A rustic Italian dish that screams summer!
As summer comes to an end, we would like to share a special recipe - Zucchini flower fritters. In Italy, these flowers represent the beginning of summer and are sold at markets around the country. In the rest of Europe and North America, they might be harder to find. But once you spot them, buy a big bunch and make this dish. You will not be disappointed! These vegetarian fritters are packed with veggies and make the perfect lunch, snack or side to dinner. Let's get cooking!
History
Zucchini flowers or "fiori di zucca" are a specialty in Italian cooking. At fine dining Italian restaurants, you might see chefs work with these flowers in different ways, including stuffed with ricotta and fried. These flowers are also used in the most humble of kitchens, in particular, my nonna's. I grew up eating these fritters as a kid right when they came off the pan and watched my nonna and my mother make them for years. Now the recipe has been passed down to me and I am so happy to share it with all of you.
Tips & Tricks
To start, you must prep your flowers. Remove the bottom of the flowers including the stem and the stamen (the pollen-containing filaments) keeping only the flower petals. clean the flowers under water and drain them in a colander. Repeat this step for 50 flowers!!
Then grate 1 cup of zucchini and add some salt to draw out the moisture. Squeeze out any excess water you can with some paper towel or a cloth. This step is very important if you want to get crispy fritters. The additional moisture makes the batter too wet and may require you to add more flour.
To a bowl, whisk your eggs. Add in flour, grated parmesan cheese, and some salt and stir. Slowly add water until a thick pancake-like batter forms. Then you can fold in your flowers, grated zucchini, and a handful of basil. Get a hot pan ready with some canola oil. Drop in some batter and do as you would when cooking pancakes! After 2 minutes you can check if they are ready to flip. They should be crispy on top and soft in the middle. Repeat until the batter is done and there you have it, rustic Italian zucchini flower fritters like my nonna makes! Top with a sprinkle of malden salt right when you remove them from the pan for that salty bite.
The Recipe
How this works?
Seeing as this is our first blog post, our recipe structure deserves a little explanation. The idea behind twotocook was to design recipes for a fun game-like experience. The idea is you and your partner decide who will be chef 1 and who will be chef 2. Following your selection you will be brought to your individual instructions. We will start with a split grocery list for those that maybe want to split the shopping and come together for the meal. Then you will find the recipe steps are written per person rather than chronologically. For example, one person can chop vegetables while the other is sautéing onion. The idea is for the recipes to be structured so working together in the kitchen is a seamless experience (and fun too!). We have game-ified cooking from start to finish (including clean up duty!).
If you guys try out this activity please let us know in the comments your experience doing it! We would love to hear from our twotocook community.
For those of you that prefer a pdf of the recipe click the link below:
Step 1: Pick your role!
Alright it's time to start. Between the two of you decide who will be chef 1 and chef 2. It will be a surprise what tasks you will have to do and which lucky (or unlucky haha) winner will be on dishes tonight. Its all part of the fun!
Step 2: Grocery List
Step 3: Cooking
Thanks for making this recipe! We hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear your thoughts on our game-ified cooking adventure. Let us know in the comments.
Until next recipe!
- twotocook
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