Kimberly Behr
Capers preserved in dry salt are far better than the ones in vinegar, which taste mainly of vinegar. The ones in salt are more flowery, more like flower buds, which is of course what capers are.
All around the Mediterranean Sea, the caper plant, Capparis spinosa, spreads its long, spiny branches over rocks and opens beautiful white flowers with long purple stamens. The capers with the best reputation come from the hot, dry volcanic island of Pantelleria, which belongs to Sicily. While the flavor benefits from the climate, the growers credit especially the minerals in Pantelleria’s volcanic soil. If you compare any Sicilian capers in salt with those from the more northern region of Liguria, the Sicilian are distinctly more flowery, while the Ligurian are more peppery, more like French capers in vinegar.
Growers on Pantelleria have for several decades raised, in place of the wild, a variety called Nocellara, which has bigger, more solid buds. No one eats the boring, astringent fresh caper; it’s all in the cure. From the end of May into September, every nine or ten days, each plant is picked over by hand, starting early in the morning before the flowers can open. Then the capers, pea-sized on average, go into sea salt. After about two months they’re ready to eat. Smaller capers command a somewhat higher price — not that they taste better, but they take more work to gather. If caper buds are left to flower, seed-filled caperberries eventually form, which, too, are sometimes preserved, in vinegar. (You can find the jars for sale in some shops.) They make good pickles with a mild caper flavor.
Of all Mediterranean places, capers are most appreciated in Sicily, where they have countless uses. They go easily with a broad range of flavors. Most often, they are combined with garlic and cured anchovies; they go equally well with tomato, green olives, celery, and herbs, such as basil, oregano, thyme, and parsley. Capers are an essential component of the sweet and sour eggplant dish caponata (whose name, of uncertain origin, is not thought to be related to “caper”). Capers go into pasta sauces, they go with all kinds of meats, they complement fish (see the alla stemperata recipe in this issue). Insalata pantesca, a salad eaten on Pantelleria, especially includes capers along with its tomatoes, sliced boiled potatoes, sliced onion, and oregano.
Provence may be the only place bordering on the Mediterranean where there ’s no tradition of preserving capers in dry salt; they’re all pickled. The Provençal for “caper” is tapeno, and the Provençal olive paste tapenado (or tapénade in French) originally always contained capers. The dry-salted ones aren’t traditional in tapenado, but they taste better. Since capers in vinegar add vinegar’s piquancy, however, often you can’t simply substitute capers in salt.
To use capers in salt, first rinse away all the salt (unless the dish they’re going into is very badly in need of salt), and then, according to how much salt the dish will need, soak them in water for a quarter of an hour or more, remembering that as salt is drawn out, so is caper flavor. For eating simply with bread, before a meal, in places in northern Italy the rinsed and drained capers are soaked for an hour in good red wine vinegar, drained again, and excellent olive oil is added to cover. Capers are used either raw or cooked, but not cooked too much or they lose their character.
Capers in dry salt taste best within a year of the harvest. Look for ones that are moist and plump and surrounded by white salt, not the yellowish salt that indicates age. Sometimes you can find them at a low price in pound or kilo bags. Keep them in a sealed jar at room temperature out of the light.
