recipe from Martino Ragusa

The Sicilian caponata variously cataloged as genuine from sources for other worthy of credibility are 37, if you widens the apocryphal you exceed the 80 versions.

How to say all tastes and all seasons.

I, of course have my own that would not trade with anyone and that is from aunt Giuseppina.

Ingredients for 4 people

1 g kg eggplant black oblong or globose

300 g of celery stalks

500 g of ripe tomatoes

(or can of tomatoes or tomato sauce)

1 tablespoon tomato paste (30 g)

150 g of white Sicilian olives in brine

70g salted capers

250 g of white onion

30 ml of white wine vinegar of excellent quality

20 g of sugar

extra virgin olive oil

black pepper

salt

Preparation

Desalted capers keeping in bath in a large bowl for at least one hour, changing the water 3 times.

Then leave them to bath until ready to use.

Put water on the fire to boil the celery (poor).

Wash the eggplants and cut first lengthwise into 4 quarters, then into cubes of 2-3 without remove the peel.

Put them in a colander, sprinkle with table salt and let them drain for an hour or more.

Wash the celery and cut into pieces of less than 1 centimeter.

Peel the onions and slice them thinly.

Blanch briefly tomatoes in boiling water, peel, remove seeds and chop.

Stone the olives and cut them in two.

Heat 4 tablespoons of oil in a crock or cast iron or metal coated in Teflon.

Let the onion on low fire for 15 minutes.

Join the tomatoes, salt with moderation and cook for 10 minutes over medium-high heat.

Add the tomatoes paste diluted in half a glass of water and cook for a few minutes over high heat.

Lower the flame, add 1 cup of hot water and cook low heat 10 minutes.

Blanch the celery for 5 minutes in boiling water, by calculating the time from the recovery of the boil.

Then strain it and book it.

Rinse in plenty water eggplants that you had put in salt and dry well.

Then fry in hot olive oil.

The fry will be performed at high heat, but not for full immersion.

As soon as they are golden, keep from the pan with a perforated ladle and put them to drain excess oil in a colander.

Turn on the fire under the pan in which you have prepared the tomato sauce.

Add a glass and half of warm water, let to boil and then reduce heat.

Pour in the pan eggplant, celery, olives, capers, vinegar, sugar, pepper, 1 tablespoon of olive oil of excellent quality.

Season with salt, stir and cook for 5 minutes.

Let cool and keep caponata in the fridge for 12 hours covered with plastic wrap.

The caponata is consumed in ambient temperature.

Therefore should be removed from the refrigerator before be served.