There comes a time in every gardener’s life when you find yourself with too many zucchini. Signs of an over abundant zucchini plant include your neighbors finding a few in the letterbox and the kids asking for beans and broccoli… anything but another zucchini dish. Thankfully, as kids, we never had that problem. Mum would simply whip up a batch of zucchini fritters, and we would (along with the neighbors) always be asking for more.

You can use the zucchini fruit as well as the flowers for this dish. When picking flowers for this dish, you will notice that there are male and female flowers. The male flowers grow on a stem, while the female flowers grow at the end of a baby zucchini. Use male flowers for this dish, just remember to leave a few on the plant for cross pollination.

Enjoy!!

Note: Zucchini flowers are a bit of a luxury here in Melbourne (unless you have a veggie patch, in which case, they are common place) If you don’t have access to back-yard zucchini flowers, you can omit them from the recipe. We have used a combination of zucchini flowers and the zucchini fruit itself, however if you find yourself in abundance of one over the other, that’s ok… just stick to the total weight requirements of this recipe. We do recommend you use as many zucchini flowers you can get your hands on!

What you will need:

400 grams of zucchini and zucchini flowers

Approx 5 tablespoons plain flour

Oil for shallow frying

1 tsp salt

1 small red chilli finely sliced (optional)

handful of fresh basil

1 egg

How to prepare:

Grate the zucchini and chop the zucchini flowers and basil.

Transfer into a mixing bowl and add the salt, egg and chilli.

Add the flour one spoonful at a time. Add enough flour to make a thick paste.

Set aside to rest for at least 20 minutes. As the paste is resting, the zucchini will release water, making the paste a little runnier.

Heat the oil in a shallow fry pan. Test the heat of the oil by placing a little dollop of mixture into the oil. The oil should start bubbling straight away.

Once the oil is hot, take spoonfuls of the mixture and place into the oil. The fritter will start to firm up. Once it can be moved around the pan without separating, turn it over and cook the other side.

Drain on absorbent paper. Serve hot or cold, and remember to leave a few in your neighbors letter box.