With its sweet and sour “agrodolce” sauce cloaking a medley of olive-oil-fried aubergine, assorted veg and piquant olives and capers, Caponata is a halfway house between English chutney and Turkish “Zeytinyağlı Sebze”; olive oil poached vegetable mezzes.
I like to use it as a vehicle for late Autumn scavengings of markets and lucky gifts from friends with gardens and no two batches are ever the same! I like to think Sicily, its homeland, approves of this opportunistic make-do approach.
Caponata is a winsome and versatile pantry friend equally at home as a mezze served with some protein such as marinated octopus, prawns, tuna in olive oil or per Anna Del Conte with hard boiled egg or as a sauce, warmed through, for roast chicken or baked cod.
I took my lead from the great ADC regarding overall proportions, and made this batch with a glut of big ripe chunky yellow tomatoes, red pepper and substituted carrots and fennel seeds for the celery ( not so common in these parts). I also added coriander seed and whole peppercorns and I baked the aubergine (although still with a generous amount of olive oil!)as this seemed easier and quicker.
For those nervous of all things bottled, the vinegar lowers the PH thus keeping mould at bay. I bottled the hot caponata into clean hot jars but did not water bath.
Ingredients
The quantities are indicative; the joy of caponata is that it is a little different every time!
- 1kg aubergine cut into smallish cubes
- 3-4 inner stalks of celery or 1 bulb of fennel or 3-4 carrots plus 1tsp fennel seeds chopped finely
- 1tbsp olive oil for every 100g aubergine; here 10tbsp
- 1 onion chopped finely
- 1 bell pepper (red or green or yellow) chopped finely
- 1 400g can of chopped tomatoes or 500g very ripe fleshy tomatoes chopped finely
- 25g sugar
- 100g sultanas
- 150ml wine or cider vinegar
- 4tbsp of capers
- 50g green olives pitted and quartered
- 1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
- 2tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground coriander seeds
How To
I like to think I have simplified the recipe yet lost none of its wonderful “medley-ness”…
Step 1: Bake the aubergine liberally doused with the olive oil (a little extra does not hurt) in trays in the oven at 180C for an hour, poking and turning so they do not blacken but do roast golden and become soft and silky.
Step 2: Place all the other ingredients in a large saucepan or pressure cooker. Cook on a low heat until all the ingredients meld together 1-1.5 hours or pressure cook on tge veg setting for 20 minutes. I used my pressure cooker and just left the mix until the aubergine was cooked.
Step 3: Add the aubergine cubes to what is now a thick tomato and vegetable sauce. Heat through to just simmering.
Step 4: Heat your jars in an oven at 100C , sterilize the lids (with a solution of bicarbonate of soda) and fill with the hot caponata. Screw the lids on and invert the jars for 30mins. Turn right side up and leave to cool.