THE GREAT CULINARY CAPER

Capers and caperberries.

What an apt name!  The caper, with its sprightly piquancy, adds playful punch to many savory dishes.  It's name comes from the scientific nomenclature, capparis spinosa, a thorny bush that grows wild in Mediterranean regions (alcaparra in Spanish). I found it, improbably, sprouting from a white-washed wall in the village, below which political posters for an upcoming election were plastered.

It is the flower bud of the caper bush, pickled or preserved in brine, that provides the culinary condiment we buy bottled on the grocer's shelf. If allowed to bloom, the flowers produce a seed pod, culinarily known as “caperberries” (alcaparrones). These, too, are brined and used as a condiment. The berry has a bit of crunch, but can be used interchangeably with capers.

Spain continues as the world's market leader in capers, although nowadays they are sourced from growers in Morocco and Turkey.

Caperberries have a slight crunch.

How to use capers? Throw them into just about any dish that needs some pizzazz. Their salty tang really perks up any food, but seems to have a special affinity for fish. Put capers on pizza, toss them with pasta. Use them in any way you might use olives, for instance, in cauliflower salad, stuffed eggs, potato salad.

Add capers to classic sauces such as tapenade, vinaigrette, remoulade, ravigote, tartare. Serve them with smoked salmon or, stirred with sour cream, as a topping for baked potatoes.

Tuna salad with capers and caperberries.

Combine capers with tuna canned in olive oil, chopped celery, green onions and lemon juice for the best-ever tuna salad (no mayonnaise!).

Grilled Fish With Caper Dressing
Pescado a la Plancha con Aliño de Alcaparras

Caper sauce adds pizzazz to grilled fish.

This fish is cooked a la espalda –“on its back”. Originally a style of grilling a la brasa, over hot coals, this is easy to do under a broiler or on a plancha, a flat  iron grill pan. My favorite plancha is reversible--a ridged grill for meat on one side and a flat one for fish and shellfish on the other. 

Butterflied fish is grilled on a plancha.

Any sea bream or sea bass could be prepared this way. I used dorada, golden bream, a product of aquaculture (see blog about farmed fish here). Each whole fish weighs between one and 1 ¼ pounds. Depending on appetites, this would serve one or two persons. (I easily eat a whole one.)

Have the fish gutted, scaled and split open along the belly and butterflied. Remove the spine. The head is usually left on, split open so that it lays flat. Open the fish out flat, salt it lightly and let it rest 30 minutes at room temperature.

Grilled fish has crispy skin.

After grilling, you can serve the whole fish with sauce spooned over and allow each person to lift off the bones, fins and head (and fish out the delicious dollop of flesh in the cheeks). Or, remove all the bones in the kitchen and serve the fillets on heated dinner plates with the caper sauce.

If cooking the fish under the broiler instead of on a grill pan, preheat the broiler pan and do not turn the fish.

Serves 2-4.

2 whole sea bream, weighing about 1 ¼  pounds each.
Coarse salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
Caper sauce (recipe follows)
   
Brush a flat grill pan with oil, sprinkle with salt and heat it.

Pat the fish dry with paper towels. Brush both skin and flesh sides with oil. Lay the fish, skin-side down, on the hot grill pan. Grill 5 minutes. Carefully turn the fish and grill flesh-side down 2 minutes longer.

Transfer the grilled fish to a heated platter and serve it, on its back, with the caper sauce spooned over it, or fillet it and serve on heated dinner plates.

For the caper dressing:

This makes enough sauce for two 1-pound fish. Serve the sauce also with grilled chicken breast, veal or tuna steaks.

Ingredients for caper sauce.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced
Red pepper flakes or sliced chili
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons drained capers
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Heat the oil in a small skillet. Sauté the garlic and red pepper flakes until garlic begins to turn golden. Add the salt and lemon juice. Remove from heat and stir in the capers and parsley. 

Pop a caperberry in your next martini.

I just bought a caper bush at the nursery gardens. Will find a sunny spot in the garden. See the little buds on the stem? About ready to pick and pickle.

FISH -- FROM FARM TO TABLE

Farmed fish--gilt-head bream, left; sea bass, right.

An offer I couldn’t resist—lubina, fresh, whole sea bass, at €2.50 each (about $3.50 for a fish weighing about 1 pound, including head).  I bought a couple of them. Two one-pound fish serve two, three or four persons, depending on how much fish you can eat. Me, I can easily eat a whole one all by myself.

At a local market.

The bass, as well as dorada, gilt-head bream, come to local markets from a fish farm where they are raised in a manner respectful of the environment. The aquaculture station of Veta la Palma, located near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, south of Sevilla and bordering the nature preserve of Coto Doñana, raises fish in artificial wetlands, a managed and sustainable ecosystem, created by pumping water through canals to create marshy, saline ponds where fish feed on natural algae and tiny shrimp. So healthy is the environment that it shelters 250 different bird species.

For more about Veta la Palma and aquaculture, see the links at the end of this post, following the recipe. Fresh fish from Veta la Palma is marketed in the US and may be available at your favorite restaurant.

The fish I buy are excellent. Here’s a way I first learned to prepare them at chiringuitos, beach shacks, on the Málaga and Cádiz coasts. This recipe is typically made with a large whole fish, cooked in a rectangular metal pan called a besuguera, on a bed of sliced potatoes, onions, peppers and tomatoes.

Ready for the oven--sea bass on a layer of potatoes and vegetables.

A whole fish weighing 4-5 pounds will serve 4 to 6 people. As the market size of the aquaculture bass are about 1 pound, I usually use one per person. The fish need to be gutted and scales removed. In Spain, the fish is baked whole, with the head. But, if your fish market sells fish with the head already removed, that’s fine too.

If using individual-sized fish, I serve them whole, letting each person remove bones (provide dishes for the debris). But, if using a large fish, it is best filleted in the kitchen after baking and served onto heated dinner plates with scoops of potatoes.

Potatoes soak up tasty juices from the fish, wine.

Baked Fish with Potatoes
Pescado al Horno

Serves 4.

4 1-pound sea bream or bass
Salt
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly
5 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 green pepper, cut in strips
Salt and pepper
1 onion, sliced
2 tomatoes, sliced
2 bay leaves, broken into pieces
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup water

Have the fish gutted and scaled. Rub fresh fish inside and out with salt and leave it to set for 30 minutes. Rinse and pat dry.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Pour half the oil into a large flameproof oven pan (a roasting pan could be used) and add half the sliced potatoes. Sprinkle over half the garlic, parsley and peppers. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add all the sliced onions, most of the tomatoes, then the remaining potatoes, garlic, parsley and peppers. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place the fish on top of the potatoes and top with the remaining slices of tomato. Drizzle with remaining oil. Tuck in the pieces of bay leaf. Pour over the wine and water. Cover the pan with foil and bake until the potatoes are tender, about 35 minutes. Remove the foil during the last 15 minutes. Add water, if necessary, so the potatoes always have some liquid.

Baked sea bass with potatoes.

About the fish farm at Veta la Palma http://www.vetalapalma.es

Chef Dan Barber's TED talk about "How I fell in love with a fish," also about sustainable aquaculture at Veta la Palma.

Sea bass, oven-ready.

Gilt-head bream have a distinctive golden band between the eyes.