Kaparosalata

The Cycladic spread of pounded caper leaves and buds with onion, vinegar, and island olive oil

Origin: Santorini & Tinos, the Cyclades, Greece

From the journey of Caper.

The Cyclades do something with the caper that almost nowhere else bothers to do: they eat the whole bush. The buds are pickled as capers are everywhere, the caperberries are pickled after them, and the young shoots and leaves, kaparofylla, are stripped from the stem in spring, brined, and treated as a vegetable in their own right. A single plant clinging to a terrace wall yields three separate foods across a season. Kaparosalata is what the leaves are chiefly for. The brined shoots and buds are pounded or chopped coarse with raw onion, olive oil, and vinegar into a rough green spread, somewhere between a salad and a relish, and eaten on bread as a meze with ouzo or the island wine. Versions differ from island to island and from house to house: Tinos tends to keep it very plain, Santorini often works in a little of the local tomato or a spoonful of fava, and some households add capers alone where others insist the leaves are the point. The geography explains the dish. These are volcanic islands with almost no fresh water, thin soil, a salt wind, and a ferocious summer, conditions that are ruinous for most crops and are precisely what the caper wants. On Santorini the bushes grow along the dry-stone terrace walls above the vines, so the island's two protected products come off the same slope. In a place with very few green vegetables, a plant that produces edible leaves out of bare pumice is not a curiosity but a resource. The one thing that cannot be rushed is the salt. Brined caper leaves are aggressively salty and need soaking and tasting before anything else happens; the dish is seasoned, if at all, at the very end.

Ingredients

Salad

  • 150 g brined or salted caper leaves and shoots (kaparofylla), drained
  • 3 tbsp salt-packed capers, rinsed
  • 1 whole small red onion, very finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed to a paste with a little salt

Dressing

  • 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 90 ml Greek extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tsp dried oregano, preferably Greek
  • 1 pinch freshly ground black pepper

To Finish

  • 1 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped, optional

To Serve

  • 6 slices country bread or barley rusk (paximadi), to serve

Method

  1. Put the caper leaves and shoots in a bowl of cold water and soak for two hours, changing the water three times. Soak the rinsed capers alongside them for the last thirty minutes.
  2. Drain thoroughly and squeeze out as much water as you can, then spread on a cloth and pat dry.
  3. Pick over the shoots and discard any woody stem, keeping only the tender leaves and tips. Chop them coarsely, or pound them in a mortar if you want the older, rougher texture.
  4. Combine the chopped leaves, the capers, the onion, and the garlic paste in a bowl and mix well.
  5. Add the vinegar first and stir it through, then pour in the olive oil in a steady stream, stirring as you go, so the mixture takes it up rather than sitting in it.
  6. Add the oregano and the pepper, stir, and leave to stand for twenty minutes. Taste and add salt only if it needs it, which it usually will not.
  7. Scatter with parsley if using and serve at room temperature with bread or barley rusks, and a glass of ouzo or dry white wine.

Notes

Brined caper leaves are sold by Greek grocers and online, usually from Santorini, Tinos, or Crete. If none can be found, the dish can be made with capers and caperberries alone at about 250 g in total, which is closer to a caper relish than a true kaparosalata but is very good on its own terms. It keeps for four or five days in the refrigerator under a film of olive oil, and the flavour settles and improves after the first day. Santorini serves it alongside fava, the island's yellow split pea purée, and the two together with a tomato fritter make the standard Cycladic first course. On Tinos it goes onto paximadi, the twice-baked barley rusk, briefly dampened so it softens. Do not add salt until the very end and taste twice before you do. Everything in this dish arrives already salted.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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