Capers an essential ingredient of pasta alla puttanesca

When you want to throw together a delicious Italian sauce using whatever is in the cupboard, nothing beats a meal of pasta alla puttanesca. Puttanesca can mean ladies of the night, but it can also be Italian slang meaning garbage or junk, though in a profane way, so it is the junk or garbage in the kitchen you throw together.

It is quick, easy and delicious. And it does involve capers, but not the capers of ladies of the night. Classic puttanesca sauce contains plum tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, anchovies, ripe olives, and most important of all, capers.

Capers (Capparis spinosa) is a perennial bush that bears large white or lightly pink flowers.

The flowerbuds are pickled in vinegar or salt to release the sharp flavor of mustard oil (glucocapparin) held in each flower or caper.

If your cupboard doesn't have the essentials for puttanesca, you can grow your very own capers bushes. You will need fairly large pots, because capers bushes grow three feet high and spread four or five feet. Natives of the Mediterranean region, they like dry heat and full sun. As a patio plant they are only hardy down to 20 degrees F, and you need to bring them indoors before frosts. The capers flowers are fragrant and sweet, and the leaves are fleshy and attractive, so you can grow a capers bush just for decoration if you want.

While you can grow capers bushes from seeds, the seeds are very hard to germinate. If you decide to plant seeds, soak them in warm water for 24 hours, then wrap them in a wet towel, put them into a plastic bag, and refrigerate towel and all for six to eight weeks. After refrigeration, soak the seeds again in warm water for 24 hours before planting. Plant the seeds about a half-inch deep in gravelly potting soil. With luck your seeds will sprout in three to four weeks. Often germination is less than 40 percent. It will be at least a year or two before seed-grown capers bushes bloom.

For more reliable results, try buying capers bush plants. Pot them into pots slightly bigger than what they were growing in at the nursery, and use a mixture of regular potting soil and perlite, or mixed with cactus soil. Try not to disturb the roots when potting capers bushes.

Capers plants are available from Richters Herbs (www. richters.com, 357 Highway 47, Goodwood, ON L0C 1A0 Canada, phone 800-668-4372 or 905-640-6677) and Mountain Valley Growers (www.MountainValleyGrowers.com, 38325 Pepperweed Road, Squaw Valley CA 93675, phone 559-338-2775). Seeds are avialable from Seeds From Italy (www.growitalian.com, PO Box 3908, Lawrence, KS 66046, phone 785-748-0959).

Let the soil dry out between waterings. Only water them every week or 10 days. These are hardy plants known to grow in rocky outcrops, so they don't need much if any fertilizer. They do need full sun, and do best in a sunny window or south-facing room. Since these are deciduous plants, they may lose all of their leaves in winter, but will burst into growth in the spring.

After your capers bloom, pick the immature buds. In a crock or other container, add kosher salt equal to 40 percent of the weight of the capers, and set aside. Carefully stir this salt and capers mixture occasionally for about 10 to 12 days, until you notice juice collecting on the bottom of the crock. Drain off this juice and add more kosher salt, about half of what you used in the beginning, and let it sit for another 10 to 12 days. Now your capers are ready to cook with. You can also pickle the capers in a salty vinegar solution.

Besides the capers flowerbuds, you can eat the young shoots along with new immature leaves as a steamed vegetable. Capers contain large amounts of bioflavinoid rutin, an antioxidant, and are used in some traditional medicines to treat arteriosclerosis, dropsy and gout.

While sauces similar to puttanesca have been around since the middle of the 12th century, the term only first appears in Raffaele La Capria’s 1961 novel “Ferito a Morte” (Mortal Wound), which tells of "spaghetti alla puttanesca come li fanno a Siracusa (spaghetti alla puttanesca as they make it in Syracuse)". This quick, salty, tasty sauce has been popular ever since: sautee crushed garlic and anchovies in olive oil, then add diced plum tomatoes, some red pepper flakes, olives, perhaps some oregano and parsley, and of course capers. Simmer this down for 20 minutes, and pour it over pasta. Garnish with grated Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley. Leave it to those Italians to make even so-called garbage sauce taste so good.

Buon appetito!