A few days ago, I found some goat’s cheese reduced to half price at the supermarket. I bought it, knowing that I would find a delicious recipe to use it in. Failing that, we could always add it to a simple salad with green leaves, beetroot and walnuts. Then the idea of stuffing zucchini blossoms with the goat’s cheese came to me. A quick search on google for recipes confirmed that this is a very popular way of eating them. At the moment, our zucchini production is in full swing in the garden and there are tons of huge yellow flowers on the plants. I’ve never made stuffed zucchini blossoms myself, but ate them at a restaurant in the South of France once. They were delicious. In New Zealand, they’re not the kind of thing that you would commonly find in restaurants, probably only in certain very high-end ones if you’re extremely lucky and even then, only seasonally. I understand that it’s possible to find zucchini blossoms in some farmer’s markets abroad if you wanted to have a go at making them at home but I don’t think they’re available here in NZ. If you want to make these delicacies, you’ll probably have to grow your own zucchini in the garden, which is pretty easy to do. For my tips on growing zucchini, please click here.
Around midday today, I picked a dozen male flowers from our plants. I left the female flowers on the plants, as they’re the ones that produce fruit. If production isn’t a concern for you, then by all means use some of the female flowers, too. Male flowers are needed in order to pollinate the female flowers, so it’s a good idea to leave a couple in the garden so the bees can do their work or you can use them to pollinate the female flowers by hand after you’ve picked them. Once you’ve picked the flowers, it’s not that difficult to prepare the flowers. First, I washed them in a bowl filled with water and gently patted them dry with a tea towel. I then removed the green spikes near the base and the stamen inside the blossom with a sharp knife. To get inside, you may need to gently prise open the flowers by the petals. While I was preparing the flowers, mum prepared the ingredients for the stuffing. She mixed together 100g of goat’s cheese, some Himalayan sea salt, paprika, black pepper (mum stamped some peppercorns) and olive oil. Mum then carefully opened each blossom, inserting some of the mixture inside. We chose to bake our blossoms in the oven which is a bit healthier than frying them, but this is another method you may wish to use as it is very delicious done this way too! We baked ours at 200 degrees centigrade for 15 minutes. The verdict? Simply divine. We’ll definitely be making these beauties again
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