For some reason, I have never attempted to make caponata before. I don't know why. It combines many of my favourite things: aubergines; olives; capers; tomatoes.
I think it may be because I first had it, when cooked by my Italian best friend at university, who has been one of the big influences on me cooking-wise. I wish I could say the same were true vice versa but I fear she still thinks I'm a barbarian with no tastebuds because of my general love for strong flavours. It's not that she did a bad job when cooking it, it's more that I realised through cooking with her a lot that I just plain understood very little about non-Gujarati food at 18 and I found it all rather intimidating.
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| Funny-looking aubergine |
Anyway. I bought a funny-looking aubergine (see right) at the supermarket the other day - yes, I did buy it basically because it was funny-looking, yes, I do have a mental age of about 7 - and I thought I'd give it a go.
Anyway. Caponata. I went for a combination of
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe, a vague recollection of what my Italian
friend did, and whim.
I chopped an onion, a couple of
sticks of celery and three cloves of garlic. Fried for a few minutes
Then added a tin of reasonably nice Italian tomatoes, some chopped green olives and some capers.
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| onion, celery and garlic |
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| chopped aubergines |
Did a bit of seasoning at this stage (and tweaked and tasted at the end)- some balsamic vinegar
(about 3 table spoons) and about 4 table spoons of sugar. Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall suggested only a table spoon of sugar but, to me,
that just didn't taste quite right so I kept adding more until it did,
and obviously salt and black pepper. Left to reduce
for around 15 minutes.
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| Caponata |
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| Frying aubergines |
While that was reducing, I chopped up a couple
of aubergines into relatively small pieces (about 1.5 cm square) and
fried until golden in some olive oil.
I then combined the aubergine with the onions/celery/tomato mixture, Topped it with fresh parsley. Though, I did think belatedly that rosemary would have been nice as well and might be worth a try next time.
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| gram flour pancakes batter |
For no particular reason, I decided that it would be good to have the caponata in pancakes and I haven't
made gram flour pancakes for ages, so that's what I went for. Went for a
gram flour/plain flour mix - 2:1 ratio - added a dash of milk, and then
enough water to make it a pouring consistency (just slightly thicker
than single cream), spiced it a bit with salt, chilli flakes and black
pepper.
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| gram flour pancake about to be filled with caponata |
Heated up about a table spoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, cooked the pancakes (it takes around a couple of mins each side, depending obviously on how thick you want your pancakes), filled them with the caponata and put them in the oven for about 5 mins to warm through before serving.
It was pretty good. Nice fun dish to cook on a Sunday afternoon. In retrospect, I'm not sure that it's really worth bothering with the pancakes - I think bread would have been just as nice with the caponata and a bit less of a faff but I like my gram flour pancakes so I don't really repine!
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| Gram flour pancakes with caponata |
