SALTY BUDS

THE CAPER BUSH PRODUCES TWO DISTINCT BUT EQUALLY DELICIOUS, TANGY MORSELS: CAPERS AND CAPERBERRIES

- Chloe Thomson

YOU WON’T BE HARVESTING CAPERS UNTIL YOUR PLANT IS AT LEAST TWO YEARS OLD. IT SHOULD BE PRUNED FAIRLY HARD IN AUTUMN.

Many people enjoy the tasty, salty and slightly floral flavour of capers without realising these tiny morsels are the edible unopened flower buds from the caper plant.

From the same plant comes the caperberry, which is the fruit that arrives after flowering, larger than the caper but with the same flavour.

Capers are often mixed through pasta sauces and other Mediterranean dishes while caperberries mostly appear on grazing platters or cheese boards as bite-sized pops of flavour — delicious, especially when eaten alongside cheeses and creamy dips.

The caper bush is a low, deciduous, sprawling shrub that thrives in hot and dry Mediterranean climates. It can be grown in most states of Australia except Tasmania, which is too cold, and it won’t be happy in areas with high humidity like coastal Queensland.

As with olives, you can’t eat capersor caperberries fresh. They need to be pickled or salted to remove their bitterness and bring out their true flavour.

You won’t be harvesting capers until your plant is at least two years old. It should be pruned fairly hard in autumn to encourage new growth, where flowers will appear. Is it worth the wait? I’d say yes; a caper bush can happily live for 30–50 years and produce oodles of fruit.