The eggplant caponata I'm about to share is one of a kind. You won't find this recipe online because it's neither the famous Sicilian version nor the Calabrese one. It's my mother Celli's caponata — a dish she learned from my grandmother, her mother-in-law, Anna.
Celli was born in Fiume in 1927 and grew up on polenta, sauerkraut, goulash, kifels, and strudel. After a harrowing escape — like so many Istrian Italians before her — she made her way to Rome, where she met and married Pietro, a young Calabrese who had been born in 1916. His mother was Anna, who had married very young into a wealthy family and studied under what we would call a Michelin-starred chef. He taught her every secret and trick of the culinary arts.
Picture my poor mother: a mother-in-law who moved effortlessly between savory and sweet dishes, with an incredible mastery that family stories still celebrate to this day.
Yet Celli never lost heart. Not only did she learn countless techniques from grandmother Anna — she actually abandoned her "Nordic" cooking for her mother-in-law's Calabrese kitchen, which she judged far superior. In the end, this caponata bridges all of Italy, from the Alps to the sea.
Ingredients:
- 4 round, purple eggplants (the sweet variety)
- 1 red onion from Tropea
- Fresh tomato sauce
- A handful of capers in salt, the small Aeolian kind
- Basil
- White vinegar
- Sugar
- Seed oil for frying
- Olive oil for the tomato sauce
Method:
Peel the eggplants and cut each into 4 pieces. On each piece, make vertical cuts without slicing all the way through. Turn it and make crosswise cuts — not too thick, not too thin. The goal is to make each piece look like a hand with fingers spread. Lay the slices in a colander and salt them to draw out the water. Do this for all the eggplants. If you like, weight them down to speed the draining. Leave them for several hours. Once the eggplants have released their water, fry them in batches in plenty of seed oil.
Soak the capers in water to remove the salt, then rinse them several times in a sieve. Prepare the tomato sauce — the amount depends on how many eggplants you've fried. In a large skillet, chop the onion and soften it in olive oil. Add the fresh ripe tomatoes (passed through a sieve) and let them cook down. Add the basil and capers, and salt lightly — the capers are already salty enough. Now for the sweet-and-sour element: stir in a generous tablespoon of sugar and half a glass of white vinegar. Increase the heat to let the vinegar evaporate, then taste and adjust as needed. Add the eggplant slices, mix well, and let them soak up the sauce for a few minutes.
The caponata is ready — but don't eat it right away. It needs to rest. The longer it sits in the refrigerator, the better it becomes. Eat it the next day, and serve it cold.
