Fleur de courgette: The simple dish beloved in the South of France

Stuffed courgette flowers, one of the Mediterranean's oldest and humblest dishes, are now served at Michelin-star restaurants on the most dazzling terraces of France's Côte d'Azur.

No one knows for sure when or how locals in the South of France started eating fleurs de courgette (courgette flowers), but their simple philosophy endures: when life gives you courgettes, make stuffed courgette blossoms. Once an affordable, rural dish due to an abundance of produce, the trumpet-like bright yellow flowers have found their way onto tables at Michelin-star restaurants.

Alain Llorca, chef and owner of his eponymous one-star restaurant, about 18km from Nice in La Colle-sur-Loup, is fond of the dish, which has become one of his signatures (see recipe below). Often stuffed with creamy ewe's milk cheese aged for months before being blended with ingredients like locally grown aubergine, basil and olives, he says that his stuffed courgette flowers "highlight other flavours from the South of France".

However, his elevated version of the dish is a far cry from its humble origins, even within Llorca's own family, where they would dip the blossoms in batter and pan fry them with herbs. "We eat them like that, hot or cold, on a picnic at the beach," he said. Courgette flowers are a speciality of the region, where many people are also accustomed to making clever use of leftovers at home. "It may be a family way of making courgette," he explained. "We collect everything that we don't eat the day before to put in the flower."

Llorca wasn't the first chef to take courgette flowers from rags to riches, so to speak. About 30 to 40 years ago, an ingenious chef – Jacques Maximin, who worked in the kitchen of the opulent Hotel Le Negresco in Nice – began cooking the courgette and blossom in a new way, elevating and popularising the region's emblematic dish into a work of culinary art.

Traditionally, the male flower, located at the end of a stem of a courgette plant was stuffed or fried, while the female flower blooming at the end of the vegetable was discarded. But, feeling that courgettes were to too big and long for his envisioned dish, chef Maximin worked with local farmers to grow a petite, tender courgette variety with the female flower still attached to it so that he could make an elegant dish using both the body and the flower together. Other chefs soon followed suit.

Llorca, who later also worked at Le Negresco, became familiar with Maximin's famed truffle-stuffed courgette flower recipe, which served as inspiration for what he would eventually offer at his own restaurant in La Colle-sur-Loup. And whether he stuffs his courgette flowers with the fancy fungi, aubergine or cheese, guests have come to expect it on his menu. "I think some customers identify with dishes," he said. "If I don't have the courgette flower, people get mad at me." 

Nevertheless, once the courgette blossom is no longer in season, it's no longer available on dinner tables across France's Côte d'Azur region.

"There is a seasonality to courgette. Courgette starts in April," said Llorca. "It all depends on the weather… [When] the weather is not nice, because it's colder, it grows less – and that's the reality, I would say, of the terroir."

As a chef who wishes to delight and please his diners, Llorca wouldn't want it any other way.

"What's important is that the international client wants Mediterranean cuisine – Mediterranean cuisine when it's in season," he said. "I have the courgette flower, [then] it's the tomato, it's going to be melon, it's going to be aubergine, then it's going to be fish, anchovies, sardines – all the Mediterranean products that can be found here in our region."

Courgette fleur à la Niçoise (Courgette flower Niçoise style) recipe

By Alain Llorca

Serves 4

Method

Step 1

Using a paring knife, remove the pistils from the 4 courgette flowers. Chop the 2 additional courgettes into 1-inch pieces.

Step 2

In a pot of salted boiling water, cook the spring onion bulbs until soft; use a slotted spoon to transfer to a strainer to drain. Simmer the chopped courgettes until tender, then drain.

Step 3

In a sauté pan, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic cloves and brown for 2 minutes, then the cooked onions and courgette and cook over low heat until golden.

Step 4

Transfer the vegetables to a cutting board. Add all the remaining ingredients and chop everything together with a knife to obtain a homogeneous filling.

Step 5

Adjust the seasoning and stuff the four courgette flowers. Steam the stuffed courgettes in a couscoussier (a double chamber pot) or in a bamboo steamer set in a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes, or until tender and cooked through. 

Step 6

Let the courgettes cool to room temperature, then serve drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and with a cold tomato coulis on the side. 

This recipe has been adapted by BBC's World's Table. 

BBC.com's World's Table "smashes the kitchen ceiling" by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.

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