Recipe - Caponata
A Sicilian sweet and sour delicious classic and an ode to my aunt who makes it.
Zia Sarina is the only aunt from my father side of the family that we were always very close to. My father was born in Castelbuono, a town in the Sicilian mountains called Madonie, but a mere 20 minutes from the beautiful sea and city of Cefalù. It’s only two and a half hours from where my mother’s family is from and the difference between the two places is enormous. They speak a very different dialect there, they eat different food, the climate is different and basically everything is different.
Zia Sarina married one of my father’s brothers (Carmelo). Carmelo had health issues when I was a child, so they had to travel to the north of Italy quite often to get seen by various specialist doctors. Public health services were not great in the south, and usually the best hospitals and doctors were believed to be in the richer northern regions (some believe this still to be the case). For this reason zia Sarina and zio Carmelo would come to visit us in Torino every year in the winter, and usually they would spend a few weeks there, sometimes even months. Zia Sarina is also the only one of my Sicilian aunts (that I always mention) who is still alive while I am writing. She is 91 years young and she’s a woman that worked really hard all of her life and took care of everyone around her.
We used to call her “the pizza queen" when we were kids. She had a real wood oven in her countryside home, and when we would visit during the summer, she would light up the oven and cook what seemed like an insane amount of pizza and bread. The whole family would come for pizza night and it would usually be something like 30 people around the table and 15-20 large trays of pizza coming in and out of the oven. Needless to say she would knead by hand that insane quantity of dough, still a mystery to me how she had so much power in her arms and hands.
But back to Caponata, my mother learned her version from Zia Sarina.
Caponata is one of those pan-Sicilian dishes, every town, every family has their own version and they can be quite radically different from each other.
The origin of this dish are quite uncertain, and even its name is mysterious. Capone is a type of fish and some people believe that originally this was a fish recipe that included the sweet and sour agrodolce tomato sauce with vinegar and sugar. One of the theories is that poorer people tried to recreate the dish and used aubergines instead of the unaffordable fish. Fish has almost completely disappeared from caponata (with maybe the exception of the sword fish version from Palermo) and nowadays the main differences are the presence of peppers or almonds. In general it is a sweet and sour flavour profile, something that is not super common nowadays in Italy but that probably it was a lot more common in the past.
In this recipe I “salt” the aubergines, this is a traditional way to get rid of the moisture and in this way they will absorb less oil during frying. It is traditionally believed that this process will get rid of some of aubergine’s bitterness but science is now saying that’s a myth! You can also decide to go the “healthier” way and either air fry (best) or roast them in the oven, the result will be less greasy but also less tasty.
In an ideal world you would use very small and long aubergines for caponata, but those are almost impossible to find outside of Sicily, so use whatever you can find. Chinese or Japanese aubergines are an interesting alternative.
In terms of vinegar I have seen both white and red wine vinegar being used, my mother even used balsamic vinegar (!), but I suspect that was because my father hated vinegar and balsamic has a much sweeter flavour profile.
Caponata is the mother of “a occhio” preparations, or perhaps I should say “cooking by ear” recipes. It’s a rather forgiving recipe and everyone makes it slightly different each time, especially when it comes to the amount of the smaller ingredients (capers, olives, pine nuts) which is always unmeasured. So my recipe here below is a transcription made from three several versions that both my mother and myself made. Like old field recordings it’s a snapshot on a given day and not the ultimate ratio, do feel free to experiment with the amounts and especially with the vinegar, some people like the acidity more pronounced and some, like my father, can’t stand it…
Last time I made caponata I filmed the recipe so I will put out that video in the next couple of weeks, but for now take a look at the recipe
Recipe
Serves 4 (as a starter)
Ingredients
Extra virgin olive oil (as much as you need)
1kg (2.2lb) of aubergines
180gr (3 1/2c) celery
180gr (3 1/2c) red onions
50gr (1/3c) Currants, (Zante currants in the US)
40gr (1/3c) Pinenuts
30gr (1/4c) Sicilian Almonds (Optional)
60gr (1/2c) salted Capers
120gr (1c) Green olives roughly chopped
3tbsp vinegar
400gr (1 3/4c) of your favorite tomato sauce (actual sauce, not passata)
1teaspoon of sugar
Method
Soak the currants in lukewarm water until they are plump (about 20 minutes), drain and set aside.
Slice the aubergines, cover them in salt and place them on a colander with a weight on top.
After one hour rinse the salt off the aubergine slices in cold water and pat them dry.
Dice the aubergines in small cubes. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and fry the aubergines cubes until golden, set aside.
Dry toast pinenuts (and almonds if using) in a small non stick pan until golden, set aside.
Chop onions in slices and celery in small pieces (about 1cm). Cook on low heat for a few minutes in a frying pan with a couple of tbsp of oil, add some water and salt and keep cooking until soft (about 15min).
In another large frying pan combine tomato sauce with vinegar and sugar to taste. Gently warm up the sauce and when it starts bubbling, add all the other ingredients to the same pan.
Lower the heat to medium/low and cook gently for about 5 minutes until all the ingredients are combined. Taste for sweetness and acidity and add more sugar and/or vinegar if needed. Let the Caponata cool down, store it and refrigerate it.
Caponata always tastes better after a day or two and is suitable for freezing. It should always be served room temperature.
Buona Caponata!
You know, the fact that this had fish at the beginning makes sense. I also read a huge lot about Jewish Mediterranean cooking - that of the Sefardim and Mizrahim, and apparently any form of fried + sweet-and-soured thing in Italy has been brought to the country by the Jewish communities coming from north Africa. One of Claudia Roden's books also clearly explains why, historically, those communities were amongst the first to deep-fry fish. It makes sense if you think of how those kind of dishes are common in the port cities where they ended up staying longer (Livorno, Ancona, Venezia). The history of this kind of stuff is so fascinating.
I can't wait to try this! Though I might want to wait for better aubergines than those of the supermarket...
My father called it caponatina. His parents were from Valledolmo Sicily.