Quarantine Cooking: Vegetable Sides

I am not overly fond of leftovers, and neither is the husband. However, we're resolved to not waste food, and so having a vegetable garden is great for zhushing up a meal of leftover protein. Because I'm in the midst of working, I pulled out frozen fish filets for dinner. However, I didn't realize it was only a serving for one and put the accompanying french fries back into the freezer and pulled out leftover barbecue spare ribs too. Fish for him, pig for me. Macaroni and cheese as a side. And since I had to bake the pasta and fish at 425 degrees, I decided to roast zucchini and yellow squash  with the mains and starch instead of constructing a salad.

I've posted before how to cook my mother-in-law's macaroni and cheese. For the vegetables, I sliced and massaged them in olive oil and chopped garlic, sprinkled salt and red pepper flakes, and then laid two branches of rosemary on top. One oven dinners are great time savers. The fish and the vegetables roasted alongside the baking mac n' cheese, and I threw the spare ribs on the pan the last 5 minutes just to heat through in order to not get dry.

On another night, I cooked squash blossoms for the very first time. I'd been saying for the past couple years to the hubs that he needed to at least pick the zucchini and yellow squash flowers before they turned into squash, so I could stuff them and fry them. Finally, a couple days ago he did and showed me the handful of blooms from our vegetable plot.

He went and got permission from another gardener to gather 5 more blooms. I think they're gorgeous.

Next I searched online for a recipe on how to to cook fried squash blossoms. The first recipe I viewed called for ricotta cheese and mint, neither which I had. I then viewed Giada de Laurentiis' recipe which did contain the ingredients I did have on hand.

I poured myself a Chardonnay, sipped and then got started.

I knew I got the goat cheese for something other than beet salad or a lemon and red onion pizza and the cream cheese for something other than smoked salmon and bagels or rugelach.

I had never thought to use a bubbly liquid for batter. Doh! Beer battered fish is made with beer. My neighbor Cecilia thought the same thing and plans to buy fish and sparkling water for her fish tacos--my planned meal too after this blog although I plan to use (and drink) the Pacifico beer I bought a while ago. Every neighbor I shared this appetizer with commented on how light and crispy the batter was on the squash blossom. My friend, Diane doesn't even bother to stuff her blossoms with anything, and I might do it that way next time too if we decide not to get sick of squash.

I recycled the oil from my failed french fries. A tiny sepal dropped into oil and started bubbling, which indicated that the oil was hot enough for frying.

I was so excited at cooking something new that I forgot to photograph the dipping of the filled blossom in the wet flour mixture and then letting the excess batter drip off before dropping it into the hot oil.

There were some blossoms that required more than 1 or 2 minutes to fry until golden, depending on how large the blossom was and how much filling was in it to cook through. I love the glimpses of yellow and green through the batter.

The frying time of each blossom was probably also affected by how many blossoms I could fit at one time into the pan. As a new blossom is lowered into the oil, the frying temperature dropped.

I'm also regretful that I didn't photograph beautiful plating though my friends who ate their little appetizer all commented how light and crunchy and delicious the fried squash blossoms were and inquired about the herbaceous filling. Must. do. fried. squash. blossoms. again.