Being right in the middle of the courgette season, here is another mediterranean speciality: fried blossoms with cheese inside. A simple, yet elegant starter for a dinner table... as long as you are able to find fresh blossoms. They should be picked early in the morning, before sunrise. Do look for them in your market in morning hours. They are pretty delicate, wash and dry them carefully and do not store unused ones more than two days in the fridge.
- courgette blossoms
- cornmeal
- slices of feta cheese
- 1-2 eggs, according to the number of blossoms
- olive oil for frying
Wash blossoms and pat dry with paper towels. Whisk the eggs in a shallow bowl and place the cornmeal in another. Open the blossoms and place one slice of feta cheese in each, try to cover by overlapping the edges of the flower. Dip them in the egg mixture. It will help edges to stick together. Then dip them in cornmeal one by one and leave gently to the frying pan which has at least 2cm deep oil in the bottom. Fry blossoms until their color turns golden and leave on paper towels to get rid of the excess oil. Serve warm with yoghurt aside. Enjoy!
As I mentioned before, Turkish cuisine has a very large section recipes for (dolma) stuffed vegetables. Most of them can be cooked either with mincemeat or rice stuffing, but courgettes are going well only with mincemeat. It is highly presentable for dinner, especially served with a dollop of yoghurt aside. Usually we make the food even more colourful by mixing different vegetables in the pot, such as tomatoes I have stuffed together with courgettes. So be brave to try different colours together, such as peppers, onions and even potatoes. Just clean the insides of the vegetable and fill it! So simple!
- 5 courgettes, long and thick enough to fill
- 300 grs of mincemeat
- 1-2 large onions
- 2 large tomatoes
- 1/2 cup of short grain rice
- half a bunch of parsley and mint
- salt, red and black pepper
- 1/2 cup olive oil
Start by cleaning the vegetables. Rinse them and scrub the skin, then halve them and scoop out the flesh by using a mellonballer. This thing is a real lifesaver:-) Keep the flesh to use later. You can chop them and make fritters by adding chopped onions, shredded carrots and 1-2 eggs, goes very well with yoghurt again! Set aside the shallow skins and prepare the stuffing. Dice onions and tomatoes, chop the greens and add to mincemeat. Add the seasoning, remember to add a little more salt for the courgettes. Add rice as it is, adjust the amount of olive oil according to your meat. Lean meat would need a little more oil. The stuffing should not be thick as to make meatballs. Add enough water to have a soft consistency, otherwise you would end up having hard dolmas. Stuff the courgettes loosely, never fill tightly. Place them in a pot and keep them in upright position. You can place small caps on each one with tomato slices. In case your filling would be more than you need, you can scoop out and fill hard tomatoes or onions as I mentioned above. Or you can keep the stuffing in freezer and use another time.
Add 2 cups of boiling water to the pot and leave to cook on a low simmer. Around 45 minutes would be enough for courgettes to get soft. If the pot has too much water at the end, just open the lid and leave to boil on high heat a couple of minutes for the juices to evaporate. Serve hot or warm, whole or sliced on a serving plate. Do not forget yoghurt and a coupke of fresh mint leaves. Enjoy!
