This week’s local meal was an ode to the zucchini and to Grandma Aurora. It’s that squashy time of year and the farm and my garden are exploding with it. Rather than shredding this week’s zucchini harvest for the freezer I thought I’d have a little OLS 8 zucchini fete.

One of my many fond memories of vising Grandma in Italy was sitting in her kitchen after the bike ride back from the beach or the piazza, cooling down with a glass of frizzina and chatting while she cooked up our next feast. One of the special treats she used to make for us which I’ve only ever made once before was fried zucchini blossoms. So, having a garden full of them, I decided to make some up for the girls this week. Needless to say, they were a big hit - and boy did they take me back to those happy, happy visits with Grandma.

If you’ve got a garden full of zucchini, then you’ve likely got a garden full of zucchini blossoms. Be sure to pick the male flowers (on the long skinny stems) rather than the female blossoms (short stubby stems closer to the ground) or you’ll loose future zucchini - or course if you’re already up to your eyeballs in the stuff, you may not care which you fry up…

Rinse the flowers gently and split them so that you can open them flat. Heat up veg oil in a nice heavy pan. Once the oil is hot dip the flowers in a batter made up of water and enough flour so that the batter is about the consistency of sour cream. Place the battered flowers into the oil carefully, fry till golden on one side, flip and fry the second side until golden. Drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with salt and (if you’re in the mood to make them like Grandma did) serve with lemon wedges — not at all local here in New Jersey, but I was channelling Grandma on this one :)

For our main course we had a lovely creamy zucchini and basil pasta from Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cooking. She calls for fusilli, but since I’m still new to pasta-making I went with the simpler homemade fettucine (thank you OLS for finally getting me to dust the cobwebs off my 10 year old pasta machine!). The zucchini, basil, milk and eggs were local, the parmesan, olive & and veg oils, butter and flour were from far, far away. The recipe called for frying the zucchini in quite a bit of oil - something I wouldn’t have thought to do. The result was a delicately flavored and textured squash which went really nicely with the creaminess of the pasta sauce which in turn was pleasantly set off by the freshness of the basil.

For dessert we had a peach crisp made with the last of the peaches left from the bushel we picked up at the orchard. The rest of that bushel? 4 pints of peach butter and 4 1/2 pints of peach jam — and lots of juicy, eat it over the sink if you don’t want to dribble on the floor midafternoon peachy snacks.