Nasturtium Tempura

Nasturtiums are brilliant things. They're easy to grow, they look pretty, they help keeps pests away from vegetable crops, and you can eat both the leaves and flowers! Fantastic!

Nasturtium flowers

I has a go at making tempura for the first time, and my first thought was to try nasturtium flowers stuffed with goats cheese. It turned our to be a very good thought, as it's delicious! The leaves aren't bad as tempura as well, I expect they'd be even better rolled around cheese too though. ;)

The ones I made are gluten free, but if you fancy 'normal' tempura just replace the Doves farm flour with ordinary wheat flour.

Flowers stuffed with cheese, ready to be fried

Here's how I made the stuffed flowers.

Ingredients

• Nasturtium flowers
• Soft goats cheese
• 170g Doves farm gluten free plain flour
• 80g Corn flour
• 120ml Water
• 1 egg
• Sunflower oil (or another oil with a high smoke point) to half fill a deep pan (enough to submerge the flowers)

Method

1. Freshly pick as many nasturtium flowers as you fancy eating.
2. Place a blob (about a teaspoon) of goats cheese in the centre of each flower and fold the petals around to cover the cheese.
3. Mix the flour, corn flour and egg in a bowl, then add the water gradually making a smooth batter.
4. Heat the oil in a deep pan. Test to see if it's hot enough by dropping half a teaspoon of batter into the oil, if it gently sizzles, rises to float on the water and is cooked to become crispy fairly quickly, then the oil is a good temperature.
5. Use a slatted spoon to dip your stuffed flowers into the batter and then quickly, but gently, place into the oil. (Be careful not to splash hot oil on yourself!) Place enough flowers in so they approximately half cover the surface of the oil. (If you place too many in, they can bring down the temperature of the oil too much).
6. After 1-2 minutes the flowers should be cooked and crispy, remove with the slatted spoon and place on some kitchen towel on a plate to soak up the excess oil.
7. Eat whilst freshly cooked, yummy!

Tempura flowers, ready to be consumed!

Tips

Try courgettes, cheese stuffed courgette flowers, sweet potato and carrots as tempura too!