Ingredients

3,53 oz  Pasta..(u can choose what kind of pasta do u prefer)     

1 small slice of fresh salmon

2 small zucchini (if u can’t find the small one it’s the same) 

3/4 or more courgette  flowers(zucchini flowers)

salt,  pepper and olive oil

0,90 oz butter

LET’ S COOK

FIRST OF ALL

HEAT PASTA’ s WATER IN A POT  OF BOILING

MEANWHILE.. COOK THE SALMON IN A PAN OR ON A GRILL ( IF YOU HAVE LITTLE TIME MICROWAVE IT’S OK).

ONCE THE SALMON IS READY DIVIDED INTO SMALL PIECES AND REMOVE THE SPINES.  PUT ON PAN  TWO SPOONS OF OLIVE OIL AND MAKE WARM FOR A  MINUTE.  THEN ADD  ZUCCHINI  SLICED INTO STRIPES  OR IN SMALL CUBES AND WHEN THEY RE READY ADD A LITTLE SALT, THE SALMON AND  THE FLOWERS OF ZUCCHINI CUT INTO STRIPES. FINALLY ADD 0,90 OZ  OF BUTTER AND TURN OFF THE STOVES. 

When the water boils add the salt and the pasta and cook for the time that is indicated on the package. One minute before draining the pasta turn on the pan with the sauce then drain the pasta and pour into the pan .. mix well and garnish with a basil leaf and a sprinkling

ENJOY YOUR MEAL

                   

I first had these stuffed with something fantastic like goose liver parfait (sorry) at the Moulin de Mougins in the South of France around 30 years ago (yikes) and because they just looked so beautiful I have never forgotten them.  Anyhow, the difficult thing with these is that you never see courgettes with the flowers left on in shops because they do wither very quickly.  You need to pick them, carry them home carefully and use them that day.

Courgette Flower Tempura

On Friday, I went to my friend Nevenka’s farm shop in Vera as I often do on Friday mornings.   Opening times are11 am until 2 pm.  It is well worth a visit for gorgeous citrus fruit, particularly limes as she has 400 lime trees!  But also, lovely preserves, chutneys and other condiments. She always has some lovely fresh vegetables too, potatoes, beans and whatever is in season and also loads of gorgeous fresh herbs – all of her vegetables are organic – she often has things which you cannot buy here – last week I had a bag of mange tout – absolutely delicious – and on Friday she had the most beautiful baby courgette with the flowers on.  I had quite a lot to do on Friday as everyone was coming around for the opening of the Friday night outdoor cinema and I was preparing a little supper.  But as said, these beautiful pale flowers come along once in a blue moon and so I took four and thought that I would make a tiny starter for lunch.  I really would have liked them stuffed with crab and crème fraiche and chives, but I thought, get real – just look in the fridge and see what is there.  So when I got home, I pulled out some cream cheese and mixed in some chilli sauce put teaspoons of the mixture into the flowers.  Then I made up some tempura batter – plain flour, a tablespoon of cornflour, a little sea salt and some sparkling water.

Then all you do is drop the stuffed flowers in the batter with a slotted spoon and deep fry in vegetable oil until they turn the palest golden colour.  Because the oil is so hot, everything stays in tact, nothing oozes out and they just look stunning. They need to be drained on kitchen paper and eaten immediately with a little chilli sauce.

Mick said they were sensational so I will be popping back to Nevenka’s this week in the hope that there will be a few more for me to steal!

Ingredients:
(serves 2 @ 10 Weightwatchers points each)
12 Courgette Flowers, cleaned, stamen removed, and kept aside
60g Buffalo Mozzarella, torn into12 pieces
1 Tomato, seeds and skin removed then diced and seasoned with a little Salt, Pepper and chopped Basil
120g Linguettine (dried) or alternatively Spaghetti will be good also
1-2 Garlic Cloves, chopped
1 x 50g tin Anchovies in Olive Oil, drain off of the oil, but leaving about 2 tsp aside and chop the anchovies roughly
a few Basil Leaves, torn

Start by stuffing the Courgette Flowers with a piece of the Buffalo Mozzarella and a few seasoned, diced Tomato pieces. Gently twist the top to close them.

Bring a pot of Water to the boil, season with a little salt and start cooking the Linguettine. They need 6 minutes to cook, however, they will finish cooking in the other pan, therefore I cook them for just about 4 1/2 minutes.
At this time start the other pan off with the Anchovies, it’s Oil, Courgette Flower Stamens and Garlic. Bring everything to a medium heat and let it quietly sizzle, while the pasta cooks.

With tongs remove the pasta from the water and drop them straight into the anchovy mixture. Add a couple of tablespoons of the cooking water, then nestle the Courgette Flowers amongst the Pasta.
Cover the pan with a lid and let everything heat through on a low heat in it’s own steam. This will  take only a few minutes.
Finally sprinkle the Basil Leaves over the top and wriggle them in.
I think it looks nice served right in the pan as it is.

Did I like my creation? The Mozzarella slightly melted inside the Courgette Flowers, yet still retained a subtle chewiness and the tomatoes giving it a tangy lift, I think I have just impressed myself a little bit.

Open the box, remove them all, unwrap each, slice 2cm line at the base of the stem, gently tear open a hole in the flower, remove the stamen, stuff with a piece of cheese, close hole, twist top and lay flat. Repeat.

To make it worse the courgette flowers are a fragile and expensive ingredient which will happily fall apart in your hands if they feel you’re being too rough with them. Balancing speed and efficiency with precision is a constant battle in the kitchen and this task was my first introduction to the struggle. Shortcuts can be found, but only ones which don’t compromise the final product. Sometimes the only solution is just to work faster.

If I lose time on this job then I’m rapidly falling behind on my prep list for the morning, this is a Bad Thing. The list might be longer or shorter depending on the vagaries of service, prep all week, the person on the station the day before. A long prep list and a delay on the underground and it’s an uphill battle all morning.

The feeling is similar to the one I had whenever I went to a tutorial at university without having done enough work. That sense of panic, scrabbling around for answers, dodging questions as best you could whilst desperately suppressing the feeling your head is going to explode. The problem is that in the kitchen you can’t just make up a tub of prepped cuttlefish, it’s either in the fridge or it isn’t.

The desperate scramble as your brain gently fries along with the scallops in the pan, as the orders fall out of your head whilst you try and remember where you put the bloody sliced fennel. Redemption lies only in ploughing on, and each service gets easier.

There is a flip side to this of course, as with everything. The feeling of coming into the kitchen and powering through the prep list, starting lunch or dinner with a fridge packed full of everything required and dominating service is truly satisfying. Totally in control, the station becomes a pleasure and the dishes get banged out just how they should be.

As ever, most days tend to fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Sometimes you’re lucky and no one orders that egg dish when you know all the pre-poached ones you did in a rush weren’t really ideal. Sometimes you get shafted. That’s part of the fun I guess, the unknown, though that definition of fun which also includes ‘sweaty, pressure-filled work’ in it.

Four minutes are crucial, get it wrong and you’re already sliding into a bad day.

The flower is just the shell for whatever filling you put in it. Mine consisted of 1/4 cup goats cheese, 1/4 cup cream cheese, herbs and seasoning. After taking the stamen out of the flower they are ready to be filled, twisted and dipped into batter and gently fried.

These were pretty to look at and tasted really good. The little courgette cooked enough but hadn’t gone all mushy.

The great thing about these, is that you can fill them with anything. Dorie Greenspan has a recipe in her new book for shrimp and I can imagine Parma ham working really well curled inside the flower.

~ Pru

Courgette flowers and sage

On our last visit to our local farm shop, we spotted in the vegetable garden a lot of courgette flowers. They didn’t have them for sale in the shop so we asked if they could cut some for us. The very friendly lady agreed and asked what we wanted to do with them, adding that she had only tried them once, while in Italy.

Unsurprising. Fried courgette flowers are a classic and much sought after Italian dish, but hard to find because it is so uncommon to find courgette flowers in shops and when you do they are quite expensive.

We dipped the flowers in a wine-based batter and fried them. We served them with sage leaves prepared in the same way. The result is delicious and well worth the inevitable frying smell that will haunt the kitchen.

FRIED COURGETTE FLOWERS AND SAGE

For 8 courgette flowers and 10 sage leaves:

1 egg
100 g 00 flour
1/2 glass of dry white wine
2 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
salt and black pepper
1/2 glass of warm water
vegetable oil for frying

In a bowl sift the flour then add the egg yolk, olive oil, wine, salt and black pepper and mix. Then slowly add the warm water while continuing to mix until you have obtained a homogeneous mixture. If the mixture is to thick add more water. Leave to rest for an  hour. 

In the meantime wash and clean the courgette flowers, removing the stems and pistils. If the flowers are large cut them in half lengthwise. Whisk the egg white until stiff and gently stir it into the flour mixture.

In a frying pan heat the vegetable oil until very hot. Check the temperature with a small piece of bread, if it floats on the surface bubbling vigorously the temperature is just right. Dip the flowers and sage leaves in the batter, drip them briefly and then fry them a few at a time for about 30 seconds on each side or until golden. Remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon and rest them on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with salt and serve immediately.

Stuffed Courgette Flowers – for 1

Courgette flowers – 3 or 4 – check carefully they often have little bugs crawling on them
75g Ricotta cheese - depending on the size of your flowers
1 T(ablespoon) grated parmesan cheese
Fresh Mint - about 10 leaves – I use Tashkent or Moroccan mint for the best flavour
Fresh Basil - similar sort of quantity
Flat leaf Parsley - bit less than the above

I reckon you could use any other soft herbs you fancy like oregano or even chives, but that’s what I fancied.

Batter:

75g Plain Flour
1 T Cornflour
150ml water

Mix the plain flour and cornflour together and add cold, preferably iced water gradually to make a tempura style batter.    The batter should be thick enough to coat but not too thick – about the consistency of cream.

Chop the herbs and mix with the ricotta and parmesan.   Season to taste.    Carefully stuff the flowers using a teaspoon to get the mixture into the flower and twisting the end of the petals together to seal.

Dip the flowers into the batter one at a time.

You’ve got to deep fry these, but I didn’t want to go overboard with the quantity of oil I used so I used my smallest saucepan and filled it about 3cm deep with rapeseed oil, you could use peanut oil or sunflower oil, basically anything light and not too strongly flavoured.

Put the flowers in the hot oil, again one at a time (or more if you’re using a wok or larger pan).  Cook until light golden, it only took a really short time.  I turned them once so they cooked on both sides.

It was actually far less faff than I thought, and they were delicious.

]]> http://jumentous.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/floral-snacks-with-a-flower-and-flour/ Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:07:16 +0000 jumentous http://jumentous.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/floral-snacks-with-a-flower-and-flour/ Ingredients: Courgette flowers (3 per person is plenty), cream cheese, basil, a squegg, plain flour, cooking oil and milk.

Perfect for: Treats to talk about

Nutritional Value: 0/10

Taste Factor: Fleury Good

mix a batter with the egg, flour and milk- it needs to be quite thick to stick to the flowers

empty each flower of its inhabitants, or risk eating beetles!

chop the basil and mix into cream cheese

spoon the cheese into each flower and seal with fingers

dip into the batter

gently pop into the hot oil and fry until all puffed up and crispy, leave to drain on kitchen towel

serve with a dip of your choice! (I like sweet chilli)

The female courgettes are the only ones carrying fruit and I’ve picked some of both to stuff with a crab filling. Both male and female flowers are edible. If ever you can get hold of some courgette flowers…they are absolutely divine, from another world and savored slowly and deliberately…well, I’m a lady, I can’t say what I really think, but you’ll know what I mean when once you’ve enjoyed one!

Suggestions:

• Serve the flowers stuffed, without steaming.
• OR make a batter of some flour and add some fizzy water, mix until a thick cream . Dip the courgette flowers wth filling into the batter until coated and deep fry quickly, one by one, turning each once once. Remove, drain and serve sprinkled with fleur de sel and a few drops of lemon juice, or a light yoghurt/mint sauce (natural yoghurt, chopped mint, seasoning, lemon juice..)Make your own filling by choosing ingredients you like and by mixing flavor which compliment each other. Keep it light.
• Serve on a bed of mixed salad leaves with a vinaigrette.

********************************************************************************

Myfenchkitchen is off to Provence for a week of painting with 3 artist buddies. We’ll be staying in the Vaucluse home of well known painter of Postcards from Provence, Julian Merrow Smith and his wife Ruth Philips, while they will be in England where Ruth will be playing cello at the Garsington festival. We even have our own blog, Four go painting in Provence and you’re invited to follow us every step of the way on this trip if you’re interested in seeing all our adventures…which of course will be mostly painting…and eating…and painting again…and then visiting the markets and painting them …and eating…and having some wine perhaps and eating again… or is it painting…in any case, a lot of everything! you can read a little more on my art blog too: Africantapestry is off to Provence for a crazy painting experience!

I’m leaving on Sunday for a week..the other three artist buddies, Katherine, Sarah and Robyn will be there for 3 weeks. unfortunately I have some exciting obligations to tend to here at Coin Perdu, which I’ll share with you once I’m back! So don’t go away…keep well and in the meantime…keep those pots sizzling!

à bientôt!

Ronelle

Stir fried courgette flowers

Not all the food we ate in Vietnam was stand-out great but the dishes that were were memorable. Another absolute favourite of mine was this squid and pomelo salad – Oh. My. Word. I am salivating at the thought of it. The Vietnamese have a knack with salads. They taste out of this world.

Pomelo and squid salad

Most of the best food we ate happened to be on boat trips. The Mekong in particular was fascinating, varied and very foody. We shared this beautiful boat on the Mekong with just one other guest from Brazil.

Cruising on the Mekong

Morning visit to the floating market

Beautifully presented fresh fruit

This looks fiddly, but if you can get some beautifully fresh courgette flowers (try your local farmers’ market in the summer) it’s as easy, or even easier, than pie.

Ingredients for 4 people

For the sauce:

Onion – 1 medium

Extra virgin olive oil – 100ml/3.5 fl.oz

Tomatoes – 250g/8.8oz

Basil – several leaves

Salt to taste

Sheep’s ricotta – 400g/40oz

Sage – 10g/1.5 tsp

Parsley – 10g/1.5 tsp

Basil – 10g/1.5 tsp

Chives – 10g/1.5 tsp

Marjoram – 10g/1.5 tsp

Thyme – 10g/1.5 tsp

Courgette/pumpkin flowers – 12

For the sauce, finely chop the onion and fry in a little olive oil for a few minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes, chopped basil and a pinch of salt. Cover and cook for 30 minutes on a very low heat. Add a couple of tablespoons of water if necessary.

While this is cooking mix together the stuffing for the flowers. Just put the ricotta and all the finely chopped herbs in a bowl and mix well. Cut the flowers away from their stems and slit them open along the side so you can roll them out flat. Gian Paolo then uses an icing bag to squeeze a neat, fat tube of filling into the open petals, but some careful spooning works just as well. Then roll the petals back up and place on a well-oiled baking tray. Preheat the oven to 200oC /Gas mark 6.

Back to the sauce – once it’s cooked pass it through a food strainer (you could use a fine sieve and wooden spoon if you don’t have a strainer) into a bowl. Then add the rest of the olive oil as you whiz the mixture with a hand blender, forming a slight emulsion.

Cook the stuffed flowers for 10 minutes. Place them 3 to a plate and pour over the sauce. Decorate with some fresh herbs and serve.

{Book Extract from The Dolce Vita Diaries (HarperCollins 2009) by Cathy Rogers and Jason Gibb}

DIY inspiration

Pretty freckles

Miaow.

Brilliant teeth!

YES

All those sweet, sweet horizontal lines. Johannes Norlander: House Tumle, Sweden

COW TREKKING!! Yes such a thing exists, and it exists HERE!! thanks SwissMiss for making me laugh!

Asamoah Gyan

aaaaahhhhhhh bliss…….

the end.

Lixa

16 fresh zucchini (courgette) flowers
3/4 cup flour
3 large eggs
Salt to taste
1/4 cup milk
6 ounces mozzarella, chopped
3 tablespoons drained capers
a few sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil – or more if your instincts say so
Vegetable oil for deep frying

Get the stamen out of each zucchini flower, you have to be kind of gentle so as not to rip them up too much. Rinse them and make sure that there are no ants hiding out – they’re way too acidic for this recipe.

Beat the flour, eggs, and salt together in a bowl until they are smooth. Beat in the milk.

Combine the mozzarella, capers, tomato and basil together and fill the inside of each zucchini flower with some of this mixture. Fold the ends of the petals over the filling to make a little packet.

Heat the oil to a depth of 2 inches in a heavy saucepan. You could use a deep fat fryer if you have one. I use an electric skillet, it just makes it so much easier to keep a consistent temperature without having to think about it. It needs to be somewhere around 375 to 400 degrees.

Dip the stuffed flowers into the batter, allowing any excess to run off. This is pretty easy if you use a couple of forks – I haven’t had good luck getting them evenly coated with the tongs. Fry the flowers until they turn light golden, 6 to 8 minutes – they don’t need to be very dark. Drain them on paper towels or whatever and sprinkle some salt on them. These are not that great cold so you should probably eat them soon.

Before the battering ... freshly picked courgette flowers

I think, without naming names, that for the majority of my tender years I’ve been misled into chomping marrows rather than courgettes.

Now I’m sure that a marrow’s pure economies of scale justifies over boiling, steaming and/or over processing this off-white, green skinned vegetable and passing it off as “courgette” to unsuspecting school children, nieces/nephews and grandchildren but enough is enough. Through pure coincidence I’ve now had two tastes of zucchini zeitgeist and suspect that I (would have) always (given the chance) loved courgettes but I still rather dislike marrow (I’m happy to stand corrected on my current false-economies-of-marrows view point. All marrow recipes will be gratefully received info@tomdowson.com.

My recent mid-summer encounter with, what I was told were, lightly charred sliced baby courgettes, tossed in fruity olive oil, with toasted pinenuts, sultanas and plump shredded mint stirred through was the first welcome revelation. The simple dish giving an awesome prelude to the second and to my first forray into the rather strange courgette flowers.

Because of my initial distaste towards the “courgarrows” that I’ve been fed over the years, I’ve always chosen to ignore these alien spore like flowers as nothing more than chefy non-entical foodstuffs. How wrong could I have been!

I’ll set the scene … see post: Provenance, Perseverance, Preserves …

… so anyway the afore mentioned PYO centre had healthy crops of … yes your guessed it … courgettes! Still with slight scepticism I picked fruit plus flower with caution. The last thing I wanted to discover was that the wool had been pulled yet again and I’m back in courgarrow purgatory. I was confident that I could do justice to the mainstay of the vegetable using the recipe above, but the recipe below was one of the most triumphant cooking moments that I’ve ever had to date.

Like a mulberry hand-bag (so I’ve been told), you can dress a courgette flower up or down (in this case a simple batter), and whatever you put in (ricotta), the contents are invariably going to be given auto kudos because of what they’re housed in. Essentially both are simply great taste!

I don’t want to say anything more on the subject (nor on my handbag fetish) the recipe and result do more than enough talking, other than to: proclaim my undying love for courgettes, insist that you must try the recipe and emphasise my utter remorse that I may have to wait until next season to produce the same again!

Stuffed Courgette Flowers

Ingredients (enough 2 as a large starter):

7-8 fresh courgette flowers (carefully washed if necessary)

For the filling:
200g ricotta cheese
75g Parmesan cheese
1tsp fresh shredded basil
1tsp fresh thyme leaves
1/2tsp of lemon zest
freshly ground salt and pepper

For the batter:
100g plain flour mixed
110ml ice-cold water
extra lightly seasoned plain flour for dusting

For deep frying:
750ml sunflower oil

To serve:
homemade Balsamic vinegar reduction or shop bought version
whole basil leaves and thyme sprigs

Method:

If necessary wash the courgette flowers carefully, lightly dry and set aside.
Pour the sunflower oil into a large pan and set over a medium heat.

Mix all of the filling ingredients together and carefully spoon into the courgette flowers. Twist the tips of the flowers to enclose the filling.

When the oil has reached a sufficient temperature (a cube of bread should brown and crisp in approximately 5-7 seconds), lightly roll the flowers in the seasoned flour and then holding the flower by the tips, dip into the batter mix and then straight into the hot oil. Fry in 2 batches.

When golden and crisp remove the flowers with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen roll.

Drop the basil leaves and thyme sprigs into the oil for literally 10 seconds to crisp and remove.

While still hot and crisp, plate up the courgette flowers, drizzle over the Balsamic reduction and top with the deep-fried herbs. Devour, making as many ridiculous breathy vocal sounds as possible when you inadvertently burn your mouth on the filling.

To trim, cut off the stalk, gently open up the flower and pinch out the stamens.   Serves 4

• 12 courgette flowers, trimmed
• For the batter
• 100g plain flour
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 5 tbsp white wine
• 1 egg, seperated

• Mix together the flour, oil, wine and egg yolk in a bowl and season with
  salt and pepper.
• Add enough warm water to make a fairly runny batter. You’re aiming for a
  consistensy of about single cream.
• This part is important – don’t be tempted to skip it Leave to stand
  for at least an hour.
• Whisk the egg white until it’s stiff and fold gently into the batter.
• Dip the flowers in the batter and deep fry until they are lightly brown
• Drain on kitchen paper, season with salt and serve IMMEDIATELY!