Cooking Zucchini flowers in Tuscany

Holiday in Magliano in Toscana with tutte la famiglia including Nona ... or Grandma Betty as we like to call her.
Our Villa was perfectly situated, beautiful to look at and the weather was fabulous. Martha was slightly freaked out by he 65 hunting trophies dotted around the villa, including a giant wild boar head with eyes that follow you .. well that's Martha's view anyway.

Every day the lovely, if slightly out of breath, maid Guiseppina would leave us some vegetables from the garden. On the first day she left fresh courgette flowers, or fiori di zucchini, as she would say.

Mrs Cook and I made the batter together in a rather fetching piece of matrimonial and culinary harmony :

2 tbs flour
cold sparkling mineral water (thanks grandma)

We mixed the batter with enough fizzy water to make a smoothish batter (the cold sparkling mineral water makes it light and a little tempura like) and then dunked the flowers in and deep fried them in small batches in some olive oil for about 2 - 3 minutes.

We then drained them on some kitchen roll, dusted with some salt and wolfed them down whilst they were hot with a very chilled glass of prosecco ( and Fanta for Martha)

Everybody loved them, it's just a shame that you can't get them at Waitrose..... or maybe it isn't, perhaps some things are better left off of the supermarket shelves.

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