Recipe: Stuffed squash blossoms with ricotta, lemon zest and basil.

In my ongoing effort to please my internist, and get her to stop muttering things like "impending gout" and other pesky phrases, I am trying to incorporate more vegetables in my life. I was meandering around, thinking of what to serve my guests at an upcoming dinner party, and was pleasantly surprised come across a box of flowers I could eat.

This solved two of my three quandaries.
1: It was not meat or alcohol, so it must be a vegetable.
2: It looks really good and is sure to impress my guests.
Now for problem #3, how to make it taste good. The answer of course, is to stuff it with cheese, because cheese is amazing. Done.

Surprisingly easy to make, a stuffed squash blossom arriving on someone's plate makes you an instant gastronomic hero. Seriously. The key is once you stuff them, casually lay them out as part of your "prep work". Everyone will assume you're Anthony Bourdain, and they haven't even tasted anything yet. Genius.

However, make sure you have practiced cooking one before everyone shows up, or you run the risk of screwing things up in front of an audience.


I'd say that went well...


You need:
Squash blossoms (try to use them within 2 days of purchase)
Ricotta cheese
Parmigiana, or any salty hard cheese (pecorino, cotija, etc).
1 egg
A lemon
Fresh Basil (about 10-12 good sized leaves)
Salt and pepper
Some warm tomato sauce (either home made or your favorite jarred version, I like Rao's Vodka sauce)

First GENTLY wash the blossoms by hand. Be careful, they are fragile and fast running water can tear them. You need to rinse the insides too, these things grew in a field after all. Then trim the stems off and set aside to dry.

You can cut the stem right at the flower's base. Pictured here is how NOT to do it.

Next, finely chop your basil: Wrap all the leaves up together and cut it like a teeny green carrot, this chiffonades it, then you chop those little ribbons widthwise, done.

Zest your lemon.

Grate up a good handful of the hard cheese, and mix into the ricotta (about half of a big tub) with the zest and basil. Add salt and pepper to taste, or add more grated cheese (this effectively adds salt). It should look like this:


Using a spoon, carefully fill the flowers. Again, they are delicate (as flowers should be) so be careful. Just fill them until the cheese reaches the top of the green section. Any leftover filling is delicious on toast.


Whisk up your egg, and dip the blossom in it (focusing on the petals). You don't want to try and make a batter here, you simply need to "glue" the petals shut. Give them a gentle twist to seal them.

Over medium heat, sautee gently in a little butter. Use a very thin spatula, and try not to mess with them to much. You'll get a nice browning of the egg, if some cheese leaks out you'll have some delicious fried bits of it. Top with some tomato sauce and viola.

The plate on the right was the original poster boy, but someone started eating it while I was waiting for the camera app to start up on my iPhone. Yes they are that good.

This concludes Gastroliaison's recipe for stuffed squash blossoms with ricotta, lemon zest and basil.