Squash Blossoms & Other Farmer's Market Finds

This past week's farmer's market cooking was made up of fresh local sausage, peppers, onions and eggplant, rigatoni cacio e pepe and squash blossoms filled with goat cheese.

First I'll start with the sausage, peppers, onions and eggplant. I browned the sausages on the stove and then finished them in the oven. In the same pan, I sauteed the peppers and onions. Once those were done, I sauteed the eggplants. While that was all cooking, I cooked a batch of fresh rigatoni which I then tossed in some the the pasta cooking water with pecorino romano cheese and fresh cracked pepper.

As for the squash blossoms, this was an experiment for me. I've had squash blossoms and zucchini flowers at restaurants before and they are so delicious. The season for them is fleeting and they don't stay fresh for long but I saw these at the farmer's market so I bought a few to try my hand at. Most often, they are stuffed with an herbed ricotta and sometimes battered and fried. I just stuffed them with goat's cheese and baked them. Next time, I would try the herbed ricotta as I think the strong flavor of the cheese overpowered the delicate flowers.