Fiori di zucca al forno recipe

Stuffed zucchini flowers with ricotta, lemon, mint and capers

On a normal Tuscan summer I wouldn’t be cooking with an oven right now — it would be off limits until September! But we are having a gloriously wet and cool start to the summer — thank you weather gods, thank you. After what we went through last summer (basically a 3 month long heatwave, here’s a taste of what we were doing during it), I am grateful for every cool night breeze, every sprinkle, every dark rain cloud that we’ve had so far. So for as long as baking is still on the cards, I’ll be making these stuffed zucchini flowers!

Honestly I usually prefer to fry these in a light flour and water batter (with this same filling, which I have been making a lot lately) but my tolerance to standing in front of the frying oil is also close to becoming off limits, plus then there’s the pesky job of having to get rid of the frying oil.

This is something I get asked about often and I actually wrote quite a bit about what I do with frying oil in the Fritti (fried) chapter of Cinnamon & Salt that I’ll share whenever I get the chance. I don’t ever reuse cooking oil. Why? Mainly because it is carcinogenic and studies have shown it may trigger breast cancer growth; but it also doesn’t taste as good and the smoking point lowers each time you use it — and when that temperature goes down, you end up not being able to heat the oil as high as you should and the result is soggy and greasy fried things, which nobody wants.

Once I’ve finished frying and turned the heat off, that’s it. The oil cools down, it goes into a big cannister that I have for used frying oil (this one) and, when full, it gets taken to the tip, where our local council has a special bin for recycling used cooking oil so it can get turned into more useful things like soap or environmentally friendly biodiesel.

I have to admit, I decided to bake these because the oil cannister is full to the brim right now — we fry things at almost all of our market day cooking classes and we haven’t had time to empty it! Coincidentally, I had noticed that two of my favourite food people, le sorelle Passera (the Passera sisters, Gigi and Marisa), had baked their potato-stuffed zucchini flowers. They looked irresistible.

So on a big cooking day during our latest workshop at Enoteca Marilu, where a trip to the market resulted in us coming back to the kitchen with anchovies (to dip in flour, then egg, and fry), butter beans, small pale green zucchinis with the flowers still attached, fresh ricotta made that morning from the cheese van, bunches of herbs for fazzoletti pasta with basil sauce (to appear soon in my Corriere della Sera column), and a mountain of cherries for a tiramisu, I decided to bake my stuffed zucchini flowers and when I posted it in stories I had so many requests for a recipe — so here it is!

I think of this as a less messy, slightly quicker version of the fried ones. Don’t get me wrong, I will forever love fried zucchini flowers — they are one of the relatively few reasons I welcome summer — but you do have to make a batter (ahead of time if possible) and be prepared for the potential mess, including clean up of used oil afterwards. This baked recipe just gets you there a little quicker and it means you have your hands free for about 15 minutes to do other things.

Stuffed baked zucchini flowers from Enoteca Marilu

12-15 zucchini flowers
300 gr ricotta
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon capers (if salted, rinse and soak in water for 10 minutes)
2-3 sprigs each of basil and mint, finely chopped
salt and pepper
handful of Parmesan cheese
Extra virgin olive oil

Pull out the stamens (if you have male flowers; the pistils if you have female flowers — how can you tell? Female flowers have the fruit attached too, like in the photos above! Male flowers have just a stem). If possible try and do this without breaking the flower but if it’s too tricky, use a knife or scissors (rather than tear) to break open one side of the flower to reach inside.

In a medium bowl, use a fork or whisk to mix together the ricotta, lemon zest, capers (you could use a few anchovies, chopped, instead) and herbs. Season with a good pinch of salt, some ground pepper and a good amount of the Parmesan cheese (just leave a spoonful or two for baking). Roll this mixture into cherry-sized balls and place them inside the zucchini flowers where the stamens/pistils were and twist the tops to “close” them.

Place the stuffed zucchini flowers in a lightly greased baking tray and then scatter over the rest of the parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes or until the surface of the flowers are golden brown. These are good warm but just as nice once they’ve cooled down too.