Zucchini / Pumpkin Flower Fritters - Quick Breakfast / Snack

I dream of Italy. A lot. I do. It is my culinary mecca (as it is for three quarters of the world). And when I go there someday – which I hope to – I will eat like it is nobody’s business. I will stuff my face with their glorious gnocchi, ravioli and tagliatelle in millions of sauce variations eating like a pig (and eat pig too), making orgasmic noises. But until then, I will continue to discover little Italian culinary pleasures in my own kitchen like this post.

Although you can find every single Italian dish ever invented in the restaurants, some are still far from reaching the kitchens of India. Zucchini flower fritters is one of them in my opinion. And when I planted zucchini in the backyard it grew wildly and made humongous zucchinis besides also producing numerous flowers. That is when I decided I should try making zucchini flower fritters. The internet is filled with deep fried versions of zucchini flowers but I found one at Parsley Thief that I loved. This is more like a zucchini pancake and you need not necessarily fry them in oil, which means slightly healthier than the deep fried version.

Zucchini Flower Fritters

Ingredients you would need, well almost.

Chop the zucchini flowers, shallots and garlic

Saute the zucchini flowers

Make the fritter batter

Pan fry the fritters

You will need:

Zucchini flowers - take 10 – 15 for 6 pancakes

Flour - 1 cup

Basil leaves - handful

Egg - 1 (you can totally skip it if you are not an egg person)

Yogurt - 1 cup

Garlic - 2 pods

Shallots - 4

Cheese - a tiny block (of cheese in stock, I used cheddar. Also I tried once with tofu and it tasted well too)

Baking soda - a pinch

Oil - as required

Salt - as required

Preparation:

• Wash the zucchini flowers thoroughly under running water. Remove the green sepals from the flowers and chop them finely after checking for any bugs.
• Chop the shallots and garlic.
• Heat oil and sauté shallots and garlic for a minute. Drop the zucchini flowers and sauté them for another minute. Turn the flame down and leave it to cool.
• Grate the cheese.
• Break the egg into a bowl, add chopped basil, grated cheese, yogurt, flour, salt and then the cooled down zucchini flower mixture.
• Whisk well and check for consistency and to avoid lumps. If needed, add water / yogurt / milk to adjust.
• Add baking soda as the final step.
•  Heat the griddle and pour the fritters, cook in low flame on both sides.
• Transfer it into a paper towel so the towel absorb oil from the fritter.
• Serve hot (it can be eaten plain or with Tabasco).

Note: I tried making the fritters with whole wheat flour and found that it turns out dense. I also tried without adding soda but the effect was just not the same.