Vegan Focaccia Caponata Sandwich
As you already know, we LOVE sandwiches – whether with bread rolls, white bread, whole grain bread, hamburger buns, or, or or. Of course wraps are somehow THE takeaway option for a sandwich kind of lunch, but we wanted to do something different today.
Ever since I got to know the Berlin bakery "Sironi", I've fallen in love with focaccia. Well, I liked it before, but somehow Sironi tought me HOW good it can taste. At a office lunch, I spread some almond cream cheese on it and there I got the idea for a focaccia sandwich (not that we invented this, of course).
For today's recipe, we combine the Italian bread with the Sicilian dish Caponata that contains a lot of eggplants. But since it can only be an inspiration for this sandwich, we played around with it, kicked the celery (sorry), and added zucchini (hello!). It's best to use a plain focaccia for this, maybe with some rosemary or other herbs, but an onion focaccia would probably a bit too fancy for this sandwich (But well, that's only our taste and who are we to tell you anything? Just use your favorite focaccia and if you can't find any, use a ciabatta instead and we won't tell it anyony).
If you plan to prepare this sandwich for takeaway, either prep it completely if you will eat it anytime soon (roasting the focaccia helps that it won't get soggy quickly) or transport all ingredients separately (bread, veggies, spread) and make the sandwich right before serving.
Focaccia Caponata Sandwich
Ingredients
- 4 focaccia
- 1 small eggplant
- 1 small zucchini
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 garlic cloves
- 1 onion
- 1 avocado
- 50 g (2 oz) pine nuts
- 10 g (0.33 oz) fresh oregano
- 20 g (0.5 oz) fresh basil
- 100 g (3.5 oz) olives (pitted, green or balck)
- 150 g (5.5 oz) tomato paste
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 50 ml (0.25 cup) water
- vegetable oil for frying
- salt
- pepper
Instructions
- Slice eggplant and zucchini. Finely dice onion and finely chop garlic. Slice tomato and pluck herb leaves from the sprigs, then chop. Cut olives.
- Heat some vegetable oil in a large frying pan and fry sliced eggplant and zucchini in batches, making sure they have enough space in the pan to get browned. Remove from the pan and degrease on some paper towels, then season with salt and pepper. Repeat with remaining slices. A
- In another frying pan, heat some oil and fry onion and garlic for approx. 2 -3 minutes until translucent. Add tomato paste, red wine vinegar, and water and stir to combine. Add half of the cut olives and chopped herbs and keep frying for approx. 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Spread tomato mixture on half of the focaccia and top with fried eggplant and zucchini slices, then add pine nuts, remaining olives and some fresh basil Spread remaining tomato mixture on the other focaccia slices and place them on top of your sandwich.
