Italian Squash Blossom Fritters

One of the highlights of our time in Ravello a few years ago was our day-long cooking class with Mamma Agata. We had so much fun learning to make authentic, local food, including these fritters (and our go-to tomato sauce) and also made some friends that we still keep up with. When we saw beautiful bunches of squash blossoms at the market a few weeks ago, we immediately thought of fritters. As you know if you’ve been following a while, we rarely fry anything, so these were definitely a treat!

We also love stuffed squash blossoms, but they are more labor intensive to make. Also, the flowers are really delicate, so they don’t always all turn out. Fritters are an easy way to enjoy the squash blossom flavor, and are great for parties.

We like to use Mama Agata’s fritter batter recipe that you can get from her book here. We used grated Grana Padano (we love this grater and use it every day), fresh herbs, and chopped the squash blossoms into 1/4″ pieces (flower petals only, don’t get the stems). What’s great about fritters is that they are super-light and airy (unlike a hush puppy), yet with the cheese and herbs, very flavorful and satisfying.

One tip we learned from Mamma Agata is to use a really large bowl (we used this exact size) for the batter, and use your hands to mix it. You want to make a slapping motion, like a puppy paddling in water, to work some air into the dough. It will still have some lumps, but that’s okay. We fried our fritters in peanut oil in our favorite dutch oven (for more frying tips see this post).

We served our fritters hot out of the pan on this brown parchment paper and topped them with herbs and Maldon Sea Salt.