By Leslie Brenner
Next time you see a pile of beautiful squash blossoms in your farmers market, or happen upon them in your summer garden, consider this: You don’t have to fry them uniess you want to.
If you’d rather not stand over that hot oil, make this Tian de Courgettes et de Chèvre, from Rosa Jackson’s new book Niçoise: Market-Inspired Cooking from France’s Sunniest Region. A tian, if you’re unfamiliar, is a baked vegetable dish from Provence, named for the earthenware dish it’s baked in. Jackson gives hers half a dozen eggs, some cream and crumbled goat cheese; she describes it as “like a baked frittata or crustless quiche.”
I love it because the eggs, cream and cheese round out the flavor of the zucchini, with basil as a lovely accent. The zucchini blossoms get halved, brushed with olive oil and laid on top of the tian in a sunburst pattern, and the result is gorgeous.
I first made the dish during a part of the summer that was so hot here in Dallas that we weren’t getting zucchini blossom in the market. Jackson calls the blossoms “optional,” so I went ahead and made it without. Pretty damn good!
Now that it has cooled a bit, the blossoms are there for the snagging, so I was excited to make It again with the sunburst final flourish.
Even better. Do try it, should those blossoms beckon.
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