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. 😊