We've moved from Baltimore, Maryland USA to Venice, Italy in pursuit of living our dream!



Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Fiori di Zucca


One of the things I love most about this time of the year is the appearance of fiori di zucca (pumpkin flowers) in the markets.  I remember my mother cooking these when I was a kid!  Upon moving here to Venice I was thrilled to find pumpkin flowers readily available. I love them.  My mom used to make them by frying them up in a little olive oil.  Mike and I do them a little bit differently. We stuff them with goat cheese mixed with chopped green onions or sun-dried tomatoes, then fry them up. 


 These are really easy to make. Buy a bunch of pumpkin or zucchini flowers. Either kind will work. Gently pull out the inside parts of the flowers,rinse them out carefully, and pat dry with a paper towel.  If you are going to stuff them, mix up some goat cheese, chopped green onion or sun-dried tomatoes, an egg, a bit of ground nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste.  Stuff each flower with a large spoon full of the cheese mixture.  Roll each stuffed flower in egg (beaten), then lightly in flour. Fry in hot olive oil for a minute or two per side. Remove from the oil and drain on a paper towel before serving.


 This is a delightful appetizer.  Easy to make, simply delicious to eat.  Buon appetito!

3 comments:

Dianne said...

We had the zucchini flowers when we were in Tuscany in May/June 2009. In fact one of the restaurants we went to actually had fried vegetables on the appetizer menu. Zucchini flowers were included in the dish. We asked the "padron" to just give us the zucchini flowers which he did but I can't help feeling that we destroyed his menu planning for a couple of days. There is a restaurant in Naples FL which serves the zucchini flowers in October and we have gone there a couple of times. He made a special arrangement with the farmers in nearby Immokalee to not throw out the flowers. Seems the Latino farmers did not know about fried zucchini flowers. Unfortunately these gems don't come on the market at all for us mere mortals -- not even at Whole Foods which is our local organic market. I keep looking though. Bon appetito Karen!

Anonymous said...

Just a simple "yum" from this corner of the world!

Solar Shades said...

Its very easy to prepare in just few minutes. Its really delicious!!