From Bangkok or Chiang Mai. This is one of many food items just not available anywhere near Nakhon Nowhere. (My daughter brings a few jars of capers when she comes home on holiday.)
Caper bushes are a common wild plant in Southern Spain - I documented them in the second half of this video, when I visited a couple of years ago: Carobs and Capers - Mediterranean Foraging - YouTube
The flowers are quite beautiful and very fragrant in the evening.
It doesn’t seem all that odd to me. People eat all sorts of flowers, and people pickle pretty much everything and anything. (For a pretty direct comparison, see artichokes. Those are also flower buds, and often pickled.) I’m more curious as to how people figured out rotting cough I mean fermented shark (hakarl) and surstromming (rotting, cough I mean preserved herring) were edible as everything about the smell of those (well, okay, I can only speak of surstrumming first-hand) says DO NOT EAT ME!
Ravigote sauce.
Sauce gribiche.
Both of which I’m fairly sure have been around way longer than tartar sauce, just FTR. Also, there are some dishes in France which are absolutely identified with these sauces.
I mean, what else would you serve with calf’s head?
Whoops, forgot remoulade.
Does the Cajun version keep the capers?
Since this has largely turned to the culinary aspects of capers, let’s move this to Cafe Society,
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Don’t ask me. Not only have I never seen them in real life, until only the last few years I thought they were a small fish like a sardine. Apparently kippers are something else entirely.
Mmmm, kippers! I have some downstairs in the kitchen, and the Cub and Mrs P are both asleep. They can’t abide the smell - now’s my Chance!
Clearly it is what is in it. The difference is pretty subtle, but to be called “tartar sauce”, it must include a specified quantity of scrapings obtained from dental hygienists.
Very handy for a concealed insult. “Oh, John, you small positively hircine this evening!”
In salads and pasta, capers are heaven. Odd for something that tastes like cigarette butts on their own.
Apropos to this thread, an SDMB Staff Report on tartar sauce, steak tartar, and dental tartar.
I’m pretty sure hunger, drunkenness, boredom, and double daring were involved.