Harvesting the World's Best Capers on Sicily's Island of Salina

Capers are called the orchids of Salina, one of the fabled Aeolian Islands of Sicily. This volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Italy's southernmost region comprises seven islands, each of which bears its own distinct charm. Salina is known for its capers.

The caper plant sprouts beautiful flowers and precious buds – the capers that we eat. When the capers are in season from May to August, Anna Palermo gets up at four in the morning to harvest them in the fields surrounding her home. She spends hours bending over the plants until the heat becomes unbearable. “My hands become dark, especially the right one, which I use to pull the buds from the plant. I pack them in salt for a few months, after which you can taste the fruit of this labor. Capers are used in many Sicilian dishes, especially those of Salina.” 

Anna, her two children, and her granddaughter Giulia were all born on the island and have lived there all their lives, with the sparkling blue sea sprawled out before them as far as the eye can see. They're surrounded by vineyards, lemon trees, orange trees, and a vegetable garden, to which Anna and her husband personally tend. “We water, water, water...” until the vegetables wind up in her dishes and, together with the capers, create a true symphony of flavors and aromas that make any dish delicious, from fish to pasta to everything in between.

Fish with fried onions

“We have onions in the garden, and we make our own vinegar. You can certainly add a few capers to this dish, and of course there’s no shortage of fish here in Salina.”

The recipe

The secret of getting this dish right is the onions. Firstly, you need to cook with a fish that not only pairs well with onions, but that also fries well. Avoid red mullet, for example, which fries excellently, but doesn't taste its best alongside onions. A better choice is small horse mackerel. Clean the fish carefully, then flour each fish with durum wheat semolina, which makes them crispier, and then go ahead and fry them.

Next, prepare the onions. Peel, slice, and very slowly sauté them in a pot with a little oil and a pinch of salt. Once they’ve turned golden, but not too colorful, add a generous dash of vinegar. Then put the fish in the pan with the onions for a few seconds so that the flavors fuse. Finally, serve the fish topped with the fried onions, known as cipollata. If you like, you can complete the dish with some raisins soaked in water and then wrung out, or with a handful of pine nuts.

Potato salad

“This is the island’s main dish. When we have the caper festival in the first week of June, we make tons of this salad.”

The recipe

It’s a very simple recipe, but it’s perfect for highlighting how good our capers are. You have to make sure to remove their salt very well, leaving them to soak for a whole day even. Then you boil the potatoes and mix them with some raw onions and a little bit of chili pepper if you like, some cherry tomatoes and wild fennel. It’s seasoned with extra-virgin olive oil and salt, and then aromas are added with basil or other herbs. Another version of this salad is prepared only with capers, cherry tomatoes, garlic, and mint. Both are also good with cucunci, the fruits of the caper. During the harvest, we let the largest buds flower. They then produce their fruits, which are also put under salt just like the capers.

Pictures by Matteo Carassale