Stuffed Courgette Flowers

If you have a courgette plant in your garden then you want to pick the flowers in the morning as they close in the early afternoon. Cut them from the stem just below the bottom of the flower and place in a bag in the fridge until you're ready to cook them that evening. There are two types of flowers, the male ones are the ones pictured here and the female ones have a small courgette looking like bit attached to the base. I prefer to stuff the male flours so that the female ones can develop into full sized courgettes, but they both work equally well.

Ingredients:

• 4 tsp pine nuts
• 4 tsp sultanas
• 4 tbsp ricotta cheese
• 4 tsp grated Grana Padano cheese
• 4 courgette flowers
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 egg, well beaten in a wide but shallow bowl
• 4 tbsp plain flour, in a separate wide but shallow bowl

Method:

1. Put the pine nuts into a small frying pan and heat over a medium heat for a few minutes, until they start to brown. Make sure to toss the pan every minute or so to allow them to move around a bit and toast different sides.
2. While waiting for the nuts to toast, place the sultanas in a small bowl and cover with water to re-hydrate them a little.
3. Finely chop the toasted pine nuts and then add to a medium sized bowl.
4. Drain the sultanas and roughly chop them before adding them to the pine nuts.
5. Add both the cheeses to the nuts and sultanas, season with salt and pepper and mix well.
6. Take each courgette flower carefully in hand and pinch out part in the very centre which, in the case of male flowers, is covered in pollen.
7. Fill each flower with a generous tablespoon of the cheese mixture and carefully close the top over them.
8. At this point you can put the stuffed flowers on a plate and place in the fridge for a few hours until you are ready to cook them.
9. Heat the sunflower oil in a frying pan over a medium high heat.
10. Hold each flower by the stem and carefully coat it first in the beaten egg and then the flour before gently resting it in the frying pan.
11. After about a minute or two on each side, turn the flowers in the pan until all the sides are a golden brown colour. The timing of this works out such that when doing four flowers, by the time you've coated the last one and placed it in the pan, the first one should be about ready to turn.
12. Serve immediately.

Serves two people.