Saturday 21 September 2013

Beignets de fleur de courgette et citrouille (courgette and pumpkin flower fritters)

Those are typical from Nice, where I spent most of my uni years...

Our vegetable garden has pretty much been taken over by courgette and pumpkin plants (those grow BIG), and since it's getting to the end of the season (the -huge- leaves are starting to brown), I thought I'd use the flowers that haven't transformed into veggies yet to make those beignets...

But not before we got this loot:

Oh and here are some of the pumpkin plants:

(Yep, the whole mass at the back and on the left side is made of pumpkin plants!)

And here are the flowers:

(The small orange ones at the bottom are courgette flowers, and the bigger yellow ones at the top are pumpkin flowers. Next to some tomatoes and spring onions also from the garden).

Anyway... I used the recipe from this website.

Here's a translation of the important bits:

Ingredients:
  • about 2 dozen courgette/pumpkin flowers
  • 75g plain flour
  • 10cl cold milk
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • salt & pepper

Preparation:

1. Wash the flowers delicately, checking that there are no creepy crawlies in them. Cut the stems at the base of the flowers.
2. Make the batter:
    a) Mix the flour, egg yolk, olive oil and a bit of the milk. Add the rest of the milk gradually while mixing.
    b) Beat the egg white until firm peaks form (damn, that takes a while!).
    c) Gently fold the egg white into the mixture. Season with S&P.
3. Dip each flower into the batter, and fry it for about 2 minutes, or until the batter is golden.
I don't have a deep fat frier so I just pan fried them, and that worked reasonably well.

Here's the result:

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