Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
A jar of capers
Capers come as a flavor package and are
mostly seen as pea-sized darkish green globes that are part of sauces and or
salads. In French cuisine, it’s their
salty, slightly sour, lemon tang marks for them to be used with cream and
butter sauces where their flavor, often with added lemon juice cuts down
richness. It’s their tart flavor that enhances the taste of mayonnaise, salads
and cold sauces, such as and tartar sauce or a tapenade. (A tapenade is an
anchoïade with added capers, and the word tapena means caper in Provençal).
Steak
tartare, fried capers, quail
egg yolk.
N.B. You cannot make a real Steak Tatar without
capers.
The capers are an important part of
Mediterranean cuisine, and that’s where they probably originated though some in
Southeast Asia may disagree. Capers were already part of Greek and Roman
cooking and would have been introduced to France by the Greeks when they occupied
southern France in the sixth century BCE. Dishes with capers are found in all parts of French cuisine but is most prominent in Provencal and other southern French cuisines.
The caper is not a fruit they are a bud,
which left alone become the attractive white and mauve flowers of the caper
bush. When these buds are picked from
the bush they are pickled in vinegar or salt brine; they are rarely
dried before pickling as that process loses some of the taste and much of the scent.
The caper flower
The caper flower,
like the poppy flower wilts within a few hours.
www.flickr.com/photos/luc_coekaerts/26583674552/
In French cuisine capers are graded according
to size and the caper size relates to taste. The smallest caper usually seen is
less than 7mm across and called nonpareil. Nonpareil means unequaled and they
are the most expensive. The smaller a caper is, the more delicate its flavor
and aroma. The next step up is the
surfines, and that means superior quality, then come capucine and onwards and upwards for
the largest sizes that are rarely seen in restaurants. The size of the caper is
seldom mentioned on a menu listing but when it is it will be the nonpareil. Apart from their taste and texture chefs
prefer the smallest because their flavor is more easily controlled.
The caper bush also has berries, and
caper berries are different from capers. Caper berries are larger and usually
eaten like olives. There is more on
caper berries at the end of this post.
Capers on French Menus
Aile
de Raie Façon Grenobloise, Pommes Vapeur – Skate
wing prepared in a Sauce Grenobloise and served with steamed potatoes.
Sauce Grenobloise is a clarified
butter sauce made with lemon
and capers and almost always used for fish; it originated in the city of
Grenoble in South Eastern France. Grenoble is famous for many things, but in
the food world it is this sauce and the
Noix de Grenoble AOP, the Grenoble Walnuts AOP.
Smoked
salmon, cream cheese, bagel and capers,
Carpaccio
De Boeuf Viande Limousine,
Mariné au Citron
et à l'Huile
d'Olive. Parmesan,
Salade,
Tomates, Câpres, Champignons
-
A Carpaccio
of thinly sliced Label Rouge, red label, Limousine
beef, marinated in lemon and olive oil
served with shavings of Parmesan
cheese. accompanied by a salad,
with tomatoes,
button
mushrooms, and capers.
With parsley and capers, slow roasted
tomatoes with fennel seeds.
Dos de Cabillaud
Lardé
à la Tapenade
Maison – A thick
cut of fresh cod
wrapped in bacon
prepared with the house’s take on a tapenade.
The beloved spread of Provence called Anchoïade
or Anchoyade is made with anchovies,
olives,
garlic
and olive
oil; added crushed capers brings forth the tapenade, Tapenades will be
offered as a spread or like this menu listing used in cooked dishes. Tapenade’s
name comes from the Provençal word for capers, tapenas.
Jarret
d'Agneau Braisé Au Fenouil
Et Céleri,
Beignet De Câpres, Pommes
Dauphine - A cut
across a braised a shin or shank of lamb prepared with fennel
and celery,
deep fried capers and served with Dauphine
potatoes. The meat on a lamb shank surrounds the bone and the same cut with
veal is a jarret de veau, more than similar to the Italian Osso buco.
Potage de Trumeau de
Bœuf.
The recipe above comes from page 19 of France’s
earliest printed cookbook.
Le Cuisinier Francoise by La Varenne
published in 1651.
A trumeau de bœuf. is an early French
name for jarret de bœuf.
Mi-Cuit De Thon
Rouge De La Méditerranée En Croûte De Sésame, Huile De Câpres, Mijoté De
Poivrons Et Menthe
Poivrée – A steak
from the Northern
Bluefin tuna from the Mediterranean very very lightly braised on the outside and left raw in the inside, in a covering of
sesame flavored with caper oil, lightly simmered bell peppers and spearmint.
The two tastes and textures of tuna prepared in this manner match each other
perfectly. Every French chef will have his or her own method of preparing caper
oil though none squeeze the caper; most take pickled capers add them to olive
oil, usually with added garlic and after some 30 days or so a caper infused oil should be ready to use,
Mi-Cuit, lightly braised, tuna
on a bed of tapenade.
www.flickr.com/photos/cornerstonecellars/7160178863/
Câpres à queue - Caper
berries
Pickled caper fruits mostly called caper berries may be part of some dishes, but their
flavor is more like an olive.
Caper berries
The official caper
sizes:
Lilliput (3-5 mm.) non-pareil (5-7 mm),
surfines (7-8 mm), capucines (8-9 mm), capotes (9–11 mm), fines (11–13 mm), and
grusas (14+ mm). If the caper bud is not picked, it flowers and produces a
caper berry. The difference is that capers are the early flower buds, while the
berries are what forms after they have bloomed and been pollinated. The largest
that may be the size of an olive hang from a cherry-like stem and they are
pickled with the stem. The fruits have
tiny seeds inside (the size of kiwi fruit seeds), the tiny seeds are soft and
pop when chewed, and so their texture is very different to capers. Caper berries have a strong smell
that comes from ingredients also found in mustard and wasabi, but they less acidic and have a milder flavor than capers, which makes them edible on
their own much like olives and pickles.
Caper Plant, buds, fruit, and flower.
Otto Wilhelm Thome (1840-1925)
In France, the most highly rated capers come from Provence, but the capers bought outside France will mainly come from
Morocco, Turkey, Spain. India and Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia also competes for the origin of the
plant and capers are included in their cuisines.
The caper bush is a thorny shrub that can
grow up to two meters tall though most are less than one meter, The shrubs
branches have thons at the base of each leaf and so when the capers and caper
berries are picked a great deal of care, and thick gloves are needed; capers are still picked by hand as caper picking machines are still a work in
progress
Capucine, Cresson d’Inde - Nasturtium, Indian cress
Nasturtium fruits can be pickled and used
as a substitute for capers and sold at much lower prices under the name of
"nasturtium capers.”
Capers in the languages of France’s
neighbors:
(Catalan - taparera ), (Dutch - kapers), (German – kaper), (Italian - cappero),
(Provencal - tapeno, tapero), (Spanish - alcaparra, caparra, tápana and the
caper berry is alcaparrón), (Latin – capparis and the plant is capparis spinose).
------------------------
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Copyright 2010,
2019.
---------------------------
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