Cypriot Courgette Flowers

Just got back from the most glorious 10 days in North Cyprus. I'm so lucky, my parents have got a lovely flat there, so it's just a case of getting a flight and finding some spendo!

It's a funny place North Cyprus, neither Greece nor Turkey, a kind of diluted mixture of both. The supermarkets burst with gorgeous foods; the most delicious baklava, oozing with honey and nuts, soft pillowy pitta bread that bears no resemblance to any pitta I've seen in the UK, fresh creamy hummous and a brilliant array of spices. Whether you're in the shop or at the Wednesday market in Kyrenia the veg seems to have been only just pulled from the ground and the fruit is fresh and perfectly ripe. More to the point, it is so cheap, I bought about 1 kg of cherries for around £1 and they were divine!

My favourite find from the market this holiday were some Courgette flowers, which I've never cooked, but have always wanted to. I ate them once at Dehesa in Soho, where they were served stuffed with goats cheese, deep fried and drizzled with honey. I really wanted to try them like this but I couldn't find goats cheese (my Turkish food vocab leaves much to be desired, but I'm working on it!).

I spent far too long standing in front of the cheese isle of the supermarket, and eventually chose some strange cheese that looked a bit like cottage cheese as well as a block of easily identifiable feta. When I got home the cottage cheese turned out to be much softer and tasted like milk, but this was fine, as it mixed nicely with the feta cheese, making it a better consistency to stuff the flowers with. I added chopped mint, plenty of crushed garlic and lots of freshly ground black pepper, until the cheesy minty mixture tasted just right.

I stuffed the flowers, made a quick batter with plain flour 1 egg and ice cold water, heated the oil and then lightly battered the flowers and fried a couple at a time. They were delicious! The flowers where sweet and a little floral, and were really complimented by the minty cheese. Though fried they were much lighter then expected and made an excellent early summer dinner with some cold wine and an Efes beer!