Courgette Flower

Ask any gardener what they have most of in their gardens this time of year and they will probably tell you tomatoes or courgettes! We have an abundance of the latter! Now ask a good chef what is the best thing you can do with a courgette and if they are honest they will probably, at this time of year, tell you to throw it at someone you don't like! Well to be fair there are lots of other exciting things you can do with courgettes in the kitchen and my favourate is to bake them along with leeks and a good strong cheese. We keep a nice local goat cheese just for such purposes.

However it is the courgette flower that I wish to refer to here. Again there is an abundance of beautiful courgette flowers around at the moment and it is a wonderful opportunity to practice your tempura and plate dressing skills. This is a wonderful dish to prepare with students as they go through the whole process from picking the flowers in the garden, removing the stamens, cleaning, preparing the filling; stuffing the flowers, deep frying, drying and finally dressing the plates. It is also one of those recipes where seeing it done is absolutely vital rather than reading and working from a recipe book.
I like to use a sweet potato, goat cheese and pine nut stuffing and this dish can be served with a wide variety of engaging delights. One of our most popular side dishes include puy lentils salsa with garlic aioli. I look forward to doing this with you and don't worry we have never thrown a courgette at anyone yet but you have been warned!