Last night, I tried something I've heard a lot about, but only eaten once or twice in my life: stuffed squash blossoms. And of course, my first attempt at making this delicacy comes with a story!
The story begins with compost. Last fall's compost. Which contained a lot of winter squash seeds. Which resulted in a lot of "volunteer" winter squash plants in this summer's garden. This is all the more ironic - that the volunteer squashes (which Bob was going to get rid of) are the most advanced plants we have at this moment, because we were out of town for two weeks right after Bob tilled, and weeds took over the garden before he could plant one seed. He has spent the last seven weeks of his life on his knees, weeding.
Personally, I think he is nuts.
Anyway, I was looking around the garden hoping for signs of edibles, when I noticed an abundance of blossoms on those volunteer squash.
I asked around for recipes, and looked on the web, and finally, my Saturday trip to the Geauga Fresh Farmers' Market sealed it. I got a package of Mackenzie Creamery Sweet Fire - fresh cherve with port wine and a touch of habanero pepper knowing it was going into those squash blossoms!
I stuck with the simplest batter - flour, cornstarch, salt and beer. While it chilled, I carefully washed the blossoms, cleaned out the stamens and dried them. Stuffed with the cheese, they looked like this:
After a dip in batter and about 3 minutes in some hot oil:
Hot, crunchy, oozy, cheesy - pure comfort food.
We had fun playing with this food, that's for sure.
The story begins with compost. Last fall's compost. Which contained a lot of winter squash seeds. Which resulted in a lot of "volunteer" winter squash plants in this summer's garden. This is all the more ironic - that the volunteer squashes (which Bob was going to get rid of) are the most advanced plants we have at this moment, because we were out of town for two weeks right after Bob tilled, and weeds took over the garden before he could plant one seed. He has spent the last seven weeks of his life on his knees, weeding.
Personally, I think he is nuts.
Anyway, I was looking around the garden hoping for signs of edibles, when I noticed an abundance of blossoms on those volunteer squash.
I asked around for recipes, and looked on the web, and finally, my Saturday trip to the Geauga Fresh Farmers' Market sealed it. I got a package of Mackenzie Creamery Sweet Fire - fresh cherve with port wine and a touch of habanero pepper knowing it was going into those squash blossoms!
I stuck with the simplest batter - flour, cornstarch, salt and beer. While it chilled, I carefully washed the blossoms, cleaned out the stamens and dried them. Stuffed with the cheese, they looked like this:
After a dip in batter and about 3 minutes in some hot oil:
Hot, crunchy, oozy, cheesy - pure comfort food.
We had fun playing with this food, that's for sure.
