Love for Food

I've never heard of zucchini blossoms (ZB) before this year when I started to become obsessed with the local farmer's market. For several weeks I'd hear y fellow foodie work friend talk about them. Being a night owl, I always frequented the market during lunch. Terrible idea. It's always packed and the stuff is picked over.

Last Sunday, I checked out Batali's new food complex Eataly and was stoaked to find they carried zucchini blossoms, wrapped in plastic in packs of two. I ran home and made stuffed zucchini blossoms, which seems like the most popular way to prepare them. I stuffed them with ricotta and baked. I'm not very patient and the ZB are small that I overstuffed them :(. My stuffed ZB were delicious but all I tasted was the stuffing.
On Tuesday I finally made it to the farmer's market before work. I was surprised at how crowded it was at 8:30am and the line of people trying to get there hands on the ZB. Who knew the people of SoBro (South Bronx) were ZB aficionados! Since they are so hard to find I picked up a bag. The bag had about 25 ZB and I wanted to try another method of preparing them.
My first idea was a soup by Rick Bayless, but it seemed like way to much work. My foodie work friend recommended the recipe from the Homesick Texan blog. I changed the recipe around a bit. I took out the pepper, since I was too lazy to char and skin it. I also used less, lower fat cheese and no butter. At first I was worried that I had too many ZB but they wilt down quite a bit, like spinach. This was an easy dish to make but you have to make sure to carefully watch your quesadilla. My first batch ending up getting burnt. They do not take long at all to cook.

The quesadillas were very gooey and yummy. The ZB and onions provided a crunch and unique veggie taste. I would definitely make this again if I could get myself to wake up early enough next week. I was a bit sad that you loose the prettiness of the flower that you still get when stuffing. But the taste and textures of this quesadilla was great, and I prefer this method of cooking ZB. Does anyone have any other method of cooking ZB?

Ingredients: Serves Six
24 squash blossoms, stems and stamens removed.
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 half an onion, diced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
2 cups of reduced fat Monterrey Jack cheese, grated
12 tortillas (can use either corn or flour)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.
Method:

• Gently wash squash blossoms (there might be bugs inside) and remove stems and stamens. Roughly chop.
• Heat skillet to medium and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add onions and cook for about 10 minutes or until onions are clear.
• Add garlic, cilantro, squash blossoms and salt and pepper to taste and sauté for 10 minutes or until all the liquid from the flowers has evaporated.Remove from heat and set squash-blossom filling aside.
• In a skillet heated to medium, spray with cooking spray. Add a tortilla and cook it on one side until it puffs (about 30 seconds).
• Flip tortilla over and sprinkle over entire surface 1/4 cup of squash blossom filling and 1/3 cup of grated cheese.
• Top with another tortilla, and after cheese has melted and the two tortillas stick together (a couple of minutes), flip quesadilla and cook for a couple of minutes more.
• Repeat for the remainder of the filling and tortillas.
  

Weight Watcher Points: 10 points per serving (YIKES!!!)