Capers in our home could possibly be wherever. My mother used to combine them with gentle herbs and olive oil to make a form of coarse salsa verde and spoon it over roasted or roasted cauliflower. She additionally launched them to German-style potato salads with onions, mustard and broth. My father fried capers and served them with asparagus or used them for his involtini: skinny slices of veal that he wrapped in a filling of breadcrumbs, capers and greens, fried and cooked in a white wine sauce. Fried zucchini capers had been served with chopped meatloaf or meatballs.
I like all of those makes use of for capers, but it surely’s this final pairing with zucchini that I discover most tempting. Consistent with our household custom of messing round with household traditions, I typically use it in pasta and pasta salads, which neither my grandmother nor my father ever considered.
I discover roasted zucchini topped with earthy capers to be an awesome base for pasta, so long as there’s one thing creamy and wealthy to distinction with the acidity. I normally make my pasta very tacky utilizing buffalo mozzarella or a very good handful of grated pecorino melted within the sauce to make the calmly marinated zucchini shine.
In my model, there isn’t a cheese or meat right here. The wealthy, creamy style comes from slowly cooking extra zucchini, first for 5 minutes in olive oil, then together with dried pasta and water, for a splendidly starchy sauce that coats every thing in a thick sheen. Roasted zucchini and capers, that are added after every thing is cooked, dilute it with further texture and contemporary tartness.
All of it is sensible to me as the following evolution of my grandma’s fried zucchini. Maybe by means of selective reminiscence and breaking just a few minor guidelines, I used to be in a position to create a brand new household custom.
