...and I'd grow them for their flowers if nothing else.
They glow like yellow moons from the green dark under the leaves and among the stems,
They are thick and soft as dusters, and have a delicate perfume I'd not known about before.
A friend gently suggested that one can eat these blossoms, fried in batter or stuffed or just in salad, which I knew but have never tried. That way, she said, I won't end up with quite so many pumpkins...
True, I agreed, but... perhaps I could just eat the male ones? I hate the thought of culling any of the tiny emergent globes, even though if they all reach maturity I'll quite possibly be able to supply the whole of Brittany with pumpkins. However, so far almost all of them seem to be female and fruiting. The vines are growing a mile a minute now, but apparently it's necessary and desirable to prune them, which I hope to be able to bring myself to do. It's got to stop somewhere.
(This one is in fact a courgette, of which I have one lone plant.)
13 comments:
beautiful pictures - i especially love the second to last one. and as for the title, they do have a bit of a triffid quality to them, don't they?
Courgette flowers dipped in light, seasoned batter and fried are a treat. In Italy in the appropriate season I have seen the flowers for sale as a vegetable in their own right. Never tried pumpkins flowers but there should be little difference. Posh chefs stuff the flowers before frying them. I have often sauteed the flowers with baby courgettes adding then at the last minute. Better to use the male flowers so as not to waste future fruit.
Swell!
Learn to love pruning, it is the path to gardening. So I'm told.
They are so gorgeous and beautiful! Yes, the flowers are really delicious - spicy in salads and delicate in beignets, a completely different delight from pumpkin in pie or in soup, which I also love - you should really try some.
Ooh! pumpkin and chickpea curry, pumpkin, carrot and ginger soup, roast pumpkin with sumac...
Alas this is the fringe of a culinary world fringed with barbed wire and dotted with signs saying Achtung! Minen!. The world of water-bearing vegetables (aubergines, courgettes, zucchini, marrow, pumpkins, cucumber, etc) estranged from my colon. And, for that matter, the world of gardening. Although I can see the pleasure of being able to create something as enormous as a pumpkin provided it doesn't end up on my plate.
There is a salutary moment in The Day Of The Jackal when the assassin tries out his newly created, collapsible rifle on (I think) a pumpkin (no, perhaps a water-melon; same difference) swinging on a rope from the branch of a tree. The relish with which the camera dwells on the effects of a dum-dum bullet hitting what is, in effect, a bag of water suggested that the one-man coterie to which I belong could possibly be augmented by the movie's director, Fred Zinnemann.
Garnish with emoticons.
I love the richness of those greens!
magnifique! I might have said more but am distracted with the pleasure of seeing herhimnbryn here :-)
Hello, Lucy! I'm back from Europe and wish we oould have come to France but we did not.
I was admiring my in-laws zucchini flowers just a few days ago in Croatia and remembering eating them fried in Italy and then trying it myself. Didn't know people did the same with pumpkin flowers.
They are delicious. My cookbook, by the way, specificies eating only the mail blossoms, as the female ones do not taste as good.
If you try it, I hope it turns out well!
In Mexico, squash blossoms are a delicacy so I would imagine pumpkin flowers would be similar.
Life in all its rich details - fresh blooms and fascinating rot... I love the variety on your blog.
Beautiful photos. i once harvested "volunteer" squash--that grew from seeds i tossed out for the birds to eat.
i prepared and fried some squash blossoms once. A whole lot of messy work, but they were yummy. But, once was enough. i will happily order them, however, when offered at an eatery.
Please make more pumpkin flowers fried in tempura batter. I shall be over for tea!!!
(I wish!)
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