Stuffed and Fried Zucchini Blossoms

Stuffed and Fried Zucchini Blossoms are unquestionably the best appetizer I’ve had so far. Blossoms are stuffed with cheese and shrimps then dipped into a batter and deep fried. What a combination! These are so good! Out of this world! Truly addictive! I need to make them more often. Well, until their season ends.

You can’t imagine how I was happy when I saw these lovely flowers at our local bazaar the other day. These are not very popular in this city, so I hadn’t had a chance of cooking with them before. I ate zucchini blossoms stuffed with spicy rice and cooked in a pot with olive oil just like other Turkish stuffed vegetables. They were amazing! I learnt that this is one of the two most well-known methods of cooking zucchini (or squash) blossoms. I was looking for some rare recipes though.

So we asked some friends what we can make with zucchini blossoms. Two commonly suggested recipes were rice stuffed blossoms and deep fried blossoms. But we decided on Karides ve Peynirli Kabak Çiçeği (Zucchini Blossoms with Shrimps and Cheese).

I didn’t follow the original recipe though, I made some changes and made these Stuffed and Fried Zucchini Blossoms my way. First I cooked shrimps in a garlic tomato sauce and let it cool down. If you are interested, in the original recipe shrimps are boiled in water with bay leaf, lemon zest, salt and garlic until they turn reddish and drained.

Then comes the cheese mixture. You can use whatever cheese you like. I used a special Turkish cheese curd called ‘Lor’, which is low fat and saltless. You can replace it with goat cheese, feta or mozzarella. To give the cheese a little more flavor, I mixed it with a little lemon juice and chopped parsley. Add the cooked shrimps in this cheese mixture and stuff the flowers carefully. Try not to tear them when stuffing. Don’t worry if you tear though. Just gently squeeze it in your palm. It will be okay when dipped into the batter.

I prepared the frying batter using flour, beer, salt and chili powder as told in the recipe, but I changed the amounts since I had fewer flowers. Dip stuffed blossoms into this batter and deep fry. Serve hot.

I guarantee everyone in your family will be hooked by these shrimp cheese stuffed and fried zucchini blossoms when you try.

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