cooking with flowers | pasta with zucchini flowers

I'm slowly but surely learning the Italian culinary calendar, at least, the one that my mother-in-law follows.  It goes like this: Tomatoes are canned at the end of August.  Baked pasta is made for the holidays.  Pasta con sarde and sfingi are made for St. Joseph's Day in March.  Seafood salad makes an appearance at Easter.  And summer is when eggplant, beans and zucchini abound.  And with the zucchini come their flowers -- to fry, to stuff, to mix into pasta.  

My mother-in-law's neighbor brought her a huge bag of zucchini flowers the other day.  This little old lady had plucked them off her neighbor's plant, because that lady doesn't use them (she must not be Italian!).  The flowers are delicate and don't keep very long.  So, my mother-in-law offered some of them to me.  I asked her what I should make with them.  She suggested pasta.  She rattled off some instructions in Sicilian and stuffed some long green beans (as in 12-15" in length) in a bag for me.  I followed some of her directions and improvised with others.            

Per my mother-in-law, chop the green beans into small pieces.

Dice an onion.  Dice a red pepper.  Arrange the three on a cutting board so they resemble the Italian flag (my improvisation).

Pre-roasted garlic.  Fresh garlic would work too.

Add a generous pour of olive oil to a pot.  Sautee the tri-color vegetables with three cloves of minced, roasted garlic, over medium-high heat.  Season with 1/2 teaspoon of salt (or more to taste).  A little trick I learned on Pinterest: put the lid on your pot and the vegetables will cook more quickly. 

Stir frequently so it doesn't burn.  When the onions become translucent, turn the heat down to low. 

To prep your flowers, cut off any remaining parts of the stem.  I hope think my mother-in-law washed these for me beforehand.  Slice into thin strips or dice to match the size of the sauteed vegetables.  Add to the pot and mix in with the other vegetables. 

In a separate pot, boil water for pasta.  I made orecchiette for this dish, since the concave nature of it collects the little sauteed vegetables.  That pasta shape selection was actually pretty serendipitous -- that's the only kind we had on hand, but it ended up being a perfect fit with the sauce.  I added about 1.5 cups of frozen peas to the boiling water with the pasta to give this dish some protein AND to avoid having another pot to wash.

Follow pasta package directions for cooking time and drain when al dente. 

Add the sauteed veggies to the pasta and peas.  Add additional dashes of salt and olive oil to taste.

Stir to combine.  I omitted my mother-in-law's ingredient of parmesan cheese, but now would be the time to add it.  Add additional dashes of salt and olive oil to taste.

And serve.  My husband approved so I did okay for my first time cooking with flowers.

Next time we have a huge bag of flowers from the neighbor's neighbor, I might have to learn how to make stuffed flowers from my mother-in-law.  Fried zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta and covered in tomato sauce.  Yes, I have a lot left to learn.