Moutabbel is a Levantine style dip, made with roasted aubergines, and mixed with some tahini (sesame paste), yogurt and a bit of spices to make a creamy dip. Moutabbel is always mixed up with Baba Ganoush, which is also a dip made with aubergines, but without the tahini. It has a dash of pomegranate molasses, some parsley and some chopped onions and tomatoes folded into it. You can say, it is basically a vegan dip. 🙂 I was browsing through Google and I could see many recipes actually using both the names interchangeably. Even I was under the same impression till I read about the difference!
I have not been successful with the original moutabbel. The aubergines always give up on me! 🙁 It either doesn’t get cooked or it gets too charred, so on and so forth. But when I spotted this recipe in a recipe cut out, I wanted to try. Sweet Potato is not something we cook with, though I know it has a lot of health benefits. Umma used to not buy them as they are as notorious as tapioca for her diabetes. Back home, mattamma would boil these as tea time snack. We had to just eat up along with our cup of chai, though I never liked it and ate it only because she took the effort to boil and peel them for us.
I was really not sure how much this moutabbel would fare but Alhamdulillah, it was accepted by the hummus crazy folks at home. Azza initially asked, “Ummi, why is the hummus sweet?” 😉 She thought she had a problem with her taste buds, so cleaned it up along with her khubbus. The quantity was little so it got over without much fuss. HD didn’t seem to like it much. Since the moutabbel is slightly sweet, I paired it up with the spicy pepper chicken roast and it paired up quite well! Off to the recipe…
Sweet Potato Moutabbel ~ Sweet Potato Dip
Ingredients
- 2 small sweet potatoes
- 2 tbsp yogurt
- 2 tbsp tahini sauce
- 1/2 tsp cumin powder
- 1 tsp paprika powder
- A squeeze of lime juice
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Olive oil as required
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
- Wash the sweet potato well. Chop them up onto pieces.
- Brush olive oil on a baking tray and spread out the sweet potato. Bake for around 1 hour or till the sweet potatoes are done.
- When cool enough to handle, peel off the skin and mash up till smooth. Allow to cool completely.
- Once cool, add in the remaining ingredients and whisk very well till combined.
- Serve topped with olive oil with khubz and roast chicken.
I love moutabbel… n actually making one today… with sweet potato it sounds interesting…
Thank you so much Niloufer…
Creamy and delicious…I love food like this.
Thanks a lot Angie…
I have a problem with Baba Ganoush and Moutabbel too!! Cannot seem to differentiate one from another!
Your sweet potato version is worth a short cz I am not particularly a big fan of aubergines
Thank you so much Ria…
Bookmarking it…got to try it… looks superb
Thanks a lot Anupa…
Interesting recipe, my husband is also a bit fussy when a savory dish tastes a bit sweet.
Just like mine! Hehe… thanks a lot Nammi…
Ah! I beg to differ. Tahini alone is not the differentiator. Because my blog BG recipe has tahini in it and so does a lot of lebanese blog. After reading this post, I went on to research and god, like you said it is a never ending confusion just like our own naan vs kulcha! LOL Anyways what I learnt from Googlema is that both have the same main ingredients except that muttabal (like its name suggests) is spicier and more fine in texture while BG is chunky. And both can have other additional ingredients to make variations. The sweet potato version sounds interesting but I would stilll boil and have them 😛 I have buy it whenver I see it in the market.
If you go through quite a few links, they will tell you that BG is chunkier and with pronounced aubergine taste, whereas in Moutabble, it gets evened out by the tahini and yogurt. Here is one for you:
http://www.legalnomads.com/foods-from-jordan-roasted-eggplant-mouttabal/
http://syrianfoodie.blogspot.ae/2009/05/mutabal-and-baba-ghanoush-which-is.html
Thank you so much dear… 🙂
That sounds interesting ..Never eaten sweet potato in a dip form…Worth a try ..
Thank you so much Gloria…
Sweet potatoes are really healthy and I usually have it only as a chat but this recipe is beckoning me.
Thank you so much Taruna…