Italian Eggplant Stew (Caponata) | April Bloomfield | The Spotted Pig NYC

Hi everybody, I'm April Bloomfield. I am at the Spotted Pig in NYC and today I'm gonna do a caponata, which is basically an Italian eggplant stew. We've got some sautéed eggplant that I lightly seasoned and drained in a colander. It'll help take away the bitterness and it'll actually concentrate the cells of the eggplant so when you fry them in the oil they won't absorb so much fat. So these are nice and golden brown and they're really kind of creamy inside like this. You can actually see that that's a perfectly cooked eggplant. And then we've got a little base of some celery, a little bit of onion. And this has been cooked for about 30 minutes until they're nice and soft. A little tomato sauce, again it's been cooked for about 30 minutes. We've got some nice garlic going on. We've got a little bit of chili which is great because it's gonna kind of make it nice and bright. A little bit of celery leaf that was saved from the whole head of celery that we used. Some parsley. We're gonna finish it with some nice black and green olives. Some nice toasted pine nuts and a little bit of caper. And then I made this quick herb vinegar. It's basically red wine vinegar with a little tarragon, a little parsley and a little mint. So first of all we're gonna put some oil in a pan. So you can just see it's starting to smoke. So we're just gonna add that like this. We're just gonna add some chili. We're just gonna crush them a little bit in between our fingers. Okay so these are ready now. They're nice and golden brown. The garlic's toasty. Smells really good. We're gonna get the tomatoes. And we'll probably go a quarter of these tomatoes. So we're just gonna sprinkle them. It's probably about half a cup of tomatoes. For this amount, two pounds of eggplant. So we've got the fried eggplant. It's all kind of room temperature right now. It's got good color. We're just gonna put it in very gently into the bottom of the pan. We're gonna give it a light stir. Smells good. Got a few of these salted capers. We're just gonna do a little pinch. They add a nice saltiness to it. A little bit of herbaceousness which is kind of cool. This is a green olive. This is a cherinola from Italy. This is gonna add some salt and some umami. A little nichoise from France. We're just gonna break those up really rustically. Give this a light stir just to incorporate it all. Kind of marry it together. We're gonna add a little bit more salt. Not too much because we've got the capers. We've got the olives. This is the best bit. The herby vinegar. We're just gonna do a couple of splashes. We've got so much sweetness going on in there from the onions and the celery, the eggplant. So this is gonna cut all the way through that and it's gonna make it nice and bright. It's got a bit of celery and parsley. Just gonna sprinkle this on top. A bit of pine nut. Been lightly toasted. The pine nuts, they add a bit of texture, a little bit of nuttiness. Kind of bring it all together. So that's it guys. That's my caponata. If you have any comments, please feel free to drop them in the comment box and thank you for joining me on the Food Tube channel.