Dark delicious chocolate courgette loaf cake.

How to deal with the courgette tsunami? The best defence is a good offence – get your punches in early. Pick the courgettes when first flowering (no fruit) or when the courgettes are still little babies. Then deep fry them. In beer batter. That will teach them who’s the boss. Seriously, the most divine way to eat courgettes and to reduce your chances of drowning in the courgette tsunami.

It’s easy and you don’t need a deep fryer. You have to be prepared to fry in 2 or 3 inches of hot oil though and have a deep heavy fry pan. The secret to these is to cook them and then eat them as soon as they are cool enough to handle.

Recipe

Ingredients

Stuffing & courgettes

• 12 blossoms (with or without mini-courgettes)
• 250 grams fresh ricotta
• 80 grams freshly grated Parmesan
• salt
• pepper
• nutmeg

Batter

• 125 grams of plain flour
• Pinch of sea salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 175 mls ice cold beer (a good use for lager)

Method

1. Carefully clean the blossoms, check for insects and remove the pistil (hard bit) from the inside of the flowers.
2. Spoon stuffing into each flower. Don’t overfill. They will only be cooking for 2 minutes. You want to be able to pinch the top together and twirl it to seal the filling inside. Lay gently on some kitchen towl.
3. Heat the oil while you’re preparing the batter. Combine the flour and sea salt with a fork in a bowl big enough roll your courgette blossoms in. Then beat in the egg yolk and beer.
4. Check you oil – either use a thermometer (180C) or drop a cube of white bread in. If it goes brown in under a minute, you’re all set.
5. Using a slotted spoon, gently lower the flowers into the oil. 2 to 4 at a time depending on the size of your pan. Cook for two minutes, turning them over half way through.
6. Drain on kitchen towel, sprinkle with some flaky sea salt and serve with lemon wedges.
7. If you have any leftover filling – lovely on toast.