Name: Caponata (Sweet-and-Sour Aubergine)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 1 h 5 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 700 g aubergine; 1 tbsp salt; 200 g celery; 200 g onion; 1 red pepper; 300 g tomatoes; 60 ml white wine vinegar; 2 tbsp sugar; 80 g green olives; 2 tbsp capers; 30 g raisins; 30 g pine nuts; 150 ml olive oil; 1 handful basil; 1 to taste salt and pepper

Ingredients

6servings

Vegetables
aubergine · cut into 2.5cm dice, skin on700 g
salt · for the aubergine; squeeze it out, do not rinse1 tbsp
celery · strings peeled off, cut into 1.5cm pieces200 g
onion · coarsely sliced200 g
red pepper · optional; it is what the photograph has in it1
tomatoes · peeled and roughly chopped, or tinned whole300 g
Agrodolce and the rest
white wine vinegar60 ml
sugar2 tbsp
green olives · stoned and halved80 g
capers · rinse salted ones2 tbsp
raisins · optional; the Arab element30 g
pine nuts · optional, toasted dry30 g
olive oil · the aubergine takes it up and gives much of it back150 ml
basil · torn in off the heat1 handful
salt and pepper1 to taste

Steps

Dice the aubergine, salt it, leave it in a colander 30 minutes and squeeze it out by hand. Aubergine is a sponge; put it in as it is and it drinks oil without limit. Losing that water shrinks the space the oil can go into (salt and seasoning).
⏲ 30 min
Heat a good depth of olive oil in a wide pan and cook the aubergine alone over high heat for 8 minutes, until browned outside and soft through. Lift it out.
⏲ 8 min
In the same pan, cook the celery 3 minutes — cooked on the outside, still with some bite — and lift that out separately.
⏲ 3 min
Add the onion and pepper and cook 6 minutes until soft. This is why the three go in separately: aubergine wants 8 minutes, celery 3, onion 6. Together, the celery collapses and the aubergine is undercooked.
⏲ 6 min
Add the tomatoes and cook 10 minutes, until the water has gone and what is left is thick.
⏲ 10 min
Return the aubergine and celery, add the olives, capers, raisins and pine nuts, and fold it all together in big movements so nothing breaks up.
Now pour the vinegar and sugar straight in. Turn the heat up and stir for 3 minutes, until the sharp smell has gone and almost no liquid is left in the pan. Not a sauce made and poured over, but a sauce boiled down onto the vegetables — that is the whole method.
⏲ 3 min
Off the heat, season and tear in the basil. Do not judge the seasoning hot. Vinegar is far sharper hot than cold, so a mixture balanced now tastes flat tomorrow.
Cool it completely and refrigerate overnight. Bring it back to room temperature to serve; fridge-cold, the olive oil sets and the flavour closes up (serving temperature).

Tips & Variations

Variations

The opposite construction to sweet and sour pork. Balancing flavour names tangsuyuk as the dish where "the vinegar-to-sugar ratio is the recipe." True, and caponata sits on the same axis. But tangsuyuk makes a sauce separately, thickens it with starch and pours it over fried meat. Caponata makes no sauce at all — the vinegar and sugar go straight into the pan and are reduced away. Same flavour axis, opposite method, which is why one runs and the other only glosses.
Against ratatouille: aubergine, onion, pepper and tomato — nearly the same shopping list, and Provence puts in neither vinegar nor sugar. Ratatouille stops at the vegetables' own sweetness; caponata lays a sour and a sweet on top of it. The raisins and pine nuts are Sicilian too, left over from Arab rule.
Set beside yuxiang aubergine you get three ways with the same vegetable: China coats it in a starch-thickened sauce, Provence stews it together, Sicily fries it apart and glazes it in agrodolce.
It changes by town. Palermo uses more tomato, Catania adds peppers, and around Messina some cooks add cocoa or almonds. There is a caponata di polpo with octopus in it. The photograph is the version with peppers.
How it is served: in Sicily as a contorno and an antipasto both. Good on bruschetta, or at room temperature beside grilled fish or meat.

Tips

Always salt and squeeze the aubergine. Thirty minutes is enough. Skip it and all the oil in the pan disappears while the aubergine is still raw.
Do not be frightened of the oil. Aubergine takes up a lot at first and gives much of it back as its cells collapse. The skill is not panicking and adding more halfway (cooking oils).
Cook the vegetables separately. It is the single most important line here. They cook in different times, and all in one pan you get something closer to a soft stew — a ratatouille. In caponata the pieces have to stay pieces.
Vinegar last, and boil it away. Added early it stops the vegetables softening and leaves only sourness. Three minutes over high heat at the end and the sharp smell goes, leaving the sweetness and the depth.
Do not judge the seasoning while it is hot. Vinegar's bite depends strongly on temperature. Balanced hot, it tastes of nothing cold. Stop while it still seems slightly too sharp.
Rinse the capers. Salt-packed ones straight from the jar bury every other seasoning.
It is not finished until the next day. Fresh from the pan the vinegar sits apart from everything else; overnight it moves into the vegetables and settles. That is the reason this is a dish you make in advance.
Serve it at room temperature. Straight from the fridge the olive oil is set and the flavour is shut. Take it out half an hour before.
It keeps five days refrigerated, and plenty of people think day three is the best of them.

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