This dinner was created so we could eat caper berries – but they aren’t even necessary!
I was having a salad at a restaurant in Israel when I came across something I’d never seen or tasted before. It tasted mostly like a caper, but it was like a caper on steroids! About the size of a small olive, when split open, it was full of tiny seeds. Since I love capers, as soon as I got home I decided I had to figure this out. Didn’t take much research to discover caper berries. Amazon Prime to the rescue – I had a jar on the way to my house with overnight shipping.
But what to make with these caper berries was a different question. (They’re too intense to eat straight out of the jar, in case you have a friend asking.) I decided it had to be pasta, and we’d add some fish to make it a proper meal. And that’s when this dish was born. It takes just twenty minutes from start to table!
Note: I used olive oil to keep the dish dairy-free, but butter takes it up a notch.
Garlic and Wine Sauce Pasta with Salmon and Caper Berries
Ingredients
- 4 salmon filets, skin removed
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- salt and pepper
- 1 lb fettuccine
- 3 tbsp olive oil, plus more for salmon
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes (adjust to taste)
- 1 lemon, quartered
- ¼ cup caper berries
Instructions
- Set oven on broil.
- Rinse salmon and pat dry. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
- Place salmon on lower oven rack and broil for 12-15 minutes, depending on thickness of fish.
- Cook pasta according to package instructions, reserving half a cup of pasta water.
- While the pasta is cooking, prepare the sauce. Heat olive oil in a deep skillet or in a saucepan. Add garlic and cook until golden. Add white wine and pasta water and simmer until reduced by about a quarter. Season with salt and red pepper flakes. (Because the sauce is very loose at this point, the best way to test the seasoning is to dip a strand of pasta in the sauce and taste that. Adjust to your liking, keeping in mind that the caper berries are salty.)
- Strain pasta and then combine with sauce.
- Slice caper berries in half.
- Plate pasta with some caper berries and a filet of salmon on top. Finish with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
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