Fried Zucchini Flowers

When we get a chance, Ames and I love to check the local farmers markets for produce. It’s always fresher and cheaper than what you find at the supermarket and you never know what you’re going to find. On our Saturday trip, we came home with a watermelon, an eggplant, 8 limes, a bunch of mint, a mango, 3 guavas, a basket of grapes, fruity pebbles, some quenepas, and some zucchini flowers all for $18. I always wondered are fruity pebbles vegan? They happen to be a good source of Vitamin D and I later found out that they are in fact vegan. Moving on to the ingredients we bought, the only thing we’d never had before was zucchini flowers, but at 6 for $1.25, we had nothing to lose.

We found a bunch of recipes for squash blossoms and zucchini flowers online. Several sounded good, but in the end, Amy decided to do her own thing and stuff them with goat cheese (since we had some in the fridge) and deep fry them with an onion ring style beer tempura. I don’t know how she pulls stuff like that out of thin air, but OH MY GOODNESS they were delicious. Click on the images below to see the process.

In case you find some of these at your local farmers market. Here’s Amy’s “recipe”:

Ingredients

6 squash blossoms
Frying oil (we used grapeseed)
Coarse salt for finishing

Filling:
â…” c. of mild goat cheese (we used Chavrie Basil & Roasted Garlic)
¼ c. provolone cheese (chopped)
¼ tsp. black pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ tsp. onion flakes

Batter:
¼ c. cornstarch
½ c. flour
½ egg
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. black pepper
â…“ c. beer

Remove stamen & green leaves from the blossoms. Rinse flower inside and out carefully and dry with a paper towel. Combine filling ingredients in a small bowl. Pipe or spoon filling into each flower and twist petal ends. Dust the outside of each flower with cornstarch and then combine remaining batter ingredients. Dip flower into batter, coating completely. Heat 2 inches of oil in a heavy bottomed pot to at least 350 degrees. Fry flowers in batches of three for 2 minutes per side. Remove and cool on paper towel to drain excess oil. Sprinkle with a little salt & EAT!