I love zucchini flowers. They don’t taste much like zucchini’s, or courgettes as they’re known in England, but instead have a flavour entirely unique. We first had them in a café in Varazze, Italy, then a few years later in a restaurant in Rome, stuffed with mozzarella. We have often scoured markets near us searching for these beautiful yellow flowers, but to no avail.
On a recent camping trip, however, we found some in the local supermarket and couldn’t wait to get back to our camping stove to try them out ourselves.
If you find these on stalks, the frying process is quick, but if you find them on mini zucchinis just fry them a little longer to cook through the vegetable too.
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 pinch salt
1 egg
1 cup cold water (ice water is preferable as it makes a better batter, but that was not possible camping)
Zucchini Flowers
Oil for deep frying
Instructions:
- Wash the zucchini flowers well, without damaging them
- Allow to dry while mixing the batter
- Combine the flour, salt, egg and water and mix to a smooth consistency. The batter should be similar in consistency to pancake batter
- Heat the oil
- Dunk each zucchini flower in the batter. Also dunk the stalk (the thin green stem is edible and very tasty)
- Lower carefully in to hot oil and allow to fry until golden brown – about 2 minutes.
- Remove from oil and drain on kitchen towel.
- Eat warm as a side dish to pasta, meat or on its own as a delicious snack.
