Fried Zucchini Blossoms: Good can get better

 

One of the special treats of the summer is zucchini blossoms, one of those delicacies that you can’t really enjoy unless you grow your own squash or you have ready access to a farmers market.  Several farmers offer them at our market, although you can never be sure you’ll find them.  We especially like the way Fiddler's Green offers the delicate blossoms standing up in a plastic basket.  This makes them easy to store with a damp paper towel underneath the basket and the whole thing swathed in a plastic bag and sealed.  

These blossoms usually need to be eaten promptly.  We shred them into side dishes or pastas featuring zucchini just before serving, to add color and to intensify the squash flavor.  They are also good raw in salads.  But the apotheosis of the zucchini blossom is fried.   When you are eating a fried flower, you know this is no ordinary day.

We have been making fried zucchini blossoms for years and the frequent fryer in the household was quite satisfied with her method.  She beat an egg with a slosh of white wine from her glass, dipped the blossoms in the egg wash, then rolled them in a mix of white flour and cornmeal, seasoned with salt, pepper, and maybe a little chile powder, and then fried them in a skillet in shallow oil over fairly high heat.  They looked and tasted great—you could see that they were blossoms and they had a nice crunch-- and it was hard to believe they could be improved upon.  We sometimes stuffed them with goat cheese but found we preferred them without filling.  So when the other Sherdo suggested trying a new recipe, from La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio (his cookbook crush of that moment), the frequent fryer scoffed.  How could her method be improved upon?  This new recipe coated the blossoms in a batter, which threatened, in her not at all humble opinion, to be too heavy.

But try it we did and the result made a convert of the frequent fryer.  The blossoms seem to melt inside the batter and develop a creamy texture and an essence of squash taste.

We have adapted the instructions of this recipe slightly to fry the fritters in shallow oil rather than the recommended 3 inches of oil.  The results are great and there is less wasted oil.

The original recipe is for 24 large or 36 small zucchini flowers and is supposed to serve 8.  We have experimented with cutting it in half and that works just fine for one basket of blossoms from Fiddler's Green (where ours were from this time) or about 16.  You need to rinse the blossoms in cold water (to be sure to get rid of any bug passengers), and then carefully dry them on towels before proceeding.  We also reach into each blossom to remove the bright yellow stamen, which can be bitter.

For the original recipe you need:

Zucchini Blossoms!  This amount of batter would cover two baskets of blossoms at least.

2 teaspoons active dry yeast (it’s the yeast that makes this batter so light)

2 ¼ cups warm water (about 105 degrees)

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Salt and ground pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

Oil for frying (high heat safflower oil is particularly good)

Sprinkle yeast over ½ cup warm water in a medium size bowl.  Stir it with a fork, then wait ten minutes until the yeast has dissolved.  Add the remaining 1 ¾ cups water and mix well.  Then, working ¼ cup at a time and stirring with a fork or whisk, stir in the flour.  Be sure to work out the lumps.  Season with the salt and pepper and stir in the olive oil.

Cover the bowl and let it rest in a warm place for about an hour.  You’ll know the batter is ready when there are bubbles on the surface.  Stir it again.

In a large skillet, heat about ½ inch of oil over fairly high heat (on our gas stove that’s between medium and high) until the oil is hot but not smoking.  Dip each blossom in batter to cover it, let the excess drip off over the bowl, and then place it in the oil.  As the batter cooks it will puff up and turn golden brown.  Turn the blossoms once so that they get brown on both sides.  You need to watch these carefully because they cook very quickly—a matter of minutes.  You’ll also need to work in batches—about 6 blossoms per batch.  

Drain the finished blossoms on paper towels or on a cooling rack over a baking sheet.  Lightly salt each batch after you set it out to drain.  You can hold the finished blossoms in a low oven while you fry subsequent batches, but we often find that whoever is lingering around the kitchen during this process happily consumes the blossoms as they are ready.  What’s wonderful about these is precisely how delicate they are.  They aren’t for keeping, before or after they are fried.

If we manage to get some on a plate, we serve them with a chopped salad of tomatoes and peaches.  But they don't need much embellishment.

One of the authors of the Gangivecchio cookbook, Wanda Tornabene, claims that her fritelle di fiori di Zucca, these very ones that seduced the frequent fryer away from her tried and true method, are “the best in the world.”  The Sherdos must now agree.  Something very good can get a lot better with the right recipe.