If you still have zucchini that are flowering this is exactly the kind of frivolous activity you will only ever have the time to do while you are quarantined at home in lockdown, so seize the day and tick this one off your bucket list.  You only need one per person as an elegant entrée; they are surprisingly substantial. Pick the glorious flowers when they open and still have little zucchinis attached. I have two plants and managed to find four ready at once. A note about the ricotta – I didn’t have any, but I did have two litres of milk at its use-by date so made some ricotta using Jamie Oliver’s recipe here. It didn’t take very long and wasn’t hard to do. I didn’t have any cheesecloth so used an old, thin, but clean tea towel, and used lemon juice instead of vinegar. Two litres of milk yielded 1 cup ricotta.

Ingredients

• 4 zucchini flowers, stamens removed from inside
• ¾ cup ricotta
• 1 tbsp mint, sliced finely
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 25 g finely grated parmesan

For the tempura batter

• ½ cup all purpose flour
• ½ cup soda water (soda stream worked)

Method

1. Mix together the ricotta, mint, lemon and parmesan
2. Gently open each flower and stuff the filling inside using a small spoon. The petals are surprisingly stretchy and resilient so when each flower is full you can stretch the petals back into place and twist the tops closed. You can do up to this point in advance.
3. Make the batter by mixing the flour and soda water together to a consistency of runny cream. Don’t worry too much about small lumps.
4. Clear all the small children out of the kitchen and heat a small pan (one that is wide enough to take the longest of the flowers lying down) and fill it to a centimeter with an all-purpose vegetable oil. Heat until a piece of bread sizzles when you dip it in the hot oil. Dip a flower into the batter then place into the hot oil. Let it cook until golden and turn it over. When both sides are cooked and golden, take it out with a pair of tongs and drain on kitchen paper. Repeat with all the flowers and serve at once on a plate decorated with mint leaves.