Unusual Recipes

 

The courgette is native to South and Central America and was first brought to Europe in the 15^th century. Isn’t that amazing?  Last week I was given a bag full of courgetti flowers and my first reaction was: What on earth do I do with all of them? I used to think it was wasteful for chefs to use them for ‘gourmet’ dishes when the plants should have been left to produce full-blown vegetables. But having read around, I realise that this is not always the case.

Apparently early in the season, these plants produce only male flowers since the female flowers like more warmth and sunshine. So cutting male flowers leaves the plant with more strength to produce female flowers later on.                                             

Now it happens that I was given mostly female flowers. Our kind donor has greenhouses and that’s why there are such blooms so early in the season. It was exactly for that reason he was thinning out superfluous blooms so it was a benefit for the plants rather than a sacrifice. The female flower is easily identifiable by the baby fruit at the base, whereas the male flower grows straight from the stem.

Above you can see these immature babes - I left a little bit on as they serve as little handles in the washing and cooking processes – you just don’t eat them. You do remove the stamen inside which look like little golden balls on stalks. They are too bitter to eat.                                                  

I washed, cleaned and then dabbed the flowers dry before filling them with crumbled feta, dill and a little lemon zest. You need to work carefully at this stage as the petals will tear easily but they twist nicely to enclose the stuffing.                                                  

 They are then doused in a batter of flour, eggs and seasoning, with milk being added to dilute the mixture a little. You can see their handy little tails in the picture above. Fried in hot oil, they crisp up nicely and make a nice meze with bread, feta and  a rocket salad.

As I said we were given more than we could immediately use so below you see cleaned and stuffed flowers, layered in baking parchment, ready for freezing. When required you simply generously coat the still-frozen flowers in batter and fry them.                                                           

The final batch of blooms was cleaned and cut into fine strips. I fried some onion and garlic in oil, added seasoning with lemon juice and  cream to thicken. Finally the flowers were added briefly to heat up. These made a delicate sauce served with pasta.                                                      

To be honest it was a wee bit of a faff but, bearing in mind these tasty suppers, I am looking forward to receiving more courgette flowers in the future. 😊                                               

          

Making a Mess of Music ..... a frank appraisal of my progress so far !

 Funny how my focus was on decoding notes – that was what I thought would be the big hurdle. – especially since I was familiar with the EGBDF/FACE note-placing rather than the doh, ray, me. fah, soh, lah, te, doh. In terms of solfege, or sol-fah, in exercises you have to recognize notes, their value, length, pauses, etc.  

Thankfully at the beginning you practice reading music with notes as they are in the scale order. When that begins to change and you are working with notes that are not in sequence- either ascending or descending, that is when the seas get rough.

So, I can recognize the notes most of the time and I can make a reasonable stab at singing – though a lifetime of incorrectly projecting my voice in the classroom and recent covid cough have wreaked havoc with my vocal chords.

Now, unexpectedly, my bete noire is actually playing the piano. It’s not about reading the notes, that is coming along – at its own pace, but it’s happening. But there is a right way to make key contact and failure to do it correctly can apparently cause damage – especially carpal tunnel syndrome –by putting excessive strain on the median nerve in the wrist.

                                          

In order to play each note correctly, you use the weight of your finger, activated from the arm, not the wrist.  Your hands should be as in a clasp and contact is made with the tips of the fingers and the outer edge of the thumb. Essentially your fingers are cupped and in their doh->soh positions and must be raised individually before making contact with each key. That in itself needs a lot of practice.

I regularly use the local bus service, and on board I frequently do little hand exercises, raising my fingers individually in turn while cupping my knees. The hard bit is to maintain the finger-cupped position. Try doing this with your non-preferred hand – not easy!   I find it frustrating that movements I thought I’d mastered get messed up when you practise them on the keyboard.

Still trying to achieve that skill, and the teacher gives me a homework assignment to play full scales. A scale is a sequence of eight notes, but we only have five fingers. :o To compensate there has to be a quick cross-over of the thumb or the middle finger to account for all the notes on the scale. So far, that has proved fairly manageable but I fear the moment when we start playing in different keys and the notes magically change position on the pentagram or staff. ☹

I really enjoy my lessons and I love my teacher: she is fun, patient and sensitive – a powerful combo in the classroom.

                                                            

    

At one point she was even placing my errant finger in the correct position on the correct key – she literally is holding my hand through this challenging  ever-changing process, bless her!