Stuffed Courgette Flowers in Olive Oil
The Aegean's most delicate dolma: courgette flowers filled with spiced rice and cooked gently.
- Time
- 70 minutes
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Hard
- Cuisine
- Turkish
Stuffed courgette flowers are the most fragile and the most strictly seasonal member of this kitchen. The flowers wilt within hours of picking, which is why they are rare in cities and constant on summer tables in the growing regions. In Türkiye the Aegean — İzmir and Muğla in particular — is the centre of this dish; the same recipe exists in Cretan and southern Italian cooking.
One piece of knowledge helps: the courgette plant produces both male and female flowers. For stuffing you want the male flowers — the ones on a slim stem with no baby courgette beneath — so that you get the dish without losing the fruit.
Directions
- Carefully remove the yellow organs inside each flower, trying not to tear the petals.
- Rinse the flowers in lightly salted water and drain.
- Soften the onion and pine nuts in half the olive oil; add the rice and stir for 3 minutes.
- Add the currants, tomato, allspice and salt, and cook with half a cup of hot water until absorbed. Stir in the herbs.
- Once cool, put a teaspoonful in each flower and twist the tips closed — do not pack them tightly.
- Arrange the dolma side by side in a wide pan.
- Pour over the remaining oil and lemon juice, add hot water to come halfway up, and set a plate on top.
- Cook over low heat for 30-35 minutes; cool in the pan before serving.
Tips & storage
Buy flowers that haven't opened. Picked early in the morning, with their tips still nearly closed, they can be filled. A fully open flower tears.
Remove the yellow parts inside. The pollen-bearing centre turns bitter; take it out with a small knife or scissors rather than your fingers.
Never pack them tightly. Here even the two-thirds rule is too generous; half full is enough. A petal has none of the stretch of a vine leaf — it simply tears.
Close them by twisting the tips. Don't try to tie a knot; folding the petal tips lightly inwards lets them seal themselves as they cook.
Little water, wide pan. The parcels should sit side by side in a single layer; stacked, the lower ones are crushed. Water halfway up is enough.
Make them the same day. Flowers do not keep. Fill them on the day you buy them; once cooked they hold two days in the fridge.
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