In Praise of the Caper Plant

I am so struck with awe by this ancient plant, mentioned in the bible and the ancient greeks. The Caper plant (capparis spinosa (L) ) is native to the Mediterranean. I havent been able to discover how much further beyond this region it has been cultivated except in specialist and botanical gardens including the Eden Project ( http://www.edenproject.com/media/current-releases/april/eden-gardeners-and-their-cliff-top-capers.php)

Well here we are in the middle of caper season again and I am busy picking, pickling, utilising and admiring the different stages of this remarkable and useful plant.

Why?

• It goes through the most beautiful growth cycle (while being fortified by the most vicious of thorns)
  

• it grows in poor soil

• You have to do nothing to it - it just dies back and reappears the next year and will continue to do so for decades.

• it has enormous and famous culinary uses

• it is wild and it is free

• its medicinal uses are endless
  

All that aside I encourage any plants that spring up near the house by cutting and using at all stages but leaving some to gaze upon because of their beauty.

Medical Uses

antirheumatic, analgesic taken as herbal teas, bruised leaves used in a poultice for gout, reduces flatulence, aids liver function and many others

Culinary

The smallest bud is the most highly prized.
Its buds are pickled and used in salads, on pizzas, in pasta, its tips are pickled in brine as a vegetable and so are its swollen buds after the flowering is over.

Its most famous recipes probably in

• potato salad with capers - I use cooked and cooled, preferably small waxy, potatoes, a finely cut onion, high quality mayonnaise and pickled caper buds. If they are the bigger buds it is best to cut them more finely. Fold together gently and serve.
  

• Skate or where skate is overfished then ray with black butter and caper sauce. Best I ever had was in Jersey.

• Caper sauce - simply a white sauce with capers and some of the caper vinegar/brine it is pickled in. Can be used with mutton, herring or mackerel.

European names for the Caper

Dutch kappertjes
English caper, caperberry, caperbush
French câprier, câpres, fabagelle, tapana
German kapper, Kapernstrauch
Italian cappero
Norwegian kapers
Portuguese alcaparras
Russian kapersy
Spanish alcaparra, caparra
Swedish kapris