Caper Update - Week 4

Some of the caper buds that I picked this morning were extra large, about 1 1/2 inches long with the stems. I thought it might be nice to ultimately serve them with the stems attached so I left them whole. I may put those into a good fruity vinegar instead of drying them. The "long-stemmed" bunch shown above weighs 1/2 ounce. The rest of the capers came in at 2 ounces without stems. So the last four weeks have yielded 6 ounces of fresh caper buds.

I tasted another dried caper from batch #1 and was very pleased to find that the flavor is even better than last week. Batch #2 has developed some nice rutin speckles after 2 weeks in the refrigerator, so I'm putting them out to dry today. Batch #3, which is fermenting at a warmer temperature, is nicely speckled also. I don't have another tray for drying that batch, so I'm going to drain them and pack them in fresh coarse sea salt, and see what happens.