Salted Capers, and how to cook with them.
To use salt-packed capers:
Capers are salted or pickled to extend the shelf life. This helps enhance the natural flavor of the caper by reducing the bitterness. Salting and brining also helps the texture of the caper, by making it softer. Capers are a great way to add saltiness and brininess to a dish.
Soak salted capers in cold water for 15 minutes and then rinse.
Capers can be used whole, crushed or finely chopped.
Recipes to try with capers:
Tarter Sauce
Puttanesca
Chicken Piccata
Chicken Cacciatore
Botany of the Caper:
Capers grow on the caper bush (Capparis Spinosa), native to Asia but grows exceptionally well in the Mediterranean. Capers are the immature flower buds on the bush, the capers must be hand-harvested due to their small size and delicate nature. The buds are then graded, the smallest being the most desirable and expensive. Finally, the capers are packed in salt or brine.
History of the Caper:
Capers have been consumed for over 10,000 years. The oldest recorded recipe with capers is in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2150-1400 BCE). The assumed origin of the caper is around West and Central Asia. However, the plant grows wild in many parts of the world including the Mediterranean and southern Europe, East Africa, Southwest and Central Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Australia. Traditionally, consumption was used as a folk medicine worldwide to treat diseases associated with the spleen, pain, anti-malarial, and convulsions.
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