Brilliance of Farmers Market Produce

You wont find produce like these at grocery stores. These can only be available in season and at farmers market – for us this is at the dane county farmers market. Roots down community farm had these gorgeous baby zucchini, with orange gold blossoms attached.

They were so tender that shaving them thin would have been enough to eat raw in a salad. But we had another salad in prep already. The other very popular recipe is to stuff the blossoms with cheese – ricotta/goat/paneer and fry them with or without batter. We prefer only a light coat but we did not want to do the frying. So we settled for very brief grilling and use also the fresh corn tortillas we scored from Los Angeles Tortilla company at the monroe street farmers market in madison. Taco’s was the answer.

Aji Amarillo Salsa

We wanted to make a thick warming salsa for the meal. We reached out immediately for the dried Aji Amarillo that we had procured a while back.

we opened couple of them, deseeded as we wanted to control the heat and toasted them on a dry pan. We also roasted a yellow bell pepper and removed the skin. We ground them together with some garlic, vinegar. We then pulsed in some some fresh paneer (substiture with cotija, goat cheese, sheeps feta etc) and toasted pine nuts. The pine nuts and paneer add a coarseness and bring the salsa together. The aji amarillo shines through. It is hot, not very hot though and the unique heat comes first followed by fruitiness almost with a faint hint of mango.

Careful searing of Baby Zucchini

we did not want to overcook or burn the baby zucchini. The large flowers we plucked but smaller ones we just sliced all the way in half.

We seasoned them simply with sea salt. Then we seared them grilling patiently and carefully in a pan, flipping them as soon as they got just a little bit of the golden brown and covering pan if they started to get dry.

Taco Assembly

We kept everything ready. The tortillas went on the griddle and were flipped at first sign of air pocket. Tortillas on the plate came steaming, followed by a smear of the thick aji amarillo salsa. The grilled baby zucchini with flowers went on alongwith one or two large flowers. We finished with some traditional mexican sour cream or crema mexicana and toasted pine nuts.