Look what I found

My Sunday usually begins far to early, by other people's standards, with a visit around 7am to my local farmer's markets.  Some would say that even at 7am I've missed the best of the produce.  To them I say: it's Sunday, a day of rest and that's the earliest I'm prepared to get up!  I always keep a look out for interesting and hard to get items as I wander around picking up my usual fruit, vegetables, coffee and breakfast (usually a pork bun from XO or a pain au chocolat from French Sin or both - maybe I need a market's breakfast post??).

When I was on holidays in Italy recently, zucchini flowers were available cheaply everywhere - markets and supermarkets alike.  Now back at home they are very hard to find (unless I grab them from the school garden when we have zucchinis on the go, which I haven't yet, so don't worry).  Zucchini are coming into season now, so you would think that for every stall with them, someone would think about boxing up the flowers too.  And maybe they do every week at the markets but they're all gone by my late arrival at 7am.  Today I found some, right at the back of a small stall and they were cutely still attached to the tiny zucchini.  In my head I thought I'm not going to pay more than $5 and I was in luck as they were $5, so I pounced on them!

The recipe for this batter is in my last blog post and worked out beautifully.  I only made a half batch, as I only had 6 flowers and several were quite small.  With that half batch of batter, I still used the whole egg (because what are you going to do with half an egg?) and also a few extra splashes of mineral water to loosen it up.  This batter would be suitable for any vegetables, as it's very similar to a tempura batter.  Next time I'll also put bigger pieces of mozarella inside the flower and possibly experiment with other stuffing.  This tasty dish is not an every day or even an every week food, but a once a year perhaps treat when you can find the flowers, so keep an eye out!

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @oitcfood