I know at this point you’re probably getting a little tired of me talking about Salavatore. But we got to hang out a lot last month, and naturally this translated into good food.
One thing Salvatore is incapable of doing is arriving somewhere without the gift of food. I’ve already told you what happened when I invited him to lunch. And in the past he’s shown up with crate loads of tomatoes, baskets of beans or dishes of panzanella. He even brought Domenico three huge sacks of manure recently (which, while not food, is all about the food ) And it’s always in huge quantities. That’s his thing, cooking for a crowd.
So when Salvatore showed up at the berry farm to meet me last week, I shouldn’t have been surprised that his little truck was filled with food. For me.
The most splendid item was a massive bunch of flowers. Zucchini flowers that is. A big bowl of just picked blossoms from his garden.
Since there were so many of them, I decided not to go through the fussiness of stuffing them before frying them (there was never any question about the frying part of the equation). I just dipped them in a simple batter and fried them up.
While Emma and Jane set the table, I fried up the beauties. What had seemed like an impossibly large amount of flowers when Salvatore handed them over to me, disappeared in a shockingly short amount of time. They didn’t even make it to the table.
I guess I should rethink the whole quantity thing alla Salavatore.
fried zucchini blossoms
Prep
Cook
Total
Ingredients
- Zucchini or squash blossoms
- All purpose flour
- Sparkling water
- salt
- Oil for frying ( I use olive oil)
Instructions
- Gently remove the stamen from each flower and shake off any dirt.
- Fill a shallow bowl with water. Slowly add flour, stirring with a fork. Keep adding flower until the batter is the consistency of crepe batter. In other words, very runny pancake batter. Add a pinch of salt, stir and let rest for 15 minutes.
- When ready to cook, heat about 2 inches of olive oil in a frying pan.
- Dip each flower in the batter, and let excess drip off. Place gently into pan with oil, and fry. Don’t over crowd. After a few minutes, turn and cook on the other side. They should be golden and take a total of 4 to 5 minutes tops.
- Place on paper towels to drain, sprinkle with salt and serve.
Notes
I usually count on about 3 to 4 flowers per person. But then again, as many as you cook will get eaten.
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Brings back many memories of my Grandmother Josephine! She would always make this for us from our Garden up at the Lake House! Sometimes she would open the blossom and put a piece of cheese inside and then dip and fry!
Thanks for sharing Elizabeth
Even better with cheese!
A cookbook i once consulted on this recipe advised using either male or female flowers (can’t remember which) with helpful line drawings of each. Or maybe that’s not that important?
In fact, these are all male. That means they aren’t attache to the zucchini. The female flowers appear at the end of the zucchini, and so have no stem and are a bit harder to cook. They also usually have long faded by the time the zucchini is ready to pick.
Grazie! In fact the recipe I looked at was in Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking,” p. 538.
I love cooking these each summer. I love to stuff them with ricotta! I also you sparkling water in my batter, it keeps the batter nice and lite. I loved you video you posted last week!
I sometimes use sparkling water too, when I have it. Thanks, glad you liked the video.
I agree about the cheese! I use mozzarella, and I also chop up some anchovies to stuff in there too.
Beautiful, Elizabeth! I’ve been experimenting with using cornstarch or tapioca starch instead of flour in my batter, and it makes them extra light and crispy, almost like tempura. Nice texture variation from the wheat flour.
I’ll try that next time.
Love this, Elizabeth!
Someone gave me several dozen blossoms a few weeks ago which I fried and they were fabulous. But there was no way we could finish them all (I really tried!) so I froze them and reheated them in the oven and served them as appetizers. They were terrific!
I would have never thought of freezing them. But then again, we usually end up eating them all, no matter how many I make!
OMG…one of my all time favourite summer treats….I make these a lot…mostly with a very light beer batter but sometimes with soda. No matter what the batter is made from they are truly fantastic! I grow zucchini just so I can harvest the “male” blossoms! Don’t forget to remove the pistels! How sad the season is almost over!
I’ve never tried it with beer, and will do next time. And yes, remove the pistels! did I forget to add that in the recipe instructions?
Hi Elizabeth ,
I do them stuffed with ricotta, canned crab meat, anchovies , chives and an egg , then fry them in batter . They are delicious .
Saskia