Caper buds. Capers are a distinctive ingredient in Italian cuisine, especially in Sicilian, Aeolian and southern Italian cooking. They are commonly used in salads, pasta salads, meat dishes, and pasta sauces. Examples of uses in Italian cuisine are chicken piccata and "spaghetti alla puttanesca". Capers are known for being one of the ingredients of tartar sauce. They are often served with cold smoked salmon or cured salmon dishes (especially lox and cream cheese). Capers and caper berries are sometimes substituted for olives to garnish a martini. Capers are categorized and sold by their size, defined as follows, with the smallest sizes
XO sauce XO sauce XO sauce is a spicy seafood sauce from Hong Kong. It is commonly used in southern Chinese regions like Guangdong province. Developed in the 1980s in Hong Kong for Cantonese cuisine, XO sauce is made of roughly chopped dried seafoods, including dried scallops ("conpoy"), fish, and shrimp, which are cooked with chili peppers, onions, and garlic. This dried seafood-based sauce resembles the Fujianese Shacha sauce. Spring Moon, the Chinese restaurant of the Peninsula Hong Kong hotel, is often credited with the invention of XO sauce, although others claim it came from Kowloon. The name "XO sauce" comes from