Erica De Mane

A real skinny guinea: Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975).

Recipe:

Caponata with Pears and Almonds

You know the classic Italian mamma, huge, aproned, her big arms swinging with fat, hoisting a steaming pasta pot? She’s an Italian-American invention. That woman hardly exists in real Italian life. Look at the classic Italian movies. They always show something much more complicated. Like the exquisite and exquisitely svelte Silvana Mangano, in Pasolini’s Teorema, who spends her afternoons driving around the slums of Milan in her Lamborghini, picking up young men. And of course Pasolini himself was skinny as can be, maybe partly because he spent more time in the same pursuit as his character in Teorema than he did overeating (or making some of the most amazing films the world has ever seen). I think there’s a lesson here. Keep yourself busy and you won’t think so much about food.

Being a cook by profession, I’m so immersed in food that I thought I’d be at a disadvantage as a new dieter. How could I not think about food when it was my job to spend every day thinking about little else? But then I recalled a feeling I’d often get while in the kitchen: The more I grew involved with my cooking, the more I lost myself to it. What a great feeling.

When I’m cooking a dish I love, or one that’s especially complex, or just new, anything that takes concentration and time, when I’ve finished and I’m satisfied with my work and I finally sit down with friends and family to eat, I feel that I’ve already lived the dish. I’ve been tasting it all day, and I’m full. I’m not stuffed, but I do have a sense I’ve come full circle. This is interesting from a dieting point of view, for I’ve realized that when I’m really immersed in my work I don’t devour as much. So much time and energy is already taken up creating the meal. This is why anyone interested in learning to be a great cook and keeping his or her figure should always turn out the best food he or she can. And take your time doing it.

Which brings me to the subject of caponata, the sweet-and-sour eggplant dish from Sicily. It’s a complex and sophisticated antipasto that in its most luxurious, baroque treatments can include ingredients as diverse as cocoa and octopus. I make a more contemporary version, but it’s still a lot of work, entailing much dicing and sautéing and seasoning of each component. In other words, it’s a lot of fun and mess in the kitchen, and for me it’s worth every minute, since the resulting flavor always brings Sicily right into my little Manhattan kitchen.

Nitpicky, fussy dicing, something I perfected during years of repetitive restaurant duties, helped me develop intimacy with vegetables. How many pounds of onion or celery have I diced in my lifetime? During my years in restaurant kitchens I saw them piling up at my station, and I smelled them raw and then cooked, alone and together. I couldn’t get the smells off my fingers, and their aromas crept into my dreams. This had its good and bad points, but it certainly gave me a perverse focus. With caponata, every vegetable is diced small and cooked separately, to preserve its individuality, and then blended at the last minute. The aromas fill the air. And when you add vinegar, a prime component in this agro dolce dish, its fumes shoot from the hot pan right up your nose. Startling. So much of this dish goes on before I even eat it, and the chopping, cooking, smelling, and eating are all equal to me. It is a full-circle dish if there ever was one, one that will help you lose yourself in the kitchen. That’s a great feeling.

Caponata with Pears and Almonds

(Serves 6 as an antipasto dish)

Extra-virgin olive oil
2 firm medium-size eggplants, unpeeled and cut into small dice
Salt
A few scrapings of nutmeg
1 teaspoon honey
1 red bell pepper, seeded, ribbed, and cut into small dice
1 medium onion, cut into small dice
2 teaspoons Spanish sherry vinegar
3 small, inner celery ribs, cut into small dice, plus a handful of celery leaves, lightly chopped
1 firm pear, peeled and cut into small dice
A handful of golden raisins, soaked in a few tablespoons of dry Marsala
1 28-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, well chopped and drained
2 teaspoons sugar
A palmful of capers
Black pepper
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped
A few mint leaves, lightly chopped
A handful of sliced or slivered almonds, lightly toasted

Have a large serving bowl ready near the stove. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. Add the eggplant, and sauté until it’s tender but still keeping its shape, about 8 to 10 minutes. Season it with a little salt and the nutmeg. Add the honey, giving everything a mix. Spoon the eggplant out into the bowl.

Add a drizzle of olive oil to the skillet, add the red pepper and onion, and sauté over medium heat until softened, about 4 minutes or so. Add 1 teaspoon of the vinegar, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add this mixture to the bowl with the eggplant.

Add another drizzle of olive oil to the skillet, and then add the celery and celery leaves, sautéing until just starting to soften, about 2 minutes. Add the pear, and sauté until softened but still holding its shape. Add the raisins, with their Marsala soaking liquid, and let the Marsala bubble for a few seconds. Add this all to the bowl, and give everything a gentle toss.

Add one more drizzle of olive oil to the skillet, keeping the heat on medium. Add the tomatoes, seasoning with a little salt. Add the sugar, and sauté the tomatoes for about 2 minutes (you want them to remain red and fresh-tasting). Add the other teaspoon of vinegar, and let it boil for a few seconds. Pour the tomatoes into the bowl.

Add the capers and a few big grindings of black pepper to the bowl. Add the basil, the mint, and the almonds, holding back a small amount of almonds for garnish. Give everything another mix. Taste for seasoning. The caponata should have a gentle, well balanced sweet-and-sour taste. Add a little more salt if needed to bring all the flavors into focus. Let this sit and come to room temperature. Give it another taste, just to check the seasoning. (Dishes taste different at different temperatures, and this one in particular will change flavors as all the various components meld. It might need a little drizzle of vinegar or a bit more black pepper.) Garnish with the remaining almonds. Serve on crostini. Although not traditional, caponata is also great used as a condiment over, for instance, grilled swordfish or chicken.