Do you know of a recipe, I think it is called caponata, made primarily with eggplant with a very small amount of sweet red pepper. The version I am looking for does not have tomatoes or capers or mushrooms, etc.

 Caponata is an old, old dish of Sicilian heritage. The clearest history we can find is that it was a cooked mixture of eggplant, peppers, and celery that Sicilian sailors bought at taverns on shore, and, when they were out at sea, spread on sea biscuits softened with vinegar and sugar.

There has been a lot of innovation and change since then. Now caponata is a fairly common antipasto, generally still based on eggplant, peppers, and celery cooked in olive oil, but very often including onion, tomato, zucchini, anchovies, olives, capers, pine nuts, mushrooms, raisins, and more.

There is a derivative, caponatina, in which the vegetables are cut into a finer dice, although the recipes – for all their variation – are essentially the same.

We have come up with a caponata recipe for you. It does include tomatoes and capers, which we hereby grant you permission to omit.

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