Fried Flowers

I mentioned once before that I had a garden that is not the upside down tomato plant it is about a 6 by 4 foot patch of dirt in our back yard. Not much of a garden really we have pumpkins, sunflowers and a few flowers that are quickly being strangled by the much larger residents. I have been postponing any pruning until I actually saw some blossoms, a few days ago it looked like I would either have to pull some entire plants or open my own market in the fall. Before I started shopping for a flat bet truck I thought I would try something new, for me anyway, Fried Pumpkin Blossoms. I also knew that the time it took me to research this would buy me a few days before pruning.

I tried epicurious and a few other websites from Italian to Thai southern twists but in the end I thought I would be best served by making them my own way. "My own way" being code for "using items that I have at home now" that way I don't have to buy a bunch of stuff to sit in my refrigerator until I question what it is.

The ingredients that I used were...
Filling
1 1/2 cups of Ricotta Cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
2 cloves of Garlic minced
1 very small Yellow Onion diced
1/4 cup Kalamata Olives pitted and diced
1 tsp chopped fresh Oregano
just a little plain yogurt to smooth it out.

I mixed these ingredients and set them aside

I had already picked 6 big pumpkin blossoms and removed the pistil (the junk in the middle) and washed them. I could have done about twice that many judging by what I had left over, but what was I going to do with that? Then I set up flour, egg wash and dried breadcrumbs for frying and heated up my small saucepan with oil to fry in (it is a one quart pan). I stuffed each flower with the amount of cheese mixture that would fit and closed the petals over the stuffing and twisted the end a little to seal. Then I dredged them, one at a time, through flour, eggwash then breadcrumbs and dropped them, one at a time, into the little sauce pan. when they were done, the coating had that crispy finish that everybody likes I put them on a plate lined with a paper towel to cool.

As I ate them I couldn't help but wonder, curiously, where I had eaten something like these before. They were kind of sour at the ends with the sweet melted ricotta cheese in the middle. Then it struck me that they tasted a little like the Fried Green Tomatoes that my mother making when I was a kid. Now I am not sure, I guess I will have to make the tomatoes soon to see.

After the research that I did I was looking at some more stuffed pumpkin flower recipes and found one that had them stuffed with roasted garlic an mashed potatoes... I may try that soon.