Welcome to Eepa’s Kitchen!
Today we’re making a true Sicilian classic: Eggplant Caponata!
This dish is all about layers of flavor — tender roasted eggplant, briny capers and olives, and rich tomato sauce. It’s perfect as a side dish or make it a meal with plenty of bread to soak up every drop.
Ingredients
¼ cup olive oil (plus extra for roasting)
2 eggplants, cubed (about 1-inch pieces)
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
1 can (14 oz) chopped tomatoes
2–3 cloves garlic, chopped
¼ cup capers
½ cup black olives
½ cup green olives
Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
1. Roast the Eggplant
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
Add the cubed eggplant to a baking pan sprayed with non-stick spray.
Drizzle with a couple tablespoons of olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and mix until well coated.
Roast for 20–25 minutes, until tender and lightly golden.
2. Make the Sauce
In a large pan, heat ¼ cup olive oil over medium heat.
Add diced onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant.
Add chopped tomatoes and bell pepper, stir well.
Mix in capers, black olives, and green olives.
Season with salt and pepper, then let simmer for 5–10 minutes to meld the flavors.
3. Combine & Serve
Fold the roasted eggplant into the sauce and stir gently to combine.
Serve warm or at room temperature — it’s even better the next day!
Enjoy with toasted bread or eat it straight from the pan.
Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more Mediterranean dishes and cozy home cooking!
#eggplantrecipe #siciliancuisine #italianrecipes #mediterraneanfood #veganrecipes #vegetarianrecipes #healthyrecipes #easydinner #eepaskitchen #sicilianfood #authenticitalian #mediterraneandiet #plantbasedcooking #cookingchannel #HomeCooking
Hi, welcome to Fun with Sheldon Cooper’s Fun with Flags. Are we really recording? Yeah. Oh, hey, how’s it going? Welcome back to Deepest Kitchen. Today, we’re going to make something for management because, well, it’s management. She gets what she wants. It’s eggplant capanada. Uh, it’s a Sicilian dish. You can use as a side, you can use it as an entree, you can use it as an appetizer. Um, you can use it to keep management happy, which we’re going to do. It’s eggplant. Um, we just finished harvesting up. I’ve got a few peppers left, but basically the the garden’s done. We had a couple eggplants left, so that’s what we’re going to make today. So, it’s it’s pretty simple. We’ve got eggplant that we’re going to bake. We’ve got chopped black olives and green olives. We’ve got um just a can a 15 oz can of chopped tomatoes. There’s four cloves of garlic that’s all diced up there. It’s a one onion, like a medium sized uh onion, yellow onion. Uh one of the sweet ones actually is what I picked out this time. There’s a red bell pepper in there. I’ve got a teaspoon of salt and a half a teaspoon of black pepper that I’m trying going to mix together because we’re just going to use that for a little bit of seasoning. And then we’ve got um a third of a cup of capers. And if you’re any um fan of Steve Martin, you’ll understand this next line, which I personally think is a mistake. So, we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to get this started. We’ll get the everything prepped up. We’ll start getting the eggplant in the oven. All right. First thing we’re going to do is we’ve got a just a baking sheet with some foil on it. We’re going to spray with a little nonstick, whatever your choice. Going to add the eggplant to it. Um, I have the oven preheated at 400°. Probably should have told you that. So, these cubes are about an inch, inch and a half. There’s some longer ones. There’s some square ones. I left the skin on. Add some nice color, a little bit of texture. So, we got all that. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to take about two tablespoons of olive oil. For this recipe, you’re going to use about a/3 of a cup of olive oil, maybe 1/4 cup. Um, but I’m just going to take about two tablespoons and just kind of squirt it over the top here. There we go. And then just take your hands and just kind of mix it up a little bit. And I just coat it. Shmear it around. Word of the day is shmear. I got some comments on that last week that we had a word of the day. So, I’ll try to remember to have a word of the day every day. And then a little bit of salt and pepper over the top. We’re going to use some of this now and then some of this later on in the recipe. So, don’t use it all up in the beginning. All right. A little bit of seasoning and wipe my fingers off. All right. And then we’re going to put these in the oven for 20 minutes. And while they’re doing their thing, we’ll start everything else on the stove. So, I’m just going to go throw these in real quick. All right. So, I got my pan warming up. I’m going to add rest of that olive oil. Roughly a/4 cup. Going to get that going. Let it’ll warm up a little bit. Then we’re going to add the onions. Start sautéing them down with the garlic. I’ll probably add the garlic after it’s in there for a little bit. And we’re going to let that get translucent lucent and we’ll start adding everything else to it. So, just a side note, a while back we got a comment that our lighting was too bright and it was washing everything out. We’re trying some new lighting techniques and as a result I I can’t see a thing over here. So, you guys will have to talk me through, you know, let me know if I’m doing this right. All right. So, we’re going to put those onions in. I think that stuff’s warmed up enough. Oh, yeah. Got a little sizzle. So, I got the flame on a medium high right now, just so I get things going. We’ll probably cut it back a little bit when I add the garlic so we don’t burn it. Nothing worse than burnt garlic. This is going to go probably four or five minutes before we start adding in the rest of, you know, the ingredients. Plan is to have this finish up about the same time the eggplants come out of the oven and then we can whip this together and have a snack. All right, so the onions just starting to soften up. So, we’re going to add the garlic in. That’s a lot of garlic. Starting to get that floral smell right away. Just going to cut the flame back up just a little bit. Just a medium. We’ll do that for another couple minutes and then we’ll start adding more stuff. All right, so these are getting pretty translucent. You really smell that garlic starting to come out. So, we’re going to go ahead and add the tomatoes in. Don’t want to waste any those out. All right. And we’re going to add the bell pepper in, too. We’re going to cook these till they start to heat through. All right, we’re going to give that a little time to heat up. By that time, I’m thinking the eggplant should be just about ready. All right, we’re going to grab the eggplant out. Oh, yeah. Kind of get a look at it. It’s nice and soft now. Okay, I’m going to add this over. Just set it over here. And then I’m going to add it to the my light off so I get in trouble by the boss. All right. Scrape it in. Then we’ll add the capers, rest of the salt and pepper, and we’ll add the um olives in too. Now stir that in. We’ll let it all kind of just marinate together on here for about five minutes with the flame on low. And then we’ll have to get a special taste test hopefully from management. Olives papers. Mix that and we’ll season it. Smells great. Give you that right now. All right, let that go for about 5 minutes. We’ll get some bread sliced and give it a taste. So, she wouldn’t be on camera, but management already tried it. We’ve got her approval. She’s very happy with it. So, now I’m going to get to try it before I give Derek any, you know, going to make sure it’s good for Derek, too. Uh, you can smell it’s like all the different um flavors of the I’m picking up the green olives when I smell it and a little bit of the garlic. We’ll see those while I have a plate. Wow, you’re right. That was pretty good. Yeah. Put my capers back on and do some more. And now you’re part of the show. All right. So, I was supposed to uh make it explode. So, that worked out good. Great flavor. Uh different levels. And I like that you can taste the the salt and pepper in it. That gives it a little bit of the heat. Eggplants’s nice and tender. Sometimes with the skin, it can be kind of dicey, but no, it’s real tender. Uh got the onions. Um the the the canned chopped tomatoes add another level of complexity with the flavor on it too. But I think the main thing is that between the the olives and the capers, they really bring out the flavors in this. So this is awesome. She’s probably just going to eat it like just for lunch and dinner and whatever. I’m just going to have it as a side or a snack. But like we talked about in the beginning, you can use this for multiple things. It’s great appetizer. It’s nice side dish. And again, just get some bread, you have it for a nice meal. So, um, I really like this. A lot of the old Italian dishes, again, this is from Sicily. They kind of use up some of that old stuff you have in the house. Not that this was all old stuff, but it kind of gives you a chance to use up things that you have in your cupboard or in in your um in your pantry, stuff in the fridge. This is this is good. I like this one. Um, we’ve never made it before, so so this was a good shot for us. But like you guys give it a try. Let us know what you think when you do it. Maybe you make one already and you’ve got a different recipe. I’d like to hear about that, too. But either way, if you like it, remember, thumb it this way. Not this way, this way. Um, subscribe if you haven’t subscribed. Um, share cuz sharing is caring. And if um, you know, whatever. If you want us to do more stuff, please just keep coming back. I guess that’s what I was going to say. So, either way, we’re going to be back next week. I hope. Unless I totally mess this up and Derek finds somebody else to stand back here. Um, but again, please let us know what you think about it. We’ll see you next week.
Dining and Cooking