The courgette flower is one of summer’s most fleeting gifts. Delicate and ephemeral, it asks to be cooked almost as soon as it’s picked..
Viewed through the meso-mediterreanean lens, stuffing vegetables has long been less about abundance than ingenuity. Leaves, fruits vegetables and blossoms have all served as vessels, filled with grains, herbs, dairy or meat according to season, terroir and circumstance.
Courgette flowers simply continue that culinary logic, transforming an everyday practice into something both elegant and memorable.
For this version, I pair them with shankleesh, one of the region’s most distinctive cultured cheeses.
Often misunderstood, shankleesh begins life as a cultured yoghurt that is strained into a thick curd before being salted, shaped into balls, dried and left to mature, developing a natural bloom of mould. Over time, it acquires a firm, dry yet crumbly texture and an assertive, earthy tang. The balls, often around the size of one’s palm, are then coated in herbs and spices such as za’atar, smoked peppers and cumin. While associated most closely with Bilad al-Sham, its story belongs to a much older tradition of preserving milk, a necessity in societies where fresh dairy could not be relied upon year-round, and especially before refrigeration.
To soften its intensity, I fold it into fresh soft goat’s labneh. The result is creamy and spreadable yet bright, retaining the character of the aged cheese while becoming light enough to complement the fragile courgette flowers.
Alongside it sits a smoked tomato salsa, sharpened with vintage garlic. Rather than dominating the dish, it provides contrast: sweetness from ripe summer tomatoes, gentle acidity and the mellow complexity that only a long-cured garlic develops with time.
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This is a dish built around seasonality, preservation and contrast. Fresh against aged. Fragile against robust. Fleeting against enduring.
It also reminds us that recipes rarely exist in isolation. They are accumulations of climate, necessity, migration, technological advancements and taste. Of nafas. And so much more.
A blossom picked in the morning. A cheese patiently and lovingly matured over months. Tomatoes that crossed oceans before becoming indispensable to regional cooking. Every ingredient carries a journey and a story of landscapes, people and time.
That is the essence of the Meso-Mediterranean: not a single cuisine uncomfortably chained to imagined borders, but an interconnected and entangled world where ingredients, techniques and ideas have continually moved, adapted and found new homes and expressions.
What are three summer ingredients you’d like to see explored through the Meso-Mediterranean lens?
Think history, movement, lineage and evolution. One ingredient, one entangled world.
I’ll bring them to life through video recipes, tracing the stories, landscapes and connections that shaped them.
Courgette Flowers Stuffed with Softened Shankleesh, Served with Smoked Tomato & Vintage Garlic Salsa
Serves: 4 to 6
Makes: About 12 stuffed courgette flowers
Ingredients
For the courgette flowers
12 courgette flowers, gently cleaned
For the filling
1 small ball of shankleesh, crumbled
2 tbsp goat’s labneh
For the tomato salsa
2 large ripe charred tomatoes, peeled and finely diced
1 small charred onion, peeled and finely diced
3 to 4 cloves vintage garlic, finely minced (see The Jewelled Table)
50g or 3 to 4 tbsp toasted pine nuts
A pinch of basil, finely chiffonaded
45ml/3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the batter
(Alternatively, use your favourite tempura batter.)
60g or ½ cup cornflour (cornstarch)
80g or ½ cup rice flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking powder
Approximately 100 to 150ml chilled beer or sparkling soda water
Instructions
Gently clean the courgette flowers, removing the inner stamens if needed, taking care not to tear the delicate petals. Dry very well.
Combine the crumbled shankleesh with the goat’s labneh until softened and creamy, then carefully spoon or pipe the mixture into each flower, twisting the petals closed to secure the filling.
For the salsa, combine the diced tomatoes, onion, vintage garlic, toasted pine nuts and basil, then season with salt and drizzle with olive oil; allow it to sit so the flavours can meld.
Prepare the batter by whisking together the cornflour, rice flour, sea salt and baking powder, then gradually add the chilled beer or soda water until you have a light, loose batter.
Heat oil for frying, dip each stuffed courgette flower into the batter, allowing any excess to drip away, then fry until crisp and golden.
Serve immediately with the smoked tomato and vintage garlic salsa.
Dayma enshalla <3
Ma’ esalama (with peace) مَع السَلامة ,
Bethany x
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