Wednesday 14 August 2013

Fried Squash Blossoms

Instead of bouquets of roses, my uncle gives my aunt bouquets of squash blossoms.  My cousins were telling me the amazing fried squash blossoms they had the other day, and so I decided to make them too.

So I'm currently in a small town in Southern Italy.  If you're curious, you can check this place out here.   Look, the place is so small and insignificant that it only occupies 3 lines on the wikipedia page.
But it's nice, I haven't been back in 8 years.  I used to come here every summer with the family.  It doesn't have much:  with the few shops that there are, they still close between 13:00 and 17:00 and Saturday afternoons and Sunday's.  Cell phone reception is appallingly bad everywhere, and this is the only internet cafe I could find.  And there's no wifi, I'm using this cable thing.   But I'm not complaining,  we're just going to the beach twice a day, i'm getting my dose of vitamin D and skin cancer.   I'm already really dark,  I have transformed from a mozzarella in Scotland to a nice piece of golden brown fried cheese.
Cooking? I'm staying with my cousin and so I haven't really been cooking...it's pretty much been pizza everyday. We've only eaten at home twice so far, hence the lack of updates. 

Be very careful with these blossoms as they're very delicate, it's easy to rip the petals and have the filling ooze out.  You can also batter them and fry them.  I used cacio cavallo which is a cheese from this area but you can use mozzarella or other cheeses that melt well. 

Ingredients
Squash blossoms
Cacio cavallo or mozzarella or other cheeses that melt well.

Method
Cut the stems off the blossoms so that only 1cm of it remains.  Gently rinse the blossoms in cold water and dry with a paper towel. Cut the cheese into small rectangle and gently push it into the blossoms, try not to rip the petals.

Heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil in a pan, enough to fill the pan to about 5mm.  When the oil is hot, add the blossoms.  Don't overcrowd the pan, don't have them lay on top of each other.  And fry for about 2 minutes on each side or until you see that the stems have softened.  Put on paper towel to drain the oil and repeat with the rest of the blossoms. 

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