Zucchini flowers are a season favorite, especially filled with ricotta, lemon zest and sunflower seeds. They are so beautiful and so tasty. Have you tried cooking them?
Stuffed zucchini flowers make the perfect appetizer or party food. You may prepare zucchini flowers fried or baked. They’re both wholesome and delicious. The only issue is zucchini flowers are rare to find, so in case you see some of these beauties in the farmers market, don’t lose the chance to buy and cook them.
My better half calls the fried zucchini flowers vegetarian “chicken wings”. There are some months now that we don’t eat any meat (we’re still eating seafood though) and are trying to get proteins from other sources. Zucchini flowers filled with fresh ricotta are a great substitute.
Stuffed zucchini flowers with ricotta and sunflower seeds
Prep
Cook
Total
Yield 4-6 servings
Ingredients
- 20 small - 15 big zucchini flowers
- 1 cup ricotta
- 3 tbsp. toasted sunflower seeds
- Salt
- Pepper
- ½ tsp lemon zest
- 2 eggs - to egg wash
- 1 cup of flour
- Olive oil for frying (in case you are frying them)
Instructions
- Start by toasting the sunflower seeds on a pan on high heat for 2-3 minutes. This step is not a must, but I really love toasted since so I do not skip it.
- Gently wipe zucchini flowers with damp kitchen towel and remove the stamens.
- In a medium bowl add ricotta, salt, pepper, lemon zest and toasted sunflower seeds and mix well.
- To fill the zucchinis scrape the mixture into a pastry bag or use a teaspoon.
- In a small shallow bowl add the eggs and whisk well.
- In another big shallow plate spread the flour.
- Open each flower and pipe out the ricotta mixture using a pastry bag or a teaspoon. Be careful not to overfill the flowers, so the filling doesn’t seep out as they cook.
- Now get ready to fry them.
- Heat olive oil in a deep frying pan. I pour enough olive oil to cover the pan bottom (about 1 cm high).
- Dip each stuffed flower in the eggs’ mixture, then roll in the flour.
- Cook the stuffed zucchini flowers in the hot olive oil and 2 minutes on each side. Try not to overcrowd the pan, so they can cook well.
- Remove the flowers from the heat and place them over paper towel, to remove the excess oil.
Enjoy warm.
Notes
1 cup – a standard cup of 240 ml
I’ve also made zucchini flowers in the oven. They taste very nice too. In this case, after you have rolled them on egg and flour bake in the preheated oven at 200 degrees C for about 10-15 minutes.
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