Wild capers with a local taste

Small gourmet and local luxuries, to discover during the Holidays and to give as gifts.

Enhanced by the floral and fruity notes of elderberry buds, the canapes are sure to fuel conversations during the end-of-year celebrations.

In time for the holiday season, Gourmet Sauvage presents its new harvest of elderberries. Picked while still immature, green and firm, the fruits of this native shrub are salted for several weeks before being immersed in a mixture of cider vinegar and sea salt brine, according to a preparation method developed by the Noma restaurant. However, here they are in a wild Gourmet version.

“It’s an exceptional product – my favorite of the whole range – that we use wherever we would put conventional capers,” says Ariane Paré-Le Gal, who is co-owner of Gourmet Sauvage and co-author of the books. Forest And Pick the forest with his father, Gérald Le Gal, who founded the company. Unlike imported capers, which are made with the flower buds of the caper tree, pickled elderberries come from a fruit. They therefore contain a very small seed which makes the product textured and slightly crunchy. That gives it all its charm. »

The specialist in gourmet forest plants challenges us to find a recipe with which elderberry capers do not go well. Serve in salads, over pasta, oysters, appetizers, smoked salmon and fish. The company from Saint-Faustin, in the Laurentians, also offers daisy buds made from capers and around a hundred other products resulting from the processing of wild plants.