Ever since our trip to Rome, when we spied them in markets and feasted on namesake risotto, I’ve been meaning to bring home squash blossoms to our kitchen. Our favorite pizza in Los Angeles featured squash blossoms and burrata–you may recall that we tried to recreate it this past February using strips of zucchini.
I’m not quite sure why it took me so long, then–but we finally brought home some squash blossoms this weekend.
After picking up provisions at the Union Square Greenmarket, we rode our bikes back to our favorite dinner spot on the Hudson. The picnic tables happened to be full, so we found a nice spot at the tip of a pier–next to one of the old structures, built in the late 19th century to offload cargo from ships and barges into the Central Railroad’s yard.
We mixed Tonjes Farm Dairy ricotta from the market with some milk, olive oil, salt, and pepper and spooned it into the blossoms–which don’t have much taste and function mostly as beautiful vessels, as long as you avoid the reproductive bits of the flower (which are very, very bitter).
They’re lovely fried–or baked on a pizza–but we enjoyed them raw, alongside a few other market-finds: a salad of local corn, tomatoes, and basil (with a little bit of Californian avocado thrown in); yellow watermelon; and nectarines and sugar plums. We still had some olives, cornichons, and sausage left over from last weekend’s Marlow & Sons picnic, and we covertly shared a bottle of wine.
We have nearly eight more blossoms to use: any other suggestions? We picked up some more ricotta–nothing wrong with repeating.
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