Finally I serendipitously found zucchini blossoms for sale at the Farmer's Market. In tradition with Farmer's Market Sunday's, I bought a batch prepared to set out on the arduous task known as stuffed and fried zucchini blossoms! And, while time consuming, it was easier than I thought.
All you have to do is check the inside of the flower, remove the stamen (yellow polleny looking thing), and make sure there aren't any bugs.
I then combined ricotta, salt, pepper, and red chili flakes, stuffed it into a ziploc bag, cut off the end, and piped it into the flower. Just pipe enough to fill the flower. Obviously if it's oozing out then your fry time is going to be a mess.
The batter was a simple light batter. I just mixed flour and beer. I didn't measure anything - I just made it the consistency of a semi-runny pancake batter then dipped the blossoms in that batter only. No pre-dredging.
I put about 3 inches of oil into a wok and heated it up. I think if you own a deep fryer (which I never ever will in my lifetime) you're supposed to check the temp for like 350 degrees but that isn't so easy to do with a wok and a meat thermometer. To really check the temp of your oil, put the end of a chopstick in. Because they're made of bamboo and therefore naturally contain water, if your oil is hot enough then little bubbles will rapidly escape the chopstick and fry in the oil. Otherwise I have no tips for deep frying.
Because of the really light coating of batter, they were crisp and fried but mostly the blossom and filling was left instead of breading. I topped it with course salt and that was it. I can finally add a notch to the belt of obstacle I so desperately wanted to hurdle.
This is a variation on the traditional caprese because the shop I get burrata from was all out. They run out pretty much by noon daily. All they had for fresh cheese was a sheep's milk ricotta. Since the sheep's milk was a bit too harsh for the delicacy of a tomato, I seasoned it with salt, pepper, black truffle oil, and chopped basil. The balsamic reduction is the same as I describe in the previous post.
