Cappero

This trailing perennial shrub, native in the Mediterranean, frequents the rocks by the sea, ruins, and ancient walls. The sight of this bush trailing its bluish leaves from a high wall announces the south, but they already begin north of Lucca and are established in the bastion walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa.

Using salted capers. The flowers picked in tight bud in May are rolled in pounded sea salt to preserve them, and sold thus ‘loose’ in village groceries in Tuscany and the Veneto. Take them home, rinse them of their salt, and steep in white wine vinegar, adding if you can find them some scarcely formed flowers of wild fennel.