Vegetables Archives - I THINK THEREFORE I JAM

Caponata

a mozaic mezze with aubergine pulling everything together

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.

Roast Golden Tomato Sauce

Sweet, ripe, fleshy orbs of sunshine just beg to be bottled for darker days – think punchy pasta sauce, ricotta gnocchi pure white pillows peeping through a blanket of yellow or a warming tomato soup base.

Sweet chilli and lime relish (no refined sugar)

In which lime marmalade beginnings become a sauce-with-an-edge ending.

This recipe started in fact as lime marmalade. But then I thought “who doesn’t like sweet chili sauce?” . Of course chilli and limes are a classic combo found in many dishes; think bejewelled Mexican salsa, zingy Thai lime and chilli salad dressings or Indian lime and chilli pickle.