Battered and Stuffed Courgette Flowers 30.7.10

We love these little nuggets of flavour. They can be made, a few at a time, as and when you get flowers, and frozen. Defrost and re-fry when you have enough. They're good as a part of a roast meal, or as finger food at a bonfire/BBQ party and they're lovely dipped into a chilli tomato salsa.

In my experience you can use any Squash family of flowers, so get picking!

Stuff flowers with the mixture. Wrapping the petals around the filling

Equal quantities of oats and diced onion, a chunk of blue, or grated strong cheese. Mix all together. You'll need a little water/stock/milk/yoghurt/cream cheese/cream etc  to bind the rather dry strong cheese mix.

Make your batter from SR flour, quarter t of bicarbonate of soda and fizzy water or beer. Consistency of double cream at the thickest. Dip one stuffed flower at a time. I keep the stalks on the flowers as it makes them easy to handle and looks good too. You can't eat the stalks though, too tough!

Fry the flowers in hot oil. If you are going to freeze them to re-fry at a later date, remove them from the oil when they are just going gold. Otherwise cook until very golden.

If like me you have a lot of flowers,get a production line going! 

Keep the cooked ones warm in the oven until they're all done or the rest of the meal is ready.

It's quite trendy to cook baby courgettes complete with their flowers. The idea is the same as above, stuff the flower, dip everything in batter and fry. I can't say I was over impressed. Although they tasted OK.

Perhaps a deep fat fryer would give better results.