Caponata is eggplant cooked with Mediterranean veggies and seasoned with red wine and Worcester sauce. One pot till the end. Easy-peasy.
Caponata can be Served Cold or with Pasta
Caponata is a dish in Sicily, Italy, mainly fried eggplant with other vegetables, seasoned with tomato sauce, olives, capers, vinegar. The sauce is sweet and sour, with a thick texture. It can be eaten alone, hot or cold, or served with bread, pasta, etc.
I failed the first time…
In the first time, I referred to Jamie Oliver’s recipe and I only skipped the capers, while the others kept the same. However, I checked the recipe’s seasoning again and again, thought I was missing something…… is it really only red wine vinegar, salt and pepper?! This is a stew, how can there be so little seasoning? Then I guess, is it because we slow cook the veggies and let all the flavours come out in the end?
As a result, the cooked texture was OK, but the taste was really bland, despite the tomatoes have been simmered for 20 minutes and the astringent flavour should have been cooked away.
There are two hypotheses. One, the tomato itself is too bland; two, this recipe itself has loopholes!
Perhaps, if the tomatoes were super sweet, the overall taste would not be so weak (then I am still dubious). If you want to highlight the tomato flavour, you don’t need to use fresh tomatoes, it’s more suitable to use tomato sauce, or add tomato paste.
Then I browsed through other recipes. Somebody mentioned that the ratio of vinegar to sugar is the key, yet JO’s recipe does not include any sugar!
So, when the second time I cooked it, I decided to trust my own experience. I poured in some red wine vinegar and Worcester sauce, had a taste, still something was missing. Then I added some sugar, violà! There it is! Sometimes adding sugar is necessary to balance the acidity.
Ingredients
Serves 2
- 180 g eggplant, cut into chunks
- ½ yellow pepper, diced
- ½ courgette, diced
- 1 celery, diced
- 1 big ripe tomato, chopped
- 1 small onion, diced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 8 olive, pitted and finely chopped
- 2 tsp capers
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp Worcester sauce
- 100 ml tomato passata
- olive oil
- salt & pepper
- ¼ tsp sugar
- parsley
How to Make One Pot Sicilian Style Eggplant Stew Caponata
- Heat some oil in a pan, put in the eggplant and a little salt and pepper, fry both sides until golden and set aside.
- Add more oil to the same pan, sauté the celery, onion and garlic until fragrant. Stir in the bell peppers and courgette with a little salt and pepper.
- Now, add the tomatoes, olives and capers. Pour over the wine vinegar, Worcester sauce and tomato passata, stir well. Cover and simmer on a low heat for 15-20 minutes until the vegetables are softened.
- Finally, add sugar to balance the acidity. Pour some olive oil on the plate and garnish with parsley.
