The capers that Tasha was nice enough to pluck, salt, ziplock and mail to me from Pantelleria made it into their first salad last night. The salad also included tomatoes (this week's harvest from the garden is shown left) and basil from my garden, plus onion and garlic and mozzarella cheese.Because the capers were heavily salted (with sea salt from Trapani, Sicily, no less), I first rinsed them out thoroughly -- letting them soak and changing the water a few times over about a half hour period. Meanwhile, I chopped the onion, garlic, basil and mozzarella cheese and put them all in a bowl to marinate in balsamic vinegar and a little olive oil. Then I chopped the tomatoes and strained and patted them with a paper towel to get rid of the excess water. I put the tomatoes into a separate container and into the refrigerator, then added the capers to the marinating onion, garlic, basil and mozzarella and put them into the refrigerator as well.
When it was time to serve I added the tomatoes to the marinating mix for what was now a chopped tomato, onion, garlic, basil, caper, mozzarella salad. Voila! or -- since this is really an Italian salad -- Ecco!