My fridge is full of courgettes, so is the cool cupboard.  Even extra shelves in the garage are full of odd shaped, too round, too long or just too odd excuses for courgettes, green & yellow shapes of nutty deliciousness! Actually, there are even courgettes piled up beside my ironing basket.  It's difficult to say which there is more of, courgettes or ironing.  Happily for the courgettes (and for me), I hate ironing and love cooking courgettes.  Anyone who has even just 1 or 2 plants will know just how abundant these generous plants can be.  They seem to produce a never ending supply.  One of the reasons we have so many in the house is also because when friends come to dinner, they bring with them generous amounts of their own courgette harvest.  They smile, knowingly, when they are served courgette soup with courgette fritters, stuffed courgette with feta and pine nuts & to finish, courgette and ginger pudding.  Yes, there can be too much of a good thing!

If you are looking for a little inspiration, look no further, some of these suggestions may help!

Raw courgette salad
Before you even lift a pan, try grating some firm, small courgettes into a dish and dress with olive oil and sherry vinegar, with salt & pepper to taste.  Alternatively, just use a potato peeler to obtain lovely long but very thin strips. Try adding some very finely sliced red onion, toasted pine nuts and feta.  It's very good with a poached egg surprisingly, but I tend to say that about almost anything. It is perfect with some very lightly cooked salmon or even smoked salmon as a starter.  Add some chilli if you will.

Steamed Courgette & pea cake
We often have this instead of Yorkshire puddings on Sunday, it's massively moreish and endlessly versatile. Pour a little oil into each cup of a muffin tin and grease well. Find a roasting tin that the muffin tin will fit into.  Boil the kettle. Preheat the oven to 200.  Roughly chop 100g of courgette, blend in a food processor with 70g frozen peas, thawed, with the juice of one lemon , 2 tbsp. vegetable oil, good chunk of peeled and chopped root ginger with 120ml water.  Stir in 140g Gram flour,  1/2 tsp. salt,1 tsp. baking powder & 1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda.  Divide the mixture between the muffin tin and place the tin inside the roasting tin.  Carefully pour the hot water into the roasting tray so that it comes half way up the muffin tin.  Cover loosely with tin foil.  Place into the oven for 15-20 minutes until risen and reasonably firm.  Serve hot or cold, on their own or with almost anything else, even roast beef!

Deep fried courgette flowers and baby courgettes
One of the tastiest ways to serve courgettes and their flowers is to coat them in a light batter and deep fry!

16 courgette flowers or baby courgettes
175g/6 oz plain flour
110g/4 oz corn flour
1 egg
Approx. 250 ml/8 oz fizzy water, chilled
Salt
Sunflower oil for frying  

Method

• Half fill a pan with the oil and put on to heat.
• Mix the corn flour, flour, salt, and egg together.  Add the water little by little stirring all the time to avoid lumps.  The thicker the batter the thicker the flowers will turn out to be.  For a thinner batter, add more water.  This batter does not need to rest and should be used at once.
• Make sure that the flowers are free of any insects by tapping against a sink gently (or leaving in a dark place over night), but do not wash.
• Coat the flowers in the batter and then drop into the hot oil taking care not to add too many at a time as the oil will cool down.  Remove and drain on kitchen towel.  Repeat until all of the flowers have been cooked.
• Serve at once with chilli jam, some fresh lemon juice or soy sauce.

Courgette fritters
These are my children's absolute favourites!  So easy to make although I often end up munching on them as I batch cook them!

Ingredients

Serves 4
2 free range eggs
5 tbsp. milk (approx.)
25g/1 oz butter, melted
110g/4 oz plain flour
2 courgettes, roughly grated
2 scallions, finely chopped
110g/4 oz cheese, e.g. feta/cheddar/gruyere/mozzarella
1 tbsp. fresh chives, finely chopped
Zest of a lemon
Olive oil for frying
Salt & pepper

 For the Tzatziki:
1 fresh cucumber, washed and coarsely grated but not peeled
2 plump cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp. lemon juice
600ml/1 pint organic natural yoghurt
2 tbsp. finely chopped fresh mint

Method

• Whisk the eggs with the milk and melted butter.  Slowly whisk in the flour and season well.
• Squeeze the courgette well once it has been grated, to get rid of any water it may contain.  Stir the courgette into the batter mixture with the scallions, lemon zest, cheese and chives.  Combine well together.  Adjust the seasoning as necessary.
• Heat some oil in a large pan.  Pour in small spoonfuls of the batter depending on what size you would like the fritters to be, and fry for 1-2 minutes either side.  The fritters should puff up slightly and appear golden.
• Remove to a plate with some kitchen towel and continue frying until all of the batter has been used. 
• Mix all of the ingredients together for the Tzatziki, adding salt and pepper to taste.
• Serve the fritters hot with the Tzatziki.

These are just a few ideas so far. Possibilities are endless, try courgette bread or cake, pickled courgettes, courgette jam, frittata, soup, barbecued, stuffed, chargrilled...just go on and on!

Some meat processors have recently been on the front pages for not coming completely clean about the total ingredients in some of their products, even if not wholly known to the producers themselves. Facebook and twitter are rife with horsey references and witty one-liners.  Even I have chuckled at some of the more well thought out comments but, of course, it has its serious side.  As news of this has “galloped” into the worldwide media, it throws a long shadow over meat products in general.  People are suddenly realising that most of the time it can be difficult
to pin point the total number of ingredients in food that has been processed, ie chopped up and put back together again with any number of other ingredients. 

I stand on middle ground with the supermarkets.  On the one hand, I support smaller producers believing them for the most part, to be better quality.  On the other, I recognise that the supermarkets provide us with a way of buying food at a better price and for the most part, good quality.  I would congratulate any small business on getting their meat products, burgers, sausages, etc onto supermarket shelves, as a herculean task.  I would also expect the quality to remain constant but at what cost?  Price, as always, is at the heart of the matter. It stands to reason that the better the meat, the higher the price.  We have become so used to eating meat every day that we have a smaller amount of money to spend on it.  I find it alarming that some will buy 5 burgers for £1 and never contemplate eating cheaper cuts of meat that may need longer cooking such as beef cheek or shin. Cooking “know-how” aside, wouldn’t you rather eat something that is as it should be and not a collection of bizarre sounding ingredients?

Bread is in a similar state, and no, to my knowledge, no foreign plants have been found in a loaf of bread! I mean that the average sliced pan contains on average, 12- 14 ingredients.  For the same plain loaf to be made in a local bakery or at home might take between 4-5 ingredients.  The governing bodies have continued to make every effort to make us aware of what is in our food.  That is to be applauded but we also need to inform ourselves properly and don’t leave it to someone else.  Understand where your ingredients come from, how important they are to our economy, our health and our reputation.  So for lunch, I’d recommend you to the kitchen and make yourselves a large beef sandwich!