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.

It’s called  a quick bread because the leavening agent is baking power but it is genuinely quick to prepare,  to cook and to clean up.  And if your vegetable garden goes into courgette overdrive – you can use the courgettes and make the family happy at the same time.

Whole wheat courgette bread – zucchini for los Americanos.

Ingredients

Dry:

• 225 grams whole wheat flour
• 120 grams plain white flour or bread flour (NOT self raising)
• 150 grams caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Wet:

• 2 large eggs
• 170 mls milk
• 60 mls vegetable oil (corn or rapeseed, not olive oil)

Other:

• 350 grams grated courgette
• 85 grams raisins
• 60 grams chopped walnuts
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (see top tip below)

Instructions

Preheat your oven.  175C non-fan/160C fan.  Prepare a large loaf pan (900 gram/2 lb/23x13cms) or two small loaf pans (450gram/1lb/12×6).   Either grease with a hard fat (butter or lard) or line with paper.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (from whole wheat flour down to nutmeg) in a large bowl.  Make sure they are well mixed.

Prep the ‘other’ ingredients and put them in a bowl (don’t need to mix).

A top tip; you can buy lemon zest and keep it in the freezer or use Dr Oetker or another substitute.  Sometimes its just too much to have to have a lemon in the fridge to zest.   Another suggestion; if you do a lot of baking with nuts and vegetables, you might want to get a mini-chopper like this one.   No, I’m not sponsored by Amazon, it’s just where I do my appliance shopping.  I find it much easier to use and to clean up if I’m not working with big quantities.

Put all the ‘wet’ ingredients in a bowl or a big mixing jug and whisk to blend smoothly.  Pour the wet into the dry and mix well.  Then add the ‘other’ ingredients to the mixture and stir until incorporated.  Scoop the batter into the prepared pan and place in the oven.

Bake for an hour and then check the temperature (if more than 90C you’re done and out it comes).  If you don’t have a thermometer, if the top looks wet and wobbles, it’s not done.   It’s unlikely to be done after an hour – tent the top loosely with foil and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven when it’s done, cool in the pan for 15 minutes or so.  Then remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Top tips and gadgets

Loaf pan liners are very convenient and speed prep, cooking and clean up.  I use an ice cream scoop with a trigger to fill the pan.  The mini-chopper comes into its own for chopping nuts – buying pre-chopped nuts is expensive plus they get stale. But chopping your own by hand is too time consuming for me.   Prepared lemon zest is also a big time saver and means you can keep lemons in the ‘pantry’ (zest and bottled juice)  rather than needing fresh for baking.

Recipe count

47 quick bread recipes; 4 completed! OMG what was I thinking.