Caponata: The Most Delicious Sicilian Salad

How to make caponata the incredible recipe from Sicily originally made with swordfish, but with most of the best recipes from our green and blue planet it's the working classes who take humble affordable ingredients and make them wonderful.

So nona replaced expensive swordfish with cheap and cheerful aubergine (egg plant) and hey presto we have 'caponata' and I love it.
This recipe also happens to be good for the vegan and even keto or low carb diet.

If you have some aubergine or egg plant in your fridge you should definitely give this caponata recipe a try.

Here's the recipe:
Aubergine 2
Bell pepper 1
Red onion 1
Celery 2 sticks
Tomato 4
Pitted olives 2 tbsp
Capers 1 tbsp
Pine nuts 2 tbsp
Raisins 1 tbsp
Olive oil 250ml
Red wine vinegar 75ml
Sugar (opt) 1 tbsp
Chopped parsley 2 tbsp
Basil leaves to garnish

Caponata (Sicilian: capunata) is a Sicilian dish consisting of chopped fried aubergine (U.S. eggplant) and other vegetables, seasoned with olive oil, tomato sauce, celery, olives, and capers, in an agrodolce sauce.[1]

Numerous local variants exist concerning the ingredients, by adding carrots, bell peppers, potatoes, pine nuts, and raisins.[2]
There is a Palermo version that adds octopus, and an aristocratic Sicilian recipe includes lobster and swordfish garnished with wild asparagus, grated dried tuna roe and shrimp.[3] However, these last examples are exceptions to the general rule of a sweet and sour cooked vegetable stew or salad.
Today, caponata is typically used as a side dish for fish dishes and sometimes as an appetizer, but since the 18th century it has also been used as a main course.

A similar Neapolitan dish is called cianfotta. The dish is also popular in Tunisian cuisine.

The dish may have been introduced to Sicily during the Arab conquests of the 9th century