Foraging the Alpujarras & A Recipe for Pickled Capers
Returning to Las Canteras was like coming home after a holiday and realizing you didn’t need to leave in the first place.
With the upgrade to Lucinda's 4 bedroom house came a little courtyard that could be fenced off. Perfect for that which was to take over our lives; an 8 week old puppy.
Not two days after we first visited Las Canteras, Lucinda had asked us if we were interested in a dog. Her sisters’ labrador had just given birth and she lived only a hundred meters away on the other end of the village. Once we saw the little black fluff balls there really was no going back. Tony would be the light of our life and the bane of our existence for weeks as he refused to sleep alone at night and cried till the early hours but made us laugh all day long. We must have watched every single dog training video we could find, to no avail…
It’s better if he sleeps alone, they said.
It will only take a week or two, they said.
He will eventually stop crying, they said.
Ignore him and he will stop, they said…
We started taking shifts and even resorted to sleeping in separate rooms so at least one of us could get a full night's sleep. To add insult to injury, little Tony was not yet allowed out of our tiny courtyard for fear of the dreaded Parvo virus until he was fully vaccinated. This meant that everything we did, we either needed to do separately or whilst holding him. We each took walks up the mountain to get out of the house and one day I spotted a low sprawling bush with beautiful purple and white flowers by the side of the road. My sleep deprived brain vaguely remembered Nina showing me a picture of a caper bush and this was it, right in front of me. Upon closer inspection I found dozens of tiny little capers along the vines and instantly felt the foraging greed come over me. I need them all! After about 10 minutes of picking and feeling a bit disappointed with the amount I had collected, I decided to continue my walk and see if there weren't any more around.
finding capers
More often than not when you’ve found a new plant to forage, first you don’t know it exists and have never seen one, then you find one and have a huge eureka moment, then all of a sudden you see them everywhere. This time was no different. Not 10 meters away I found another bush, then another one, then I looked up and the mountainside was absolutely covered in them. I must have spent about two hours going from bush to bush. Leaving at least half the capers on the bush and not giving in to the greed is important if you want to later enjoy the other delicacy this plant delivers; caper berries. They appear a few weeks later after the flower bud (which is the caper) has opened and the blossom has given way to the fruit. Absolutely unpalatable when fresh but when prepared well, both the bud and the berry are delicious and can be kept until the next year’s harvest or for as long as you can resist putting them in every meal.
Pickled capers recipe
Pickling capers really is as easy as sticking them in a pickling liquid of your choice. Try to avoid strong tasting or dark vinegars as they will mask the floral caper flavour but aside from that, go nuts. I find that a nice white wine vinegar works best and I like to add a pinch of salt and a little bit of sugar, just to take the edge off.
My standard pickling liquid recipe goes a little something like this. I use bakers percentages so bear with, I will explain below.
3 parts white wine vinegar to 1 part water
0,5% salt
3% white sugar
(herbs and spices as desired)
So if you wanted about a litre of pickling liquid you would have the following:
750gr vinegar
250gr water
5gr salt
30gr sugar
Fill a jar about 80% with capers. Bring the pickling liquid to a boil and pour into the jars. leave about a centimetre of air in small jars and a little more in big ones. Seal and let cool.
The capers should be ready to eat in a week but the flavour will continue to develop for around 3 to 4 weeks.
Salted capers
Salted capers are, as the name suggests, simply stored in salt. A lot of salt. The ratio I use is about 60% capers to 40% coarse salt. They will release liquid which you will want to drain but as soon as they stop they can be jarred and kept for a very very long time. Before using them, soak in fresh water for about an hour.
Pickled caper berries
Pickling the berries requires a little more time and patience. Unlike the buds which can be pickled straight from the bush the berries need to be soaked for a week to tone down the mustardy sharpness. Drain and refresh the water daily. You can actually make mustard from fresh caper berries but that might be something for the 2022 harvest.
After the berries have been sufficiently flushed, follow the same procedure as for the buds. Garlic and bay leaf go very nicely in a caper berry pickle.