delvious

Have you ever tried a zucchini blossom before?  Delicately flavored and conveniently stuffable, they are often brimming with a cheesy filling, lightly battered and deep fried.   As much as I love deep fried anything, I decided to skip the mess and tried baking a lighter version of the typical preparation.

Recipe

A Saturday farmers’ market trip yielded these just-picked squash blossoms, fragrant basil and some amazing freshly made ricotta.  (Once you’ve had fresh ricotta, you will not be able to go back to the kind you would find next to the cream cheese at the grocery store.)

The hardest part of this recipe is finding the right high-quality ingredients.  Once you’ve got them, all that is left to do is chop some basil, crush some garlic, crack an egg, and stir in some Parmigiano-Reggiano, salt and ground pepper.  I carefully spooned the filling into the blossoms, twisted the tops shut and sprinkled them with breadcrumbs.  After 20 minutes in the oven, the filling will firm up a bit and the breadcrumbs will get toasty.  It’s delicious, and no one has to know this impressive looking appetizer only took 15 minutes to prepare.

Baked Zucchini Blossoms Stuffed with Basil Ricotta

A Delvious original recipe

Prep time + Bake time: 15 minutes + 20 minutes

Serves 6

Ingredients

3/4 cup fresh ricotta

1/3 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

1 egg, beaten

6 large zucchini blossoms, rinsed with stamens removed

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease a sheet tray with non-stick cooking spray or butter.

2.  In a medium bowl, combine ricotta, basil, garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3.  Once you are satisfied with the taste of the filling, stir in the beaten egg.  (If you are making the filling ahead of time, refrigerate until you are ready to bake the blossoms.)

4.  Carefully spoon 1-2 tablespoons of the filling into each blossom.  Gently twist the tops closed and place them side by side on the prepared baking sheet.

5.  Sprinkle the breadcrumbs evenly on top of the stuffed blossoms.

6.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until the breadcrumbs are lightly toasted.  Serve warm.

3 Comments | In: Appetizer | tags: basil, breadcrumbs, garlic, ricotta, zucchini blossoms. | #

Sometimes I’ll come across a recipe that I just can’t get out of my head.  After reading a rave review from The Kitchn, Jaime Oliver’s recipe for Chicken in Milk became one of them for several reasons:

• Undertaking the daunting challenge of cooking a whole chicken for the first time ever to hopefully achieve a deliciously moist result;
• Putting my still-sort-of-new and beautiful Le Creuset dutch oven to good use; and
• (most importantly) Using curdled milk for sauce.

Delvious?  I had to find out.   Oliver tells us to trust him on this one, but it sort of sounds like he had gone off his rocker when he came up with the recipe.  All of us know that you’re not supposed to add both lemon and milk to your tea if you want to avoid the unappetizing curdling reaction your beverage.  Who wants their chicken covered in curds and whey?

Recipe

As it turns out, I do!  This chicken dish was aromatic and complexly flavored.  You must first brown the chicken in butter to get those all-important flavorful caramelized bits stuck on the bottom of the pot.  From there, you add the unique array of sauce components: fresh sage, whole garlic cloves, lemon zest…a pint of milk…and a cinnamon stick.  It looked beautiful although I remained skeptical.


After your chicken has disappeared into the oven , you will start to smell tantalizing things.  I basted the meat every half hour; it got harder and harder to refrain from sampling the sauce.  An hour and a half later, you have a company-worthy, one pot main course.  The meat was wonderfully moist and the sauce…oh the sauce.  The curds became a bit chewy like melted cheese, and the now translucent liquid portion of the milk was infused with the other spices.  Serve this chicken with wilted spinach and mashed potatoes like I did, and you’ll be everyone’s favorite cook.

Chicken in Milk

Adapted from Jaime Oliver

Prep time + Cook time: 15 minutes + 1 1/2 hours

Serves 4

Printable recipe

Ingredients

1 3.5 lb whole chicken, cleaned

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/4 c (1/2 stick) butter

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cinnamon stick

Generous handful of fresh sage leaves

Zest of 2 lemons

15 cloves of whole garlic, unpeeled (I figured you can’t go wrong with extra garlic.)

1 pint (2 cups) whole milk

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 375F.

2.  Season the chicken with plenty of salt and pepper.  In a dutch oven, melt the butter and add olive oil over medium high heat.   Fry the chicken until golden brown on all sides.

3.  Remove the chicken from the pot, and discard the extra fat.  Add the chicken back to the pot, along with the cinnamon stick, sage leaves, lemon zest, garlic cloves and milk.

4.  Bake in oven for 1 1/2 hours, basting every 30 minutes.  I followed The Kitchn’s recommendation and left the pot covered for one hour, and uncovered for a half hour.

Some Kitchen Chemistry

As it happens, there is another instance where you want to mix lemon juice and milk.  Say you wake up on a Saturday morning, craving some fluffy, homemade buttermilk pancakes.  You’ve got your pantry staples on hand…but who keeps buttermilk lying around?  Since buttermilk’s tartness comes from acidity, you can mimic that with some acidic lemon action in regular milk.

Quick Buttermilk Substitute

1.  Mix one tablespoon of lemon juice into one cup of milk.  (A tablespoon of white vinegar would work as well).

2.  Let sit for 10-15 minutes.  Stir and voila!, you’ve got buttermilk.

4 Comments | In: Chicken, Roasted | tags: cinnamon, dutch oven, garlic, lemon, milk, sage. | #