What we do with an Abundance of Eggplant

Well, our eggplant have survived over the winter and are full of blooms and continue to produce big beautiful fruit.  I’ve had peppers survive for a second year but never eggplant.  They are Black Beauty variety and I picked a nice load of them the other day. 

Fresh Picked Eggplant

Tricia sautéed a batch of them and enjoyed them for lunch.  Of course we like to fry them.  We also like to make delicious Italian dishes with them and will sometimes use eggplant in place of meat in those dishes even though I’m about the furthest thing from vegetarian that you can get.  One of our favorite snack-type dishes or appetizers is caponata.  We’ve posted about it before, but it bears repeating.  It is a Sicilian dish and there are numerous variations.  We use a recipe from Pirates’ Pantry Cookbook.  It is a local cookbook put together by the Junior League of Lake Charles.  It is quick and easy to make.  Let’s do it:

The recipe calls for:

·         2 pounds eggplant

·         ¾ cup olive oil

·         2 ½ cups onions

·         1 cup celery

·         2 cans tomato sauce

·         1 cup dry red wine

·         2 Tablespoons sugar

·         ½ bottle salad olives

·         ½ jar capers

·         Salt & Pepper

I used a sharp knife to remove the purple skin and stem from the eggplant.

Skinning the Eggplant

 Then I cut up the eggplant into little cubes.  There’s no sense in measuring the size – just nice little cubes.

Cutting into cubes

I poured ½ cup of the olive oil in a pot and heat, adding the cubed eggplant and then saute it in the oil, stirring constantly until the eggplant has softened and has a nice golden brown color.  Then I remove the eggplant into a separate bowl, add the remaining oil and saute our onion and celery.

Eggplant sauteed.  Now time to saute the onions and celery

Add the eggplant back into the pot and then add the tomato sauce and bring to a boil.  Then you can lower your heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Getting close

At this point you can add your remaining ingredients like wine…

Olives…

And all the rest.  Stir everything together, cover and cook for an additional 20 minutes.  Then we put it into a big bowl with a spoon in it.  Caponata never really makes it into a fancy serving dish.  It sits in the container on the island and we have a box of crackers out.  We’ll pass by throughout the day and fill crackers with the tasty caponata.

Yum

 Caponata!  What a wonderful dish.  It disappears far too fast, but fortunately, we have a bumper crop of eggplant that will continue to bless our table.  

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.