I'm sure you've seen them in the grocery store - those small bottles of tiny green bits, usually where the pickles are.
You may have even used them in cooking - the ones packed in brine (which seem to be the only type available in the USA) add a salty/vinegar flavor to a dish.
Capers are a mainstay in Italian cuisine, and without them there would be no veal or chicken piccata. They are one of the most important ingredients of tartar sauce and they are often served with cold smoked or cured salmon – imagine gravadlax and cream cheese without capers!
Here in Italy capers are predominately salt cured rather than brined. I'd never had the salt cured ones before . . . and wow -- oh -- wow!! The flavors are complex, vegetal (in a fantastically good way) with a burst of umami and all sorts of traces of things that are impossible to really describe. I now know in retrospect that the USA brined ones just taste like salt and vinegar. My eyes have been opened and my horizons expanded simply by the experience of making (and eating) chicken piccata with these little local gems.
No wonder they've been collected and consumed for thousands of years.
When it was pointed out to me that these bushy, weedy looking things growing out of the wall were caper bushes, I was hopping for joy. Fresh capers!
I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole researching and figuring out the technique to preserve them using the salted method. I'll give you all the details of that in a follow up post. But I found the history of capers fascinating - and I hope you will too.
Capers probably originated from the arid regions in western and central Asia since they have been used there for thousands of years – there’s mention of them in the Gilgamesh, possibly the oldest written story documented and found on ancient Sumerian clay tablets dating back to c. 2700 B.C. Apicius also mentioned them as did Dioscorides, a surgeon in Nero’s army who confirmed that they were initially used by the ancient Greeks who not only used them as an ingredient in cooking but also used the roots and leaves of the plant for medicinal purposes.
Capers are the immature buds of the flower. You can see the little green buds in this picture.
The smallest ones are much sought after for their delicate flavor - but I'm finding that I like the larger ones, which pack more of a punch.
The flowers eventually turn into berries - unsurprisingly called Caper Berries -- which are pickled often served as a mezze in Greece
I've started salt curing the first batch we've picked, and I'll give you a progress report soon!
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