Eggplant is the star of Caponata, a cooked Sicilian salad. Our favourite is the ver­sion from Naples, Italy called Cianfatta, which makes use of the salty, briny deli­cious­ness of capers and olives. Zucchini, red pep­per, basil and cur­rants are added for a final dish that sparkles with sweet, sour and salty delights.

Caperberries are fun to use in place of reg­u­lar capers. Both come from the same plant but the berries are larger and can be sliced into thin rounds. Their inner flesh is rem­i­nis­cent of a ripe fig and they look beau­ti­ful scat­tered among the bright green zuc­chini and dark pur­ple egg­plant. This is a nice win­ter salad because it isn’t served cold, but is best served at room tem­per­a­ture. With a pasta aglio e olio it makes the per­fect dinner.

Ingredients

1 Italian egg­plant, medium cube

2 reg­u­lar zuc­chini, medium cube

olive oil

red wine vinegar

1/4 cup currants

dozen green olives, pit­ted and chopped

3–4 caper­ber­ries, sliced into rounds

1/2 a red pep­per, small dice

basil, torn

Steps

1. Heat  a saute pan and saute the egg­plant in batches, never over­crowd­ing so you get some nice brown colour on it. Cook the egg­plant thor­oughly until it’s soft, it takes a bit longer to cook. You will have to keep adding more oil as the egg­plant really sucks it up, but just add a driz­zle at a time.
2. Put the cooked egg­plant in mix­ing bowl.
3. Do the same with the zuc­chini but don’t cook it as long, just give it some colour and toss it in the bowl with the egg­plant where it can fin­ish cooking.
4. Now add olives, caper­ber­ries, cur­rants and red pepper.
5. Add a few tea­spoons of red wine vine­gar and sea­son with salt and pep­per, taste it. Can you taste the slight hit of vine­gar? If not add a bit more.
6. If the salad looks dry, don’t worry and don’t add any olive oil there is enough in there already.
7. Toss with some torn basil leaves and cover.
8. Let sit for a bit to let all those flavours min­gle, then serve at room temperature.