Zucchini Flowers, Finally

“When I pass a flowering zucchini plant in a garden,” Gwyneth writes, “my heart skips a beat.” I, on the other hand, have never seen a goddamned zucchini flower in my life. Until yesterday.

Out of all the baffling ingredients in My Father’s Daughter, one of the most difficult to track down over the last near-decade(!) of this project has been zucchini blossoms (second only to purple sprouting broccoli, whatever the hell that is). For years, I’ve searched every produce section of every grocery store I’ve ever walked in, and every farmer’s market I’ve strolled through. I’ve downloaded apps that keep you up-to-date on when items of produce are in season (naturally, no apps list zucchini blossoms). I’ve searched far and wide, and the consensus around the best way to get these damn flowers is, basically, befriend a farmer or grow them yourself.

Yesterday, on a mercifully slow day at work, I skipped out a bit early and headed home, sweating through the nasty hell of late-August NYC. Just a few feet away from my subway entrance, I passed a completely random single tent with fresh produce, a one-man farmer’s market. “That’s weird,” I thought, and there I saw it, scribbled on a piece of paper taped to a cooler: “squash blossoms, $.75/ea”. After all these years, I couldn’t believe it so I kept walking, down into the 140-degree subway station, but I stopped. I knew I had to go back. I couldn’t wait another 7 years for this opportunity.

I turned and went back up the stairs, pissing off the people who were trying to get into the station behind me. Sometimes, you have to anger a bunch of overheated New Yorkers for the greater good. Gwyneth’s Zucchini Flowers With Anchovies & Mozzarella calls for 20 flowers, but the cooler only held 7. I didn’t care. This train had left the station and my braking mechanism was BROKEN. I cradled the plastic bag of flowers all the way home on the long, crushing, sweaty train ride (stalled train on the bridge; vote for Cynthia Nixon in September), and then, in true Gwyneth Paltrow fashion, had to go to two different grocery stores to find the rest of the ingredients.

The rarest ingredient on the planet.

To start, I whisked flour with a little bit of olive oil, which did… basically nothing. I’m still unclear what this accomplished, as it just created a bowl of flour, but now with larger clumps of flour held together by olive oil. Then I poured in sparkling water (Pellegrino, because we deserve the best), an experience I found entirely ridiculous. Salt it a little, whisk it all together, and there you have a not-very-good batter. I already felt like we were headed for disaster.

Meanwhile, I mixed together crumbled mozzarella, shredded anchovies, pepper and salt. Gwyneth says to use a wooden spoon, but I used my hands because I’m not delicate. Then the hard part began: I had to carefully open each flower and stuff it with the cheese mixture. The flowers are ridiculously fragile, even moreso after a long, hot commute home. The smaller ones had already started to wilt. But I took my damn time with it, because I knew I couldn’t mess this up. It was my one chance. I was not going to ruin these flowers and then have to start befriending random farmers just for the sake of getting some fucking zucchini flowers.

It took about 20 minutes, but I stuffed all seven, with only a small hole or two poked in the flowers. Truly, I felt like a miracle-worker. The hands of a surgeon. The nerves of an astronaut. The focus of Omarosa Manigault-Newman née Stallworth out for revenge.

Literally the last time they looked appealing.

Gwyneth tells you to set aside the flowers and batter “a couple of hours,” a shocking revelation buried in the middle of a recipe that clearly states up front “ACTIVE & TOTAL PREPARATION TIME: 45 MINUTES.” How the hell do you explain this, Gwyneth? I know goop can make magic happen, but I find it hard to believe the “wellness” scam has gone far enough to include goddamned time travel. The next paragraph begins, “When you’re ready to eat,” a further insult. I’m ready to eat NOW but you just LIED to me. So, I ordered Thai.

I ate my food, watched some TV, and drank some wine. Three hours later, at 10 pm, I thought, “Oh yeah, I was making zucchini blossoms,” and pulled them out of the fridge. I poured a whole little bottle full of sunflower oil into a pan (she specifies safflower or peanut oil, but that’s all I had and how different can sunflower oil and safflower oil be? They’re basically the same word!) and heated it up until a drop of water made the whole thing go batshit insane and reminded me my apartment has never had any smoke alarms installed.

I dipped the flowers into the stupid batter and slid them into the oil. They sizzled, pleasingly, and I let them sit for a minute or so, before rotating them. At which point the crispy batter immediately slid off and floated away from each flower. Fucking great. I fried them some more, and drained them on a paper towel. They looked terrible and greasy, and the cheese was pouring out of them.

A bit of lemon squeezed over them, some salt sprinkled, and we were good to go! And they were… fine? Super greasy, and absolutely batterless, but it’s hard for zucchini flowers, melted mozzarella, and anchovies to not taste good, you know? It’s a great combination, in a better recipe! These were just fine. I’m glad I don’t have to look for zucchini flowers anymore, I guess. Bye.

I thought the lemon and fork would make these look less disgusting. I was wrong.