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Pumpkin flowers have long been used in cooking by the peoples of the world. They are valued for their nutrients as well as interesting taste characteristics. In some countries, they are sold in supermarkets along with potatoes and cabbage.
Many gardeners from the CIS countries grow pumpkin for personal purposes, using both its fruits and making tinctures from seeds. Even the leaves are used in the preparation of recipes from traditional medicine.
Historical information
It is believed that North America is the birthplace of this useful plant in every sense. And there, the locals have learned to add it to traditional dishes for a long time. Pumpkins were mashed, stewed and even sweets were prepared.
From a botanical point of view, the plant belongs to the category of annuals. It has rough stems and leaves that literally creep along the ground. A useful representative of the flora blooms with yellow rather large flowers. They are often used in cooking as an independent dish after heat treatment, and as an addition to multi-component dishes along with zucchini flowers.
Historians believe that the Aztecs were the first to cook deliciousness. They simply peeled off the skin and sent the pulp to bake. After the Mexicans tasted the amazing taste of the fruit, they upgraded a fairly simple recipe.
Since then, the ancient housewives first cut off the top of the fruit, and then poured milk, spices to taste and honey inside. Baking all this in the ashes for several hours, they received an excellent hearty meal.
Today, the “orange sun” is positioned as a dietary food product. Its different parts are used in the preparation of a festive or everyday meal. The fact that the plant is easily absorbed by the body adds to its advantages.
In addition to the culinary direction of use, many create original crafts from juicy fruits, decorating them with flowers. A striking example of this is the “Jack Lantern” on Halloween, when the pulp is cleaned inside the “ball”, instead of which a candle is placed there.
Just in time for the autumn harvest season, while some are looking for how to make a terrible craft for the holiday, others are refreshing in their memory recipes for making flowers. The assembled bouquet can be fried with a special filling, and then eaten either directly or added to salads.
natural doctor
While people who are far from culinary masterpieces form pumpkin flower arrangements to make a vase of flowers look harmonious, chefs look for the freshest flowers that have a low calorie content.
In general, experts recommend that everyone who wants to conduct a pumpkin experiment go to agricultural markets. There, when buying the fruit itself, it will be possible to agree that the next time the gardener will grab a box of flowers. A full basket will serve as breakfast, lunch, dinner and at the same time a healer for various ailments.
Herbalists know that a rich chemical composition is to thank for the wide use of various parts of a common representative of botany. Seeds alone can please with a high content:
- unsaturated fats;
- vitamins E, C, B, A;
- fiber;
- minerals.
Healers in Latin America still use the seeds to naturally lower the level of bad cholesterol in the blood. This acts as a prevention of diabetes among people prone to it. Additionally, some heavy metals such as cadmium or lead are removed from the body by white assistants.
The fruit itself contains about 90% of the water part, and it is also rich in sucrose, vitamin A, fructose, glucose and various pectins. Due to the presence of vitamin T, the deliciousness helps in the formation of blood cells, which stabilizes metabolism and blood clotting.
Nutritionists advise eating flowers and fruits if a person suffers from liver diseases. Orange fresh juice with a cumulative effect alleviates the course of diseases of the pancreas, and also helps with the formation of stones in the kidneys and gallbladder. And if you eat 500 grams of pulp with minimal heat treatment, you will be able to protect yourself from the development of caries by consuming the daily rate of fluorine.
Culinary Facets
The decor, which includes compositions from this popular agricultural plant, usually includes the use of only fruits. If we are talking about a big harvest, preparation for the same Halloween or a themed festival, then instead of throwing away fresh flowers, it is better to use them for a good cause:
- fry;
- put out;
- stuff.
Italians are especially fond of this part of the pumpkin. Any grocery store will offer the surprised tourist already selected “one to one” ingredients in a box on the shelves with cucumbers and zucchini.
The easiest way to cook a delicacy in batter. Italian enterprising hostesses do not hold such a dish for a holiday at all, preferring to cook it for dinner just in the middle of the week. To create it, you will need to either manually collect the main components from your personal garden, or purchase the right amount in the store.
To make a popular Italian delicacy with your own hands, it is enough to follow the simplest algorithm of actions:
- Take one chicken egg and beat it thoroughly together with pepper and salt to taste.
- Take the washed flower and dip it in the spicy egg mixture.
- Fry the preparation. To fill the pan, it is better to use spicy olive oil, which, when frying, transfers its aroma to the finished product.
It is called the easy-to-prepare dish fiori di zucca in pastella.
A modified version of the dish provides for another stage – rolling in breadcrumbs. Gourmets say that it turns out even tastier. But here we can not do without another intermediate phase. After frying, you need to send the sweets to a paper napkin. This will get rid of excess oil.
The treat, still unusual for the Slavs, should be served with homemade mayonnaise or sour cream.
Instead of cabbage rolls and borscht
Most immigrants from the USSR are used to the fact that traditional cuisine involves stuffing zucchini or, at best, tomatoes. Sometimes cabbage, grape leaves are used as a “fur coat”.
The Italians went further than their colleagues in the kitchen, having learned how to deftly stuff pumpkin flowers. For the filling, tomatoes and mozzarella are used here, which is easy to cook at home even without proper skills. The resulting result has long been entrenched in European cuisine cookbooks under the label “dietary”.
To take a sample, you can start with the simplest option, which includes the following ingredients:
- 12 floral;
- 300 grams of champignons;
- 1 bulb;
- 50 ml of milk;
- 3 Art. spoons of flour.
Chefs conducting a master class on a given topic recommend selecting from a mountain of proposals only those flowers that have not yet had time to fully open. First, the blanks are washed, and then the core is removed.
Mushrooms are first chopped with an onion, and then sent to stew in vegetable oil for about 15 minutes. A couple of minutes before the end of the stew, dill is added to the mixture to add flavor.
After that, each flower is carefully stuffed with the resulting slurry, closing the petals tightly. Later, it only remains to make a thin batter so that when dipped, the flowers can be seen. Such a mixture for dipping in Italian cooking terminology is called pastella.
To prepare pastella, you will need to pour the indicated amount of flour into a pot or any other suitable container, previously mixed with mineral sparkling water. Moreover, the amount of liquid is regulated independently according to the principle “how much dough will take” so that the consistency is perfect.
Particular attention will need to be paid to deep-frying, the basis of which is the same olive oil loved by Italians. It is poured onto the bottom of the pan, waiting until the liquid is heated sufficiently. Then the workpiece is dipped in batter and sent for frying for five minutes. During this time, the semi-finished product is turned over several times to get a uniform crust.
As soon as the goodies acquire a pleasant golden hue, it should be immediately removed from the fire, shifting to paper towels. Such a move will reduce fat content. And you need to serve the finished treat hot with herbs or a separately prepared vegetable salad.
Such a culinary delight will help to cope with the lack of vitamins in autumn evenings. The recommendation of gourmets to use the dish along with red wine will add atmosphere. A juicy shell with mushroom filling has a slightly sweet aftertaste that goes well with table alcohol. But if it was not possible to get champignons, or the soul requires variety, then the filling can be replaced with minced meat or fish. Italians prefer to attract for this purpose:
- shrimp;
- anchovies;
- mozzarella.
Although male and female differ in size and slightly in structure, some frugal cooks use both types for soup. To serve Italian pumpkin soup for lunch, you just need to follow the step-by-step instructions:
- Select large specimens and grind them.
- Cut the onion and rub the pre-prepared tomatoes.
- Add all of the above to a pot of simmering olive oil.
- Fry the base until golden brown.
- Pour the meat broth into the saucepan.
- Mix butter, flour by eye and salt in a bowl.
- Shape the dough into balls by making a small hole in the middle.
- Throw “flour bombs” into the broth.
After waiting until fully cooked, the soup is poured hot, serving on the table to dear guests.
Medicinal properties
The use of pumpkin components in medicine originates from ancient times, when the sick were healed only with the help of natural medicines. Based on the knowledge gained from past centuries, modern pharmacists continue to create effective drugs.
A striking example of this is the Indian drug Pepozin. It is positioned as the first assistant for people who need to slow down the reproduction of tubercle bacillus.
On an identical principle, experts began to create medicines to relieve symptoms in people who suffer from the development of various types of tumors. And although such funds are listed as auxiliary elements of therapy, without them, recovery would have been slower. Thanks for the accelerated positive dynamics should be a high content of fiber, which is responsible for stimulating intestinal motility.
One of the most common traditional medicine recipes based on pumpkin flowers in combination with leaves is considered to be a tincture to normalize metabolic processes. It demonstrates particular effectiveness in case of deviation in terms of water-salt and mineral metabolism.
To prepare it, you will need three tablespoons of pumpkin flowers and leaves, the same amount of licorice root, as well as two tablespoons of rowan fruits, shepherd’s purse (grass) and dried seaweed.
All ingredients are crushed and mixed, and then the resulting mixture is poured with boiling water at the rate of three tablespoons of dry billet per liter of water. The solution is wrapped in a warm cloth, leaving to saturate for about two hours.
The resulting medicine should be taken after prior consultation with the doctor according to the principle: a quarter cup seven times a day. With prolonged use, a cumulative effect is triggered.
Also, decoctions in their pure form or together with other herbal herbs are used externally to quickly heal purulent wounds. In some cases, specific teas are necessary for those who need to extinguish heat during inflammatory processes.
But trying to help yourself with the help of alternative medicine tips should still be done only after consulting a doctor and undergoing a clinical examination.