My mother´s Kapunata recipe (a Maltese version of Sicilian Caponata, or French Ratatouille)

Allow me a brief (well this might take some time) Martha Stewart moment here, but I was asked to post the recipe by AA who was over for dinner yesterday with SD.

My mother´s kapunata is something of a big event in our household. She spends hours making it, and whenever she does, the kitchen is a definite no-go zone. But the end result is totally worth the wait, and all the admonishments to get out of the kitchen. Whenever I go visit in summer she makes sure there´s always a big bowl going, and I´m usually to be found dipping yet another slice of warm ftira into it.

Unfortunately, on my last visit, due to unfortunate circumstances, there was no kapunata. I returned to Barcelona with a big yearning for it, and a mental note to try and make some myself. Then a couple of weeks ago I was at a barbacoa where a basic version was on offer, so I promised some people that I would get the recipe and make some. Yesterday, after a detailed phone conversation with my mum, I spent about three hours in the kitchen making enough for about 70 people (when it comes to cooking, there is no denying that I really am I mother´s son!!).

Be warned, you need time, patience, and ideally a dishwasher, as you will probably need to use every pot, pan and bowl in the kitchen. But beleive me it´s worth all the hard work!

I used: (note to proper cooks: I don´t really use measurements in the kitchen, so you might want to check out quantities in other more legitimate recipes)
2 aubergines
2 big courgettes
about 3 or 4 cloves of garlic
about 5 green peppers
i think it was 8 tomatoes, nice juicy ones
basil
capers
black olives
tomato puree
about half an olive grove´s worth of olive oil
(another note: if you´re calorie counting, this is not for you).

I started off by slicing all the veg into thinnish, but not too thin slices. the aubergines are a bit of a pain, because you have to put salt on them and leave them to rest for about twenty minutes. After that, they need washing, and drying.

Once you have everything sliced and cleaned, start off by putting the green peppers, some garlic and a couple of the tomatoes into a pot. Make sure the peppers are still a bit wet, and instead of frying them, just pour some olive oil over them. Cover, and leave to cook, checking regularly to make sure that what´s in the pot is slowly melting, and that it´s all nice and moist in there. This pot will become your main pot, by the way.

In a frying pan, fry the courgettes until some are crisp, and some are nice and mushy. Once that´s done, bung it all into the main pot. Do the same with the aubergines. By this time, you should have the pot on a low heat, and a nice gloopy mixture going.

In yet another frying pan, prepare some basic tomato sauce - well, i just threw some garlic into olive oil, and then the rest of the chopped tomatoes. Cook for a couple of minutes, and then mix it together with all the other ingredients in the pot. Add some tomato puree, the capers and the olives, cook for some more and then remove from heat, and leave to rest.

(note: Have I just made this sound like it´s a quick, easy to make thing?)

I served it warm-ish, which is very good, bt it´s even better eaten cold. So once you´ve used what you need, put the rest (and with these quantities, there´ll be a lot left) into the fridge.

I love eating it with bread, but it´s excellent with fish, and last night I made it with butifarra and roast potatoes and there was not one morsel of food left on the plates. Which, of course, is what you want to see after spending hours in a kitchen being attacked by tiny explosions of hot olive oil!