Stuffed Zucchini Flowers at Couteau Bonswan

Stuffed Zucchini Flowers

Published July 18th, 2006 in Meals

Usually, when one thinks of “zucchini” the idea of tens of thousands of them overflowing your garden is the first idea that comes to mind. But lets forget about the actual fruit of the plant for a moment and look at the flower.

If you don’t have your own garden, zucchini flowers can be difficult to get your hands on. I was lucky enough to spy some at the farmer’s market today, looking nice and fresh. They are often served dipped in a batter and fried, but as I’m trying to stay on the healthier side of eating lately, I opted against the deep frying.

I gently rinsed them and made sure there were no visitors inside. Some recipes say to remove the pistil, but I think that’s a bit fiddly for such a fragile food and besides, we all need a little more orange pollen in our lives.

This is not an exact recipe, but a starting point, so feel free to experiment as you will.

As Joe is off being musical this evening, I just made three flowers for myself. First, I steamed about 1.5 cups of escarole and chopped up 1 oz of mozzarella into small pieces. After the escarole was done, I added it and about half of a large clove of minced garlic to a bowl and pulverized it down a bit with my stick blender. This is to help get it to a consistency that is more easily introduced into the flower.

Stuffing these things is not the easiest task in the world. Just do your best and don’t worry about using your fingers. You will probably have some of the mixture left over. This is a good thing and will be your “sauce” for the spaghetti.

In a skillet, I started heating a tablespoon of oil and the rest of the garlic. As soon as it was hot, I laid the stuffed flowers in the pan and let them cook until the petals were browned nicely on all sides and the cheese in the filling seemed nice and melty. This doesn’t take long, so…

Cook your spaghetti before this step! The spaghetti should, ideally, be coming out of the pot, as the flowers are ready. Remove the flowers from the skillet, toss the spaghetti in as well as the leftover filling and heat it all through. The remaining oil in the pan coats the spaghetti to keep it from sticking together. When the cheese is again melty, slide it all out onto a plate and top with the stuffed flowers.

The flowers have the taste of zucchini, with a bitter floweryness (mmmm… pistil!) that is contrasted well with the cheese. You could easily stuff them with a softer cheese (ricotta, mascarpone) alone, but I wanted a bit more greenery involved and the mozzarella paste with the escarole worked well. I snipped the stems fairly close and they still had a tender crunch near the bottom.

This was the first time that I had cooked with zucchini flowers and I know that if I see them again, I’ll be sure to grab them.

A few final notes:

I used Ronzoni’s Healthy Harvest Whole Wheat Spaghetti (which is not fully whole wheat, but is the only one that tastes good to me).
If you stick to a 2 oz spaghetti serving, 1 oz of cheese (whole milk), and 1 tablespoon of oil, the recipe is roughly 400 calories.

11 Responses to “Stuffed Zucchini Flowers”

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1 sam Jul 19th, 2006 at 8:42 am

I made something similar a few weeks ago and although my picture looked great I couldnt blog it in the end because I thought they tasted awful (I did remove the stamen). I sizzled mine for a few seconds in olive oil and the petals were all mealy and gritty. Ugh! Afterwards I checked out lots of recipes and they all seemed to be dipped in batter like you say, whereas mine weren’t, so I thought that must have been where I went wrong. But maybe, like you, I should have shallow fried them instead.But also like you - I am not sure if I will bother with them again. I am sure that it is their looks that atttracts more than their taste.
2 Stefanie Noble Jul 19th, 2006 at 10:23 am

Hmmm… I would definitely eat these again! I didn’t mean to come across as hesitant in my post… there is a bitterness, but when paired with something like cheese, I think it works. The taste of the escarole added to that as well.

As for cooking method, I think I could have used even less oil. I only used a tablespoon so that there would be enough to coat the spaghetti as well. The flowers were definitely not submerged at all. I let them go on low heat for a decent amount of time as well (because I hadn’t timed my spaghetti correctly), so they were very soft on the petal end and pretty much melded with the filling with crisp edges, while the stem end was cooked through but still had a little bite to it.

It’s definitely a fiddly ingredient though. I hope others comment with their experiences so we can get a better idea of what does and doesn’t work if you don’t want to go the batter route.
3 sam Jul 19th, 2006 at 4:14 pm

I cooked mine really fast in v hot oil - so that is not the way.

My flowers were very small and most of them green, i kind of failed to mention that those ones (which I coudnt stuff) I sauteed more slowly in a little oil with garlic and lemon i think and they were delicious, and they had their stamen intact, so maybe your way is truly the way forward
4 Nicky Jul 23rd, 2006 at 10:57 pm

The colors in your photo are really striking! Yesterday I found Molly (Orangette’s) recipe with Zucchini flowers, now yours… Hopefully I can find some Zucchini flowers at the market
5 Stefanie Noble Jul 24th, 2006 at 2:34 pm

Thanks! I’m making this again tonight, actually. I just can’t resist those flowers at the markets!

(btw - the photos on your site are always stunning!)
6 Jennifer Jul 25th, 2006 at 4:40 pm

I adore stuffed squash flowers! Yours look fantastic!
7 Julie Jul 25th, 2006 at 8:40 pm

Your zucchini blossoms are gorgeous and I bet they’re delicious on top of pasta. I have yet to try making them again as there is only one stand selling them at my farmer’s market and they have not had them regularly. I was a little disappointed in my first go round with cooking them because the flowers themselves didn’t really seem to have much flavor, although the texture of the fried flowers was heavenly. I’m looking forward to further experimentation though.
8 Julie Aug 4th, 2006 at 6:20 am

I have been searching for zucchini blossoms, but have not seen them at all this season. If only I had a garden! I wanted to comment on your note on pasta. I’ve come to love whole wheat pasta even more than regular, especially for dishes with lots of veggies added. For a nutty taste I love the Whole Foods Market 365 brand. For all the nutritional benefits but with a taste that is virtually indistinguishable from white pasta, try Barilla’s brand with omega-3s. It is good in dishes like carbonara where you don’t want that nutty flavor. Bionaturae, an imported brand from Italy makes a wonderful, balanced pasta. Find it at Whole Foods. Lovely blog, by the way!
9 Stefanie Noble Aug 4th, 2006 at 6:59 am

There are no Whole Foods to be found in upstate New York, a point that I’m kind of glad about as we need a few less out-of-state businesses coming in. There is a thriving farmer’s market and co-op culture in Ithaca as well, making the need for a Whole Foods almost nil.

I found the Barilla Plus to have a very strange texture. It isn’t bad, but it just seemed very crumbly and I could definitely detect a “chickpea” nature to it.

Wegmans has a fully whole wheat line that I’m planning to try next time I need to buy more. They tend to have good quality store-brand options.

I think Cook’s Illustrated rated the Bionaturae very highly as well, so I’ll have to look for that.
10 AZCook Aug 4th, 2006 at 9:49 am

Hi,

Stephanie Noble wtote:

“Hmmm… I would definitely eat these again! I didn’t mean to come across as hesitant in my post… there is a bitterness, but when paired with something like cheese, I think it works”

It is advisable and necessary IMO to remove the pistils/stamens of the male flowers before using squash/zucchini flowers because these are bitter. It sounds like perhaps you didn’t do that…

yours sincerely
11 Stefanie Noble Aug 4th, 2006 at 9:57 am

Hmmm… Just for reference, my name is spelled with an F, not PH!

I think there has been a bit of confusion surrounding how I truly felt about the zucchini flowers. To sum up:

- I would make them again (and have!).

- I don’t remove the pistils/stamen when stuffing them. Maybe if I made them without stuffing, but otherwise I think it’s unnecessary.

- When I say “bitterness”, I don’t mean an unpleasant taste. It’s the same sort of bitterness that you find in many dark, leafy greens. They taste like plants!

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