An ancient Sicilian preparation, the main ingredient is eggplant (Arabic bandigian crossed with apple), olives, tomatoes and celery in a delicate sweet and sour balance.
The origin of the term “caponata” can have different declinations, from the Latin caupona, tavern where there was always ready food, or from the Spanish caponada, or even it is thought to derive from “capone” that is a sort of dolphinfish with white flesh that historically would seem to have entered (fish) by right in the recipe. Again from panis, (the one who eats bread with another) and caponata always requires a lot of bread…..
A clearer definition appears in the early 1700s with Joseph Vinci in his Etymologicum siculum
“acetarium et variis rebus ninutim concisis”. Today, caponata undergoes, like all peasant/mrinare recipes, a strong family and local influence. The constants in this recipe are found in the eggplant and in the sweet and sour balance and then it becomes a great coming and going, from peppers to celery, from pine nuts to capers, from pomegranate to hard-boiled egg yolk.
The Sicilian red prawn absolute in honour of Queen Margherita, takes its cue from the enrichment that the royals, first Spanish and then the Savoy, required to integrate the classic caponata with Sicilian red prawns or lobsters from Lampedusa.
