Making Caponata

Our eggplant has come along very slowly this year.  I have some Louisiana Long Green Eggplant that you can see below.  It won't be that much longer, but it is hard being patient waiting for them.

Louisiana Long Green Eggplant

Fortunately, I have a friend from work that shared some eggplant with me and I took them home and Tricia quickly got busy making one of our favorite eggplant dishes - caponata!  Caponata is a Sicilian dish that is mostly eaten as an appetizer.  The recipe that we use comes from a cookbook from Lake Charles called, Pirate's Pantry.  Here's what you need to prepare it:

2 lbs of Eggplant
3/4 cup olive oil
2 1/2 cups onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
16 oz tomato sauce
1 cup red wine
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1 can black olives
1/2 jar green olives
1/2 jar capers
Salt and pepper

Here's some of the ingredients all ready to go

First Tricia used a potato peeler to peel the purple skin off of the eggplant

Peeling purple eggplant

Once you have peeled the eggplant, cut into cubes and saute in the oil until it is tender.  Then remove.

Sauteing Eggplant

Then add a little more oil and saute the onion and celery.

Put the eggplant back into the pot with the onions and celery and add tomato sauce. Bring it all to a boil. Then turn the heat down, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, cover and cook 20 minutes, stirring every once in a while.

Caponata!

We like to eat this like a dip, with crackers or on top of toast.  It is really addictive and in no time at all the caponata was gone.  Hopefully our eggplant will ripen soon so that we can cook up another batch of caponata.