Sciaki Sciuka (pronounced shah-key shoo-kah) appears in restaurants and on home tables across Pantelleria. When I visited in September, I ate sciaki sciuka almost every day. Like all dishes that originated at home, each version was a little different. Some were served hot, others cold. One dish was served family-style with diced hard boiled egg [...]

A few tips I picked up on using capers on Pantelleria: To rinse or not to rinse? Unsurprisingly, salt packed capers are pretty salty. Cooks are often advised to rinse capers before using them. But how much rinsing is really necessary? Not everyone agrees. One man I asked said he never rinses his at all; [...]

Capers are the pickled flower buds of the caper plant. Eating flower buds isn’t so weird; a quick internet search pulls up guides and recipes. However, the unique thing about the caper is that if you allow the flower buds to bloom, the plant will produce a fruit: the caperberry. So why would we prefer [...]

What’s the relationship between a caper (“a crime, esp. an organized robbery”) and a caper (“a pickled flower bud of the caper plant”)? I wish I had a good story about an elaborate pickled flower bud heist, but I think it’s just a coincidence. Caper the plant comes from the Latin capparis, borrowed from the [...]

Last month, I visited a caper farm and a capperificio – or caper producer – on Pantelleria, a small island in the Mediterranean that is renowned for the quality of its capers. The capers of Pantelleria have a delicate, floral flavor that is a result of the the fertile volcanic soil, arid conditions, and a [...]

In September, I visited Pantelleria, a small island in the Mediterranean midway between Tunisia and Sicily. With 37 miles of sea separating the island from the next closest land, it’s as isolated as anywhere I’ve ever been. Despite its location in the middle of the sea, the people of Pantelleria have always been farmers, not [...]