cans Garbanzo Beans drained and rinsed (reserve about a cup of the liquid)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 T. Tahini
1 Roasted Eggplant
1 Head of Roasted Garlic
1-2 T. EVOO
1/3 t. of  salt

Preheat oven to 400.  Slice eggplant in half.  Remove excess paper from garlic (leave the tight paper), slice the top of the head off, just enough to expose the cloves.  Place garlic on aluminum foil, enough to wrap the whole head for cooking.  Drizzle with olive oil and salt.  Close foil around garlic and put tray in oven.

Let cook for about 45 minutes to an hour.  Until the eggplant looks like this:

Take the tray out of the oven and allow to cool a little bit.  When the foil is cool enough to touch, unwrap the garlic.

At this point, you can squeeze the cloves of garlic out of their wrapper and basically eat them.  They’re so delicious you could use them in place of butter on a good loaf of bread, or whip them into mashed potatoes or really anything.  If you’ve never roasted garlic, you really have to try it.  Amazing return for very little work.

Squeeze all of the garlic out of the head and scrape the eggplant out of it’s peel.  Drain and rinse the chickpeas. Add all the ingredients to your food processor except the olive oil and pulse until it’s well blended.  At this point, check for taste - it’s all about how you like it - maybe add more lemon - I added a little more salt, but I really like salt.  Adjust your seasonings if necessary and close the processor.  Add 1 t. of olive oil and process.  1 might be enough.  I added the second one as it looked a little dry to me.

Transfer to an airtight container and chill.  To serve, I sliced fresh cucumber, drizzled a little olive oil and sprinkled some paprika for color.