Battered Zucchini Flowers With Halloumi
Battered zucchini flowers with halloumi is a dish my grandmother used to make for us when the zucchini flowers were in season. I can picture her in the kitchen as I’m writing this, over the stove using her small frying pan and her finger tips covered with batter. It was always an absolute treat eating these hot and biting into the warm halloumi. The perfect appetizer or meze dish!
Halloumi cheese
As part of my “Cheese lover of the month” role for Olympus Cheese this is the second recipe I am releasing using their products and more specifically their halloumi. The great non-melting properties of halloumi make it one of the most ideal cheeses to use for the battered zucchini flowers since it won’t melt and leak out. Furthermore, if you haven’t already done so, check out the first recipe I posted for Olympus cheese – “Halloumi dinner rolls with yoghurt”.
Zucchini flowers
To create these battered zucchini flowers stuffed with halloumi I was very grateful to be given some of my father in law’s homegrown crop. Otherwise, you may speak with your local grocer to try and order them for you. We’ve had them in abundance this season and we’ve definitely enjoyed them in a number of ways besides this recipe. For example, scrambled with halloumi for breakfast or stuffed with a herby rice mixture for dinner.
My father-in-law gave me a quick gardening lesson when I was at his house. He says that the zucchini flowers that don’t stem off zucchinis are considered to be “male” and that the ones that do stem off the zucchini (marrow) are considered “female”. That is important to know when it comes to cross pollination and ensuring that the zucchini plants are able to grow plentifully.
How to clean zucchini flowers
Zucchini flowers are quite delicate as they are thin and can easily tear. Therefore, as you handle them take extra care. There are three parts that need to be removed when cleaning them: the stem, sepal and pistil. The zucchini flowers need a short cooking time for this recipe hence the pistil is removed as it may be a bit bitter. Though when I stuff them with rice, due to the longer cooking time, I tend to not remove the pistil as it cooks through and it is not as bitter.
I was very lucky that my father-in-law took the time and actually did most of the preparation for me, so I didn’t have to remove a lot of the parts myself. But that also meant that I could not show you in this blog post how to do it yourselves, especially if this is your first time cooking with them.
However, a fellow foodie friend, Christine from Kali Orexi Melbourne has a great quick video recipe on how to make “Baked stuffed zucchini flowers with rice” and in that there is 40sec section (from 1’37’’) on how to clean the zucchini flowers. The actual recipe is really tasty also if you wanted to create a meal out of the zucchini flowers.
The batter used
The batter I use for the zucchini flowers includes some very basic ingredients. The combination of the self-raising flour with the mineral water creates an airy result. I like to add fine semolina as I find it adds an extra crunch in comparison to when I add just self-raising flour.
The final result of the batter should be not be too thick or very runny. The zucchini flowers are quite thin so you don’t want to cover it with a very thick layer of batter as the flavour will not be well balanced. At the same time, if it’s too thin the texture might not be too crisp and it is definitely messier.
