By now, faithful readers of my blog will know that I have planted zucchini in the garden, picked and stored the zucchini flowers, turned them into dolmadakia to cap oven-cooked yemista, fried them with Italian-style filling and stuck them in a green-onion pie.
I now present to you dolmadakia zucchini flowers cooked in the pot. If ever there was a competition for a beautiful dish, this one would surely give others a good run for their money.
The zucchini flowers were collected over a period of two weeks. They stored marvellously well in the fridge in a plastic bag, one flower stacked inside the other. I gave them a quick rinse just before stuffing them, stacked them in two layers over a bed of fennel weed, and let them cook as long as the rice needed to be cooked.
To serve them, let them cool down because they might break up when you try to pick ladle them out if they are too hot. Accompany them with Georgia's tzatziki or just plain yoghurt, and a green salad. Heavenly ambrosia!
And for some more beautiful food flowers, I give you the overgrown artichoke - edible only before its thistly stage. But its dazzling purple flowers are worth resisting the temptation to eat them all (with or without broad beans or carrots).
Recently, one of my fellow blogger cooks gave me an award for good blogging, so I am dedicating this post to her. Thank you Laurie.
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You're welcome, Maria - it was also for your writing, which I like very much. As for the pictures, they are wondrously beautiful. The zucchini flowers are particularly lovely.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations. I think you deserve it with all the effort you put into this blog. BTW I am thinking of starting my own mini gvegetable garden in the new house. Will you help me? I have no idea about growing anything!
ReplyDeleteThe joy of having your own garden! When I was in Greece I saw stuffed zuccini blossoms as a special on the menu many times, but they were always out. I finally was able to make them myself on the island of Kea at Keartisinal.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the recipes, you've helped me to save face!
ReplyDeleteI am an Australian PhD student living in Athens. I live here with my Greek boyfriend his sister and her husband. For the first few weeks I wouldn't dare venture into the kitchen because they had such specific ways of cooking things that I was terrified I'd do something wrong. In Australia, In Melbourne I am generally thought of as bit of a wiz in the kitchen. The other day I was desperate to get in and do some cooking, and as everyone was out I knew I'd have free range. So while searching the internet for recipes to entice me, I chanced upon your blog. I started with the zucchini flowers fried and now I'm working my way through the others. I haven't told my friends where I get my recipes from, I'll wait until the looks of amazement have been wiped off by pleasure eating the food!
Anyway, next week I am coming to Crete with my godparents from Australia. My godmother is a real foodie. She is a nutritionist and cook-book writer, so, as I think Cretan food is the best in Greece, I wanted to introduce them to this cuisine with a bit of a tour around the tastes of Crete. I would love some tips on places to go, if you could help me that would be fantastic.
With many thanks, Thea
hi thea - there are plenty of places to come and see. send me an email at mverivaki@hotmail.com
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