Caponata

By now most people don't confuse tomatoes as Italian, but that doesn't mean they didn't figure out how to use them best early on. The Sicilians probably deserve credit for this, although it is surely impossible to say who made the first tomato sauce. That said, when you combine some splendid sicilian produce (tomatoes and eggplant) with a local farm's zucchini, you get one mean caponata.

I decided to venture a little bit from the recipe once I had the basics down. Jamie's recipe calls for adding tomatoes, eggplant, and onion. I cooked the eggplant and squash together, set them aside. Cooked up some mixed mushrooms, set them aside. Put everything back in the pot, added the garlic, parsley, and onion, and when it started to blend, mixed in some balsamic vinegar. Once the vinegar dissolved, I tossed in the tomatoes and an extra splash of extra virgin olive oil. I let that simmer for about 15-20 minutes (oh, and I had doubled the amount of garlic he put in).

The end result was amazing. I tried it in a few forms: on some pasta I cooked up, finished off with a little chili and parm, by itself (nothing added), on a piece of bread once room temp. I have a feeling this is one of those "better the next day" meals and am very excited to have bundled 2 lunches (kept with the over pasta method for those).

Cooking eggplant had, for a long time, given me some major trouble. If you too suffer, try this:

1) use small, firm italian eggplants. Once you see seeds, too late.

2) cook on high heat with olive oil (not extra virgin!). The extra virgin variety has too low a burning point and can make for some funky cooking at these high temps. This is a good rule in general. Save the good stuff for salads and finish off dishes.

3) add oregano (and a fair amount of it). You don't need fresh stuff, and in fact, it might be better to use the dried as you're cooking it at pretty high heat. This makes it taste vunderbar.