Sicilian cuisine

Sicilian long zucchini and its greens with tomatoes / cucuzza e tenerumi al pomodoro

| Simona
tenerumi e cucuzza / IMG_2546

flavors of Sicily: cucuzza e tenerumi
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

Italian author Andrea Camilleri died on 17 July, 2019, aged 931. The novels he wrote narrating the adventures of detective Salvo Montalbano are one of the main reasons Novel Food came to exist and it is therefore fitting to dedicate to il maestro (the master), as he was respectfully called in Italy, this post.

In the archive of briciole there are several posts dedicated to Montalbano and dishes from his (and Camilleri's) native Sicily2. Montalbano likes to eat well, though he is not a cook, so he relies on his housekeeper Adelina, the chefs of his favorite restaurants and a small number of friends, to delight his palate. He hates to talk while eating and prefers to eat alone. After having lunch in his favorite trattoria, to help the digestive process he walks down the pier to a special rock, where he spends quiet time considering the various elements of the case at hand and sometimes talks to a crab.

In The Terracotta Dog, the second novel of the series3, Montalbano, while dealing with a modern crime, discovers a 50-year-old one: in a cave, he finds two skeletons guarded by a terracotta dog. The mystery of the burial pulls Montalbano and he can't let go until he solves it, in quite a creative way. The story behind the two dead people allows Camilleri to describe a page of Sicilian history, around the time of the Allied invasion of the island (1943). I don't want to divulge more of the story: it is quite fascinating and you can read the book then watch the TV movie based on it4.

tenerumi e cucuzze / IMG_2104

tenerumi e cucuzza at the Berkeley farmers market

During the investigation, Montalbano is invited to dinner by headmaster Burgio, whose wife Angelina cooks a traditional Sicilian vegetable: tinnirume (also called tenerumi):

The soft vegetables, which consisted of the leaves and flowers of Sicilian zucchini — the long, smooth kind, which are white, lightly speckled with green — had come out so tender, so delicate, that Montalbano actually felt deeply moved. With each bite he could feel his stomach purifying itself, turning clean and shiny.

The vegetable reappears in The Voice of the Violin5 (the fourth novel of the series), where its original name is kept in the English translation, and where it is said to "cheer the stomach and intestines."

I tasted pasta with tenerumi when I first visited Sicily many years ago. Besides prepared as a side dish the way signora Angelina did, tenerumi are also used to make soup. When I saw tenerumi at the Berkeley farmers market a recent Saturday, I could not believe my eyes. I felt I had been tele-transported to Sicily. The zucchina lunga (Lagenaria siceraria) called cucuzza in dialect, does not belong to the same species as other zucchini6:

Lagenaria siceraria (Cucuzza longa, Bottlegourd, Calabash gourd) is an ancient cucurbit… The plant has white flowers and fruit size and shape can be very variable… There are two common types: a short necked ornamental type, var. a fiasco, and a long edible type, var. longissima. The long fruits harvested at immature green stage were a popular vegetable in antiquity (cucuzza longa), but they were replaced by various immature fruits of Cucurbita pepo from the New World where various types are known as zucchini. However, the cucuzza longa is still a common vegetable in Sicily… The shoots, called tenerumi, are very appreciated in Sicily and they are very popular in summer season in local markets.

zucchina lunga / IMGP4164

zucchina lunga sold at the Vucciria market in Palermo

The specimens of cucuzza sold at the Berkeley farmers market7 are shorter than to the ones I saw in Palermo, at the famous Vucciria market, some years ago. That was fine with me as I ride my bike to the market and it would have been awkward to pedal with a yard of cucuzza sticking out of my backpack. I bagged a bunch of tenerumi and two short cucuzze and rode home.

tenerumi e cucuzza / IMG_2540

fresh from Sicily Marin County to my table
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

The leaves, flowers, blossoms and tender stems are edible and are eaten, an example of efficiency in the use of available food resources. The raw leaves have a distinctive consistency: they feel like fabric. In fact in dialect they are referred to as pezzi or pezze (meaning, pieces of fabric).

tenerumi e cucuzza / IMG_2543

preparation in progress

I cooked cucuzza e tenerumi simply, with sweet onion and some fresh Early Girl tomatoes from the same farmer. I can confirm the vegetable's cleansing properties extolled by Montalbano.

Print-friendly version of briciole's recipe for Sicilian long zucchini and its greens (cucuzza e tenerumi) with tomatoes

Ingredients:

  • 12 ounces / 340 g Sicilian long zucchini (cucuzza)
  • A bunch of tenerumi, Sicilian long zucchini greens (8 ounces / 225 g clean weight)
  • 6 ounces / 170 g small Early Girl tomatoes
  • 4 tablespoons / 1/4 cup / 60 ml extra-virgin olive oil
  • 6 ounces / 170 g onion sweet onion (like Walla Walla or cipollini), finely diced
  • 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • A pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Trim the zucchini top and bottom, quarter each lengthwise, then cut crosswise into slices 1/8 inch / 3 mm thick.

Wash the tenerumi, discard the thickest stems and tendrils. Cut the leaves in 1-inch / 2.5 cm ribbons and the tender stems into short lengths.

Halve the tomatoes and cut each half into 3-4 slices, depending on size.

Warm up the olive oil in a large skillet or deep sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion, stir to coat and let cook on medium-low heat for 5 minutes, stirring often.

Add the zucchini and tenerumi and stir well. Turn up the heat to medium-low and cook for a couple of minutes, then cover the skillet and turn the heat to low. After 5 minutes, add the tomatoes and stir well. Cover and cook gently until the zucchini and tenerumi are tender, stirring every  now and then. The last 5 minutes or so, cook uncovered to let the extra water evaporate.

Remove from the heat and serve immediately.

Serves 4-5 as a side dish. (The photos do not show the whole yield.)

tenerumi e cucuzza / IMG_2547

variation with cheese
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

A couple of way to enrich the simple side dish: sprinkle some grated cheese on top (in Sicily I would have used caciocavallo, but at home I used some sheep milk cheese) and/or make a nest with it and cook an egg on top.

1 Andrea Camilleri's obituary in The Guardian
2 From briciole's archive, posts that mantion Montalbano: caponata di melanzane, cipollata, four kinds of bread, reginelle (sesame seed cookies)
3 The book's page on the publisher's website
4 Alberto Sironi, the director of the Montalbano TV series (some 34 movies!), died 3 weeks after Camilleri: this obituary includes also an interview (with subtitles) of Luca Zingaretti, the actor protagonist of the series.
5 The book's page on the publisher's website
6 Traditional vegetables of Sicily by Ferndiando Branca and Giuseppe La Malfa
7 Thanks to La Tercera farm in Bolinas for growing special produce

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

cucuzza e tenerumi al pomodoro

or launch the cucuzza e tenerumi al pomodoro audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

Small_NFlogoThis is my contribution to the 37th edition of Novel Food, the literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I started 12 years ago and that I continue to host.

The roundup of the event.

FTC disclosure: I have received the table linen free of charge from the manufacturer (la FABBRICA del LINO). I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting it on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.

tomatoes, sweet onion, zucchini, side-dish, Italian food

recipe: Sicilian long zucchini and its greens (cucuzza e tenerumi) with tomatoes

| Simona

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reginelle / sesame seed cookies

| Simona
reginelle sesame cookies

reginella à la Simona

Sicily smells of sesame seeds. Not the actual island, but the Sicily of my memory. I close my eyes, I whisper "Sicilia" and I smell toasted sesame seeds. The same thing happens if I read about Sicily: I open one of my Montalbano books and my nose smiles.

My first visit to Sicily, the summer before I turned 18, overloaded all of my senses in a joyous way: the beauty of churches and other buildings in Palermo, the sticky smell of the hot July days, the pleasant coolness of the sea, the sound of the dialect (of which I learned a few words), the taste of new foods. Of all the novelties my senses encountered, the smell of sesame seeds (semi di sesamo) is the one with highest emotional content. I had never tasted sesame seeds before, not even set my eyes on them. I only knew the name and that they were small.

First, I ate bread with the surface sprinkled with sesame seeds and I was amazed at the amount of flavor the small seeds packed. So, when I saw reginelle, cookies covered with sesame seeds, I did not need any special encouragement to pick one up (gently, to avoid seed loss) and bring it to my mouth. As each bite crumbled in my mouth, sesame seeds were scattered around. The cookie softened but retained a bit of crunch and the seeds teased my teeth into chasing them. A light swetness supported the pleasure without distracting the taste buds. One reginella was a dose of pure and simple pleasure, the memory of which lasted a long time.

I have vivid memories of other foods I tasted during that vacation, from rich gelato eaten in a soft, sweet bun, to fresh fish, from light mini cannoli to intense cheeses, but it's reginelle that feed my nostalgia. When I visited Palermo with my husband a few years ago, I carefully chose the bakery in which to purchase reginelle: I wanted the very best. A bite, stolen when hardly out of the store, sent me back to that summer of many years before, when I first discovered the pleasure these cookies provide.

Reginelle

brought back from Palermo

Until recently, I had never tried to bake them at home, afraid, I suspect, of taking out of the oven something so different from the original that the disappointment would be crushing. Reading again The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri (1994), the first of the novels that have as protagonitst police inspector Salvo Montalbano, brought me back to my first visit to Sicily and back to the yearning for reginelle, so this time I didn't skirt their calling and set about to make them. First, a note on vocabulary. In Sicilian dialect, sesame seeds are called cimino or giuggiulena. Just let this word tingle your ears: giuggiulena. It comes from from Arabic جلجلا (juljulān, "sesame").

I made several batches, trying a slightly different combination of ingredients each time, in search of the elusive bite of recognition. As I expected, none were exactly the same, and some were further from the archetype than others. The recipe I settled on is good: it makes reginelle that are a pleasure to eat and that have already made a couple of converts to their cause.

Ingredients:

  • 200 g all-purpose flour
  • 50 g whole-wheat pastry flour or 50 g all-purpose flour
  • 70 g ultrafine sugar
  • a pinch of salt
  • 2 g baking ammonia
  • 40 g cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
  • 20 g cold strutto (rendered pork fat) or 20 g cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
  • 1 large egg (possibly from pastured poultry), lightly beaten to mix white and yolk
  • 1-2 tablespoons milk
  • flavoring of choice: a pinch (1/16 teaspoon) saffron powder + grated zest of 1/4 Meyer lemon; or vanilla sugar + 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (see Notes)
  • plenty of sesame seeds (I used unhulled ones)

Notes:

  1. The whole-wheat pastry flour is my way of making cookies a bit more nutricious.
  2. I had my homemade strutto and pretty much finished it due to all the batches of reginelle I baked. It makes the cookies friabili (crumbly), but it also has a bit of a flavor and that is why I mixed it with butter. You can use all butter.
  3. Based upon my reading, baking ammonia is the leavening agent traditionally used in reginelle. I have some I bought in Italy, where it is easy to find it in grocery stores. As you can read on this page, baking ammonia has advantages over baking powder when used in baked goods like cookies.
  4. The recipes I read used various flavorings, from saffron powder to lemon zest to vanilla. In my first batch I used a small amount of saffron powder (1/16 teaspoon) I had and liked the result, but then I could not find more in the store and using saffron threads did not give me the same result. I then used a combination vanilla and lemon zest and was not happy, so I removed the lemon zest and used my vanilla sugar plus a bit of vanilla extract.
  • If using saffron powder, dissolve it in a tablespoon of warm milk.
  • Put flours, sugar (vanilla sugar, if using), salt, and baking ammonia in the food processor and pulse a few times to mix.
  • Add butter and strutto, and pulse a few times, until the mixture has the consistency of coarse meal.
  • Empty food processor's bowl onto your work surface.
  • Make a well in the center of the mounded flour and butter mixture and pour the beaten eggs into it.
  • Add the vanilla extract or lemon zest (whichever using) to the well.
  • Add 1 tablespoon of milk or the milk and saffron powder mix (if using).
  • Use a fork to incorporate the liquid into the solid ingredients, and then use your fingertips.
  • Knead lightly just until the dough comes together into a ball. Add a bit more milk, if necessary.
  • Shape the dough into a flat ellipse and wrap in plastic wrap. Place the dough in the refrigerator and chill while you get ready for the next phase. 
reginelle sesame cookies

shaping the dough

Take a kitchen towel, spread it on your working surface and pour some water over it, so about half of it gets wet, but there is no pool of water. Take a round cake pan and pour sesame seeds in it so you have a nice layer. Preheat the oven to 400 F (or 350 F, see below). Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat.

Halve the dough and keep one half in the fridge. The following is how I decided to shape the reginelle and to roll them in the sesame seeds. Place dough on your working surface and pushing on its surface with the rolling pin, flatten it slightly (about 1/2 inch / 1.25 cm thick). With the bench scraper, cut strips (3/4 inch / 2 cm wide) and then cut each strip into pieces (1.5 inch / 4 cm long).

reginelle sesame cookies

prepping the surface

Place a piece of dough on the towel and lightly roll it with the palm of your hand so its surface becomes slightly damp, then deposit it on the sesame seeds. Shake the pan so the dough rolls around and covers itself with seeds. Gently pick up the seeded piece of dough and place it on the lined baking sheet. Leave at least an inch (2.5 cm) of space all around each reginella. When you become comfortable with the process, you can work with a few pieces of dough at a time. And of course, you can come up with your own version of how to do all this.

I have read two schools of thought in terms of baking: one starts at high temperature (400 F) and then drops to lower 10 minutes after the start and one uses the same temperature (350 F) throughout. I think I prefer the result of the first version, while my husband prefers the result of the second: you can be  your own judge. Either way, I follow the advice of leaving the oven door slightly ajar (1/8 inch / 3 mm) to let the ammonia escape but without letting too much heat dissipate.

  • If starting at 400 F, 10 minutes after the start, lower temperature to 320 F
  • If starting at 350 F, keep the same temperature throughout

Either way, check the reginelle after 20 minutes from the beginning and estimate the amount of time still needed. The reginelle are ready when the surface is golden. Check the bottom as well: it should be brown but not dark brown. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and move the reginelle to a rack to cool. While the first batch is baking, prepare the second batch as above.

Store reginelle in an airtight container and enjoy. You probably won't think about Sicily when you bite on one, but you should still have a pleasant, crunchy experience.

Final note: reginelle shed sesame seeds throughout their life cycle. I have been collecting them and used them for a second time: the second baking did not affect their flavor, in part, I think, because I used unhulled seeds. I will not use them a third time for reginelle, but I have already used them as toasted sesame seeds on salads.

reginelle sesame cookies

rolling in the sesame seeds

I have not visited Porto Empedocle Vigata, where the novels are set, but years ago, I spent a month working at the Club Med Kamarina and have been to Ragusa, Vittoria and other places in the area, so I have a sense of the landscape Camilleri describes in his Montalbano novels.

It was interesting to read again the first one of the series. We meet Montalbano and see his charming human touch at work. For example, he lies about his identity to the mother of a young man he wants to question to avoid alarming her. He understands immediately that Ingegner Luparello's wife is a smart woman and the two of them develop a mutual esteem. He may be a bit rough, but his first instinct is to try and connect to the person he is dealing with. 

The most memorable part of the novel is probably the improbable friendship that blossoms between Montalbano and Ingrid, a beautiful Swedish woman accidentally married to an absent Sicilian. The story moves forward to reach the solution. We never doubt that Montalbano will figure out what happened. But the process of uncovering the truth includes also making sure that innocent Ingrid is not dragged into the mud, that the Luparello widow's wish is respected, that Saro gets some money to cure his little boy, in sum, that the chaos of the world in general and of that corner of Sicily in particular, for at least a brief time, is organized in a sort of just order that allows Montalbano a few hours of quiet sleep or a long swim in the sea in front of his house in Marinella.

reginelle sesame cookies

a cookie from the heart

In an interview (in Italian), Camilleri says (my translation of the transcription):

I wrote the first, then the second [The Terra-Cotta Dog], and said: the end. I wrote the second to better define the character, but then what happened happened. 

"What happened" was that The Terra-Cotta Dog was a huge success. Nineteen years after the publication of The Shape of Water, readers around the world still wait impatiently for the next Montalbano to come out. Long live Andrea Camilleri.

Small_NFlogo This is my contribution to the 18th edition of Novel Food, the literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I started some time ago and that I continue to host.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

CtB This is also my contribution to the current edition of Cook the Books, hosted by Rachel of The Crispy Cook. You can find the guidelines for participating in the event here, and here is the announcement.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

reginelle

or launch the reginelle audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

cookie, sesame-seeds, Italian recipe

Related articles
semi di sesamo / sesame seeds

caponata di melanzane / eggplant caponata

| Simona

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano]

The Abbecedario culinario d'Italia (Italian Culinary ABC) invites us to visit Sicilia (Sicily), and this time I have some photos to share from a visit to Palermo (capital of the region) five years ago. One characteristic of the city that fascinated me was the juxtaposition of sumptuous architecture and urban disrepair. Here are a couple of examples.

image from www.flickr.comPALERMO CATHEDRAL

The Cattedrale dazzles the eyes with its rich decorations.

image from www.flickr.com SAN CATALDO

The 12th-century Norman church of San Cataldo catches the eyes with its set of pretty red domes.

image from www.flickr.comFONTANA PRETORIA

Piazza Pretoria is dominated by the elegant Fontana Pretoria. The building on this side of the square needs restoration.

image from www.flickr.comURBAN DECAY

Missing structural elements grant an unimpeded view of the sky.

I have already shared some images of our visit to La Vucciria, the famous outdoor market in Palermo in my post on zucchina lunga and pesce spada.

image from www.flickr.comAT THE MARKET

Here is another image that includes ingredients for the dish I am describing today: caponata di melanzane. I am reposting the recipe from my archive: in the original post, the context was an edition of Novel Food and the dish was introduced by Inspector Salvo Montalbano.

As the photo shows, there are various kinds of melanzane. For caponata, I use the most common variety, the long, dark purple kind (which in the photo is in the background, on the right).

According to the glossary of La Cucina Italiana, caponata "features cubed eggplants, celery, and onions – each one fried separately in a generous amount of olive oil – flavored with tomatoes, raisins, pine nuts, olives, a sprinkling of vinegar, and a touch of sugar for a characteristically sweet-and-sour flavor… Caponata is usually enjoyed as an antipasto in its native Sicily, but it also makes a lovely side dish and is quite delicious spooned onto crisp bread for crostini."

Caponata marries many flavors in an agrodolce (literally, sour-sweet) medley. Being a traditional and popular dish means that there are countless recipes for caponata, with ingredients (like bittersweet chocolate) added and subtracted depending on location. Since I don't have a family recipe to rely on, I felt free to experiment using an appealing recipe on Saveur as blueprint. I made several changes to both its list of ingredients and its procedure, based on my taste. The result is really good, though not quite authentic. I think Sicilians would not agree with my preference for oven-roasting rather than frying the eggplant: you are welcome to side with them and follow the instructions on the recipe that inspired me.

Here is the list of the ingredients I used:

  • 2 eggplants (the long, dark purple kind), cut into 1/2"-thick slices
  • sea salt
  • 1 large yellow onion, chopped
  • 2 anchovies preserved in salt, halved, cleaned and chopped
  • 3 ripe medium tomatoes, briefly immersed in boiling water, peeled, cored and coarsely chopped
  • 2 ribs celery, thinly sliced crosswise
  • 2 tablespoons blackberry and raspberry vinegar or red wine vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 2 tablespoons golden raisins
  • 2 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted in a dry skillet
  • 2 tablespoons capers, rinsed
  • 12 pitted Kalamata olives, quartered (I like them better than green olives)
  • 1 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded, and chopped
  • freshly-ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons slivered fresh basil (from my pot)
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (from my herb garden)

Note that, with respect to the Saveur recipe, I halved the quantity of vinegar and omitted the sugar. This is because I wanted to keep the sour and sweet flavors a bit toned down. I have a memory of a caponata eaten eons ago that was a bit too vinegary even for the vinegar lover that I am. I also used a berry vinegar instead of a red wine one, for no reason other than because I like it. I love anchovies and make generous use of them. You may decide to be more guarded.

Sprinkle the eggplant slices with salt and let them stand for an hour, then remove the excess salt and pat them dry. Distribute on a baking sheet and bake at 425 F for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for the same amount of time. When cool, cube (1/2") the eggplant.

eggplant caponata

Generously spray with olive oil a pan and add the onion and anchovies. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the celery and cook on low heat for 10 minutes. If the pan becomes dry, add a bit of the juice from the chopped tomatoes. Add tomatoes and turn up the heat to medium-low. Cook 5 minutes, then add the vinegar and tomato paste. Mix to dissolve the paste. Cook 3-4 minutes. Add cooked eggplant, raisins, pine nuts, capers, olives, roasted pepper. Cook until everything is hot. Add salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a plate and let cool slightly. Sprinkle basil and parsley on the top. Let the caponata cool before serving it. Better yet, store the caponata for a day in the fridge, take it out in advance and serve at room temperature.

eggplant caponata 

Caponata is better eaten the day after it is made. The flavors of the different ingredients come together in a sumptuous chorus, where each voice is distinguishable, but also works in harmony with the others. Caponata has a rich flavor. It reminds me of Sicily: its colors, its many architectural styles, its composite historical heritage.

SiciliaThis is my submission for the 16th installment of the Abbecedario culinario d'Italia (Italian Culinary ABC), an event organized by Trattoria MuVarA that will bring us to visit all the 20 regions of Italy using the alphabet as guide. S come Siracusa (Sicilia) is hosted by A.B.C. of Fragoliva.

This page has the list of recipes submitted to the event and a slide show.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

caponata di melanzane

or launch the caponata di melanzane audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

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eggplant, Italian recipe

Newrule

caponata di melanzane

L'Abbecedario culinario d'Italia ci invita a visitare la Sicilia e stavolta ho delle foto da condividere, scattate durante una visita a Palermo, cinque anni fa.

image from www.flickr.comCATTEDRALE DI PALERMO

La Cattedrale affascina con le sue ricche decorazioni architettoniche.

image from www.flickr.com SAN CATALDO

La piccola chiesa di San Cataldo (XII secolo) in stile normanno colpisce per le sue caratteristiche cupole rosse.

image from www.flickr.comFONTANA PRETORIA

Piazza Pretoria è dominata dall'elegante Fontana Pretoria. Il palazzo che sorge su questo lato della piazza necessita di restauro.

image from www.flickr.comCAMERA CON VISTA

E in questo edificio, gli elementi strutturali mancanti lasciano spazio al cielo.

In precedenza, ho condiviso delle foto della nostra visita alla Vucciria, il famoso mercato di Palermo (qui e qui).

image from www.flickr.comAL MERCATO

Questa immagine comprende un paio degli ingredienti per fare il piatto di oggi: caponata di melanzane. La ricetta che descrivo è tratta dal mio archivio: il post originale lo trovate qui.

La foto mostra un paio di tipi di melanzane. Per la caponata, uso il tipo più comune, la melanzana di forma allungata e di colore viola scuro (che nella foto si vede dietro, a destra).

Secondo il dizionario della Cucina Italiana, la caponata si prepara con "melanzana tagliata a dadi, sedano e cipolle – ciascuna verdura fritta separatamente in una quantità generosa di olio d'oliva – insaporita con pomodori, uvetta, pinoli, olive, una spruzzata d'aceto e un tocco di zucchero per dargli un caratteristico sapore agrodolce… In Sicilia, la caponata di solito viene mangiata come antipasto, ma è un gustoso contorno ed è ottima sopra un crostino."

Essendo la caponata un piatto tradizionale e popolare, ci sono molte ricette, con ingredienti in più (come il cioccolato amaro) o in meno a seconda della località geografica. Dal momento che non ho una ricetta di famiglia da condividere, mi sento abbastanza libera di scegliere la ricetta base che preferisco. Qualche anno fa, lessi una ricetta interessante sulla rivista Saveur. Ho apportato diverse cambiamenti sia alla lista degli ingredienti che alla procedura di preparazione, dettati dai miei gusti. Il risultato è ottimo ma non proprio autentico. Credo che i siciliani non siano d'accordo con la mia scelta di cuocere al forno piuttosto che friggere le melanzane e voi siete liberi di prendere la loro parte e seguire più da vicino la ricetta che mi ha ispirato.

Questa è la lista degli ingredienti che ho usato:

  • 2 melanzane (quelle lunghe, viola scuro) tagliate a fette spesse 1,25 cm
  • sale fino
  • una grossa cipolla tritata
  • 2 acciughe sotto sale, tagliate a metà per lungo, pulite e tritate
  • 3 pomodori medi maturi, immersi per poco tempo in acqua bollente, pelati e tagliati a pezzetti
  • 2 coste di sedano tagliate a fettine fine
  • 2 cucchiai di aceto di more e lamponi o aceto di vino rosso
  • 2 cucchiai di concentrato di pomodoro
  • 2 cucchiai di uvetta bianca (zibibbo)
  • 2 cucchiai di pinoli leggermente tostati in una padella a secco
  • 2 cucchiai di capperi sciacquati
  • 12 olive nere tipo Kalamata, nocciolo rimosso e tagliate in quattro (le preferisco alle olive verdi)
  • un peperone dolce arrostito, pelle e semi rimossi, e tagliato a pezzetti
  • pepe nero macinato fresco
  • 2 cucchiai di basilico fresco tagliato a chiffonade
  • 2 cucchiai di prezzemolo fresco tritato

Rispetto alla ricetta di Saveur, ho ridotto a metà la quantità di aceto e omesso lo zucchero, perché tanti anni fa mangiai la mia prima caponata e mi ricordo che il sapore di aceto era troppo pronunciato anche per un'amante dell'aceto come me. Il mio uso di un aceto fruttato è semplicemente dovuto a preferenza personale. Adoro le acciughe e ne faccio uso liberale: voi potete decidere di essere più cauti.

Salare le fette di melanzana e farle spurgare per un'ora, poi rimuovere l'eccesso di sale e asciugare. Distribuire le fette di melanzana su una lastra da forno facendo uno strato unico. Cuocerle a 218 C per 15 minuti, girarle e cuocerle per altri 15 minuti. Lasciare intiepidire e poi tagliare a dadi di circa 1,25 cm di lato.

caponata

Oliare in modo generoso una padella e aggiungere cipolla e acciughe. Cuocere per 5 minuti, poi aggiungere il sedano e cuocere a fuoco dolce per 10 minuti. Se il fondo si asciuga, aggiungere un po' del sugo dei pomodori a pezzi. Aggiungere i pomodori e alzare il calore a medio-basso. Cuocere per 5 minuti, poi aggiungere aceto e concentrato di pomodoro. Mescolare bene per sciogliere il concentrato. Cuocere 3-4 minuti, poi aggiungere le melanzane, l'uvetta, i pinoli, i capperi, le olive e il peperone arrosto. Cuocere fino a quando tutti gli ingredienti sono ben caldi. Aggiustare sale e pepe a seconda del gusto personale. Trasferire la caponata su un piatto e farla intiepidire leggermente. Distribuire il basilico e il prezzemolo sulla superficie. Far freddare la caponata prima di servirla, o, meglio ancora, farla riposare un giorno in frigorifero, tirarla fuori in anticipo e servirla a temperatura ambiente.

caponata

La caponata è decisamente più gustosa il giorno dopo, quango gli ingredienti hanno avuto il tempo di accordarsi in un coro armonioso dove ogni voce è chiaramente riconoscibile ma anche in armonia con le altre. La caponata ha un sapore ricco. Mi ricorda la Sicilia: i suoi colori, i vari still architettonici che vi si incontrano e il suo composito retaggio storico.

SiciliaCon questo post contribuisco anche all'Abbecedario culinario d'Italia, un evento organizzato dalla Trattoria MuVarA che ci porterà a visitare tutte le regioni italiane utilizzando come guida l'alfabeto. La tappa S come Siracusa (Sicilia) è ospitata da A.B.C. di Fragoliva.

Su questa pagina trovate la lista delle ricette inviate all'evento e uno slide show.