After three months the courgettes are coming good. Turn your back for a few days and the inch long squirts have turned into mini-monsters, on their way to be marrows. Last week we had the flowers mixed in with our pasta. Last night I decided to deep fry them.

On a shelf in the kitchen of the Cottage there is a small pile of cook-books including River Cafe Cook Book Easy – a bright silver cover and lots of straight forward recipes most of which only take a few minutes to put together. Last summer Andrea cooked Zucchini Fritti from it and the kids wolved them back sat on the beach watching the moon come up from behind Mount Gabrial. I had picked up a copy of the book in the Oxfam book shop in Oxford and decided to try it at home.

The batter is basically flour, water and a drop of olive oil left to settle for half an hour then lightened with three whisked egg whites. I was drinking a bottle of Spitfire as I cooked and used a drop of that to add a bit of extra flavour. The flowers should have been stuffed with ricotta but I thought they would work just as well as they were.

I fried the match-sticked courgettes first so the family could start on those whilst I did the flowers. There were half a dozen of them and they were delicious. The crunch of the batter piping hot on the tongue.