Aunt Jo's Caponatina

Thank-you Janice for passing this on to us and for being the first. Mary(Texas Mary) has sent me other recipes, but this is the first one specifically for this project.


Caponatina

Main ingredients:

1 pound mushrooms

1 Large eggplant (peeled)

4 red peppers (roasted)

4 sticks celery

3 onions or 2 large

3 cloves garlic (chopped)


Other Ingredients:

Capers (optional), raisins(optional), olives, sliced toasted almonds or toasted pine nuts, salt, black pepper, 1T cinnamon, 1t parsley, basil, 1t oregano, olive oil, 1/3 cup cider vinegar, 1T sugar, 2T Romano or Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup tomato sauce, 1/8t nutmeg.

Slice all the vegetables. Easiest is on a mandolin. Saute the vegetables in enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. The recipe says to saute each veg. separately. Salt and pepper to taste as you go. Add all the vegetables back into the pan after they are cooked. Cook for a long time so that they are cooked down. Add tomato sauce, Parsley, basil, oregano, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cook for another 10 min.

The recipe calls for roasted peppers but I just slice red, orange or yellow peppers and saute as I do the others in the recipe.

In a small bowl, stir vinegar and sugar together and add to the pan. The recipe calls this a slurry. I usually wind up adding more of each to taste and I use more tomato sauce than the recipe calls for. Add the cheese and nuts. Add the raisins, olives(sliced) and capers if you like them. I omit the raisins and capers.

Note from Bill: Capers can be very salty or vinegary depending on how you get them...either be very light on the salt till the end of the recipe or rinse the capers before you add them...correct seasoning afterwards.
Also, I might recommend grilling sliced bread that has been moistened with olive oil and rubbed with garlic. Serve them together.
The Sultanas or white raisins are most like what you would find on the islands if you plan to use them.