Monday, June 15, 2009

Squash blossoms

I heard about frying squash blossoms before and somewhere I remember that these mythical squash blossoms grow on your zucchini plants . . . so i've been waiting . . . . and watching

and these appeared:
I first noticed these about three days ago (after those heavy rains). They are crusted with dirty in the above photo.

Today, though, they were larger and vibrantly full of color:
It's amazing how fast things grow in this garden! I mean, wow.

I was looking around for the place I read about the fried squash blossom recipe and found this scrumptious one on a blog called Cooking With Anne. But, in addition to her recipe, Anne related some very valuable information - there are male and female blossoms (duh), meaning, some of the blossoms will produce fruit (or vegetables, as is the case here) and need to be left on the plant. These are called the female blossoms. You want to pluck off the male blossoms only, Anne says.

This makes a world of sense. Here is a great informative link describing how to discern between the male and female blossoms, with pictorial illustrations. The easiest way to differentiate is by looking at the bottom of the blossom - is there a green bump, or a long skinny stem? If it's a stem, it's a male flower. If it's the green bump, it's female, and the bump eventually grows into zucchini, as long as that flower is pollinated. Another way you can tell is that the male flowers have nothing but stamen inside, the female flowers . . .. more female looking stuff.

One other tidbit I learned was that if the female flowers are not fertilized, they wither up and die. Hmmmm, reminds me of how a lot of the flowers on the Early Girl plant are looking right now. More on that later.

Anne's recipe is to pipe a mixture of goat cheese and chives into the blossoms, dip into a loose batter and fry in oil until crispy .. . . hers look divine but I don't want to steal the photo. Go to her blog to check it out and hopefully I will have my own to show soon!

5 comments:

Natty said...

I wish we lived closer to one another. Your green thumb is making me super envious!

Siren said...

HA HA HA have you seen the sorry story of the peas? Or the sorry shrinking lavender? or the wilted dead arugula? I guess it is time to do a "garden failures" post . . .

but thank you :) I did have one.nice.salad.

Chris said...

Hey! Let me know how it turns out. I have seen the blossoms on FoodTV but never in a store. Whole Foods didnt have them. let me know if you try them out!

Natty said...

Dude. I can kill anything ANYTHING. I'm like Peggy Hill over here. :-(

MAYBELLINE said...

I have asked other about frying the blossoms. I was told that the mess wasn't worth the effort. With that, I put my mind to collecting recipes for the bounty of zucchini ahead.

World hunger could be stopped by sending each citizen of earth 2 zucchini seeds. Really.