It’s giving: stuffed zucchini flowers had a baby with prawn toast.
You’ve gorged on stuffed zucchini flowers and nibbled through plates of prawn toast. Now, get ready for Jessica Nguyen’s zucchini/prawn love child, the aptly named Prawn-Stuffed Zucchini Flowers. If you’re not familiar with Jessica, she is a fabulous dinner party host and home cook who lives in Melbourne. We’re giant fans of her work, so we were super excited when she shared this recipe with us.
“I made this recipe in February last year. I think of it as a ‘stuffed zucchini flower meets prawn toast’ delight,” Jessica explains. “There’s a Vietnamese recipe called ‘Bông bí nhồi tôm thịt’, which is where pumpkin flowers are stuffed with pork and prawn, so I think I subconsciously channelled it as I was making this.”
Since this concoction came to her, it’s remained on regular rotation. “It is honestly one of the tastiest things I’ve ever made,” she quips. “If you can get your hands on zucchini flowers, which are in season in summer, this is a great way to cook them that isn’t your standard ricotta-filled, Italian-style recipe.”
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Jessica says this is a perf recipe for entertaining (it wouldn’t go astray on a Christmas menu either), but warns that you have to be extra gentle with the zucchini flower as it’s quite delicate and you don’t want to smoosh it. “Don’t dip them into the batter until literally right before you dunk it into the hot oil,” she advises. This is a make-and-serve-right-away type of dish.
Because the flavours are quite fatty in these little morsels, your chosen beverage pairing needs to work hard to cut through that delectable richness. That’s why Jessica goes for the Santa Magherita Prosecco Di Valdobbiadene. “I’m a big advocate for pairing fried food with sparkling wine as the bubbles contrast and cut through the fat. One of my favourite pairings is Champagne and fried chicken – so this pairing is in the same vein, but a little homage to the Italian origins of both the wine and the fried zucchini flowers.”
Next time you come across a crop of zucchini flowers, shelve that ricotta and opt for Jessica’s prawn filling. You won’t regret it.
Filling ingredients
20 green or banana prawns, raw and peeled
2 tsp of sesame oil
1 tsp of sugar
Pinch of salt & white pepper
2 tsp of fish sauce
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Batter ingredients
1 cup of plain flour, sifted
Generous pinch of salt
¾ cup of sparkling or soda water
½ cup of sesame seeds
Other ingredients
8 zucchini flowers
- 2 cups of oil for frying
¼ cup of Vietnamese dipping sauce (Nước chấm)
Method
Make your prawn filling by placing your peeled prawns into a food processor and blitzing for 20 seconds, or until you get a smooth, mousse-like texture. Season with sugar, sesame oil, fish sauce, garlic and white pepper and blitz again to combine. Set aside to marinate.
Prepare your batter by adding your flour and salt into a shallow bowl, then slowly whisk in the soda water until you get a thin crepe-like batter consistency. Set aside.
Fit a piping bag with a round nozzle and fill the bag with the prawn filling.
Prepare the zucchini flowers by gently peeling back each petal to reveal the pistil/stamen (the core) and pluck to remove. An optional step, but I like to remove it so there’s more room for the filling.
Pipe the filling gently into the cavity of the zucchini flower, approx ¾ full making sure you don’t overfill. Gently cover the prawn filling with the petals and then twist the petal ends together to seal.
Heat your oil in a pot on high heat – once it starts bubbling when you place a chopstick into the oil, you’re ready to fry.
Check the consistency of the batter again, which will have slightly thickened by now, and add more water if preferred. For a thicker batter, go for a pancake consistency. For thin, aim for a runny crepe-like batter.
Dip your zucchini flowers into the batter and fully cover all surfaces, then quickly dip part of the flower head into a dish of sesame seeds and lower into a pot of oil and shallow fry for a few minutes, turning over a few times till golden.
Remove and allow to drain on a plate lined with paper towel and sprinkle some salt to garnish.
Serve immediately with an optional dish of Vietnamese dipping sauce (Nước chấm) to dip into!
