Jim Dixon wrote about food for WW for more than 20 years, but these days most of his time is spent at his olive oil-focused specialty food business Wellspent Market. Jim’s always loved to eat, and he encourages his customers to cook by sending them recipes every week through his newsletter. We’re happy to have him back creating some special dishes just for WW readers.

Ask the average American what they know about Sicily, and the answer will almost always include a reference to the mafia and The Godfather movies. But the Mediterranean’s largest island, a roughly triangular-shaped chunk of volcanic rock that’s been conquered and ruled for the past few thousand years by outsiders, from the Greeks to the Phoenicians and Carthaginians to the Normans to the Spanish, just to mention a few. It is also home to some very tasty food.

As my friend Nancy Harmon Jenkins once wrote in Saveur magazine, “Sicily’s culinary history is like an intricate, multilayered pie—an ‘mpanata, to use a Sicilian word borrowed from Spanish. The various elements come not just from Phoenicians and Arabs but also from Greeks and Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Germans, Aragonese, Spanish, and French, not to mention from modern-day Italians and other Europeans. Each group left its mark on Sicily—or rather, Sicily absorbed them all.”

Jenkins, who lives part of the year near Cortona in northeastern Tuscany, writes that “the best illustration of Sicily’s complexity—culinary, historical, and otherwise—is caponata, the luscious mixture of eggplant (from the Arabs), tomatoes, and peppers (brought from the New World by the Spanish), that is like ratatouille but made exotic with a sweet-sour sauce (ancient Sicilian) and often topped with crushed almonds (from the Greeks for sure).”

My introduction to caponata came long before I married a Sicilian-American. I’d dropped out of college and was learning some rudimentary carpentry with a few other long-haired hippies. During a lunch break, one of them opened a small can of Progresso caponata and we spooned it on crackers. I’d never tasted what the Italians call agrodolce, the sweet-and-sour combo typically associated with Americanized versions of Chinese food. And I’m not sure if I’d ever eaten eggplant before then, either, but I was hooked.

Over the following 30 years I made lots of caponata, mostly the same mix of fried eggplant, tomato, celery and green olives I first spooned out of that Progresso can. I played around with other variants favored in different parts of Sicily, sometimes adding peppers, mint, raisins, pine nuts, almonds, and even chocolate—an unexpected ingredient used by cooks around Modica in the island’s southeastern corner. I’ve also made caponata with winter squash, and recently read about a version made with artichokes that sounds intriguing.

But when I finally made it to Sicily and bought a cookbook in the little seaside town of Cefalù, I found my favorite recipe. Similar to the classic approach to ratatouille, it calls for cooking the different components separately, then blending them and adding the vinegar and sugar that create the sweet-and-sour agrodolce. I’ve streamlined it a bit so you don’t need to wash as many pots, and for something with so much flavor it is surprisingly easy to make. While I usually eat caponata on good bread, it’s also great with crackers or tortilla chips, layered onto hummus, or dolloped into a bowl of beans. Sometimes, like the first time I tried it, I just eat it with a spoon. One thing remains constant: Caponata is best at room temperature.

Caponata

1 large globe eggplant

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium red onion, chopped

3 stalks celery (about 3/4 cup chopped)

1 1/2 cups pitted green olives, coarsely chopped

2-3 tablespoons capers, preferably salt-packed*

1 cup water

1/4 cup tomato paste

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons sugar

*If using salt-packed capers (and you should since they taste much better), soak them in water for 10 minutes, then drain

Cut the eggplant, unpeeled, into roughly ¾-inch chunks. Get the olive oil fairly hot in a heavy skillet, preferably cast iron, and add the eggplant. Spread it into an even layer but otherwise don’t stir it for the first 5 minutes or so. Continue to cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, for about 10-15 minutes or until the pieces are translucent and have lost any of that white color that gives eggplant its name. Add the onion, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for another 5-10 minutes or until the onion is soft.

In a separate small saucepan, combine the celery, olives and capers with the water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and cook for about 10 minutes. Set aside until the onions have finished cooking.

Add the celery-olive-caper mix and cooking liquid to the eggplant. Stir in the tomato paste, vinegar and sugar and cook for another couple of minutes. Taste before adding any salt, especially if using salt-packed capers. Serve at room temperature.