The Sunny Kitchen - An Italian cook in Amsterdam:

A lovely, not too sweet orange dessert scented with fresh thyme: another one of our "creations" during this cooking holiday here in Tuscany.

You can prepare it a couple of days in advance, make sure you cover each portion with a little plastic foil.
Remember to take it out of the freezer at least ten minutes before serving otherwise it will be too hard.

If you like, accompany with a glass of chilled limoncello, the intense Italian lemon liqueur, or arancello, its orangey version.

Semifreddo in Italian means literally "half cold". It's almost like making ice cream but you don't need to stir it from time to time like you would do with gelato, which makes this dessert less work than real ice cream and yet a lovely, creamy taste experience.

Semifreddo all'arancia e timo

Serves 10-12

Ingredients:
10 egg yolks
150 gr. fluid honey
3 organic oranges
8 dl. whipping cream
fresh thyme leaves
sugar
6 spoons rum or another liquor

Beat the egg yolks with the honey in a big enough bowl until frothy.

Grate the zest of two oranges and add it to the egg yolks together with some thyme leaves.

Leave this mixture to rest for 10 minutes and whip the cream in between.

Add the whipped cream to the egg yolks and mix everything delicately from top to bottom so that the whipped cream stays quite stiff.

Pour the mixture in the silicone molds or porcelain ramequins and put in the freezer for at least 2 hours.

Remove the peel of one orange for garnishing the dessert. Cut the peel in thin strips and cook them for 10 minutes in boiling water. Throw away the water, replace it with fresh water and bring the orange peel to the boil again (this is to remove the bitterness). Throw away the water one more time and pat dry the orange peel with kitchen paper. Weigh the peels and put them in a steel pan together with the equivalent of their weight in sugar and 4 spoons of water. Leave the sugar to melt on a low fire and simmer for a while until the peel is caramelised. Remove from the pan and lay on a sheet of baking parchment to dry.

Squeeze the juice of the two oranges, mix with 4 tablespoons of sugar and the rum and put in a little pan on low fire to thicken, stirring from time to time. Remove from the fire and leave to cool off.

Serve the little parfaits with a tablespoon of orange sauce and garnish with the caramelised orange peels and a little thyme twig.

Right now I'm in Tuscany (Montecatini) for the second culinary holiday of this season.
The markets and supermarkets here are FULL of beautiful courgette flowers, often still attached to lovely light green courgettes, so I thought I'd use these little nature's wonders for tonight's lesson.

It's not a classic recipe but something I thought would be nice (I admit, I used my students as guinea pigs since I had never made this stuffing before...): a mixture of ricotta cheese, fresh and strong-tasting mint (we got ours directly from the garden), Parmesan and pecorino cheese plus a lot of black pepper.
The result was absolutely exceptional.

To make the flowers nice and crunchy chill the batter with some ice cubes. It works fabulously.

Fiori di zucchina ripieni fritti

Serves 10-12

Ingredients:
10-12 courgette flowers
2 egg yolks
250 gr ricotta
50 gr. grated parmesan cheese
30 gr. grated pecorino (sheep) cheese
a bunch of fresh mint leaves
200 gr. flour
2 dl. ice-cold beer or ice-cold fizzy mineral water
4 egg whites
salt and pepper
sunflower oil for frying

Rinse the flowers quickly under the tap and dry them with kitchen paper.
Gently remove the fleshy pistils from inside the flowers.

Mix the ricotta with the egg yolks, the finely chopped mint leaves, the parmesan and pecorino cheese and a generous pinch of ground pepper. Salt is usually not necessary since the pecorino is quite salty but taste the stuffing just to make sure.

Fill the courgette flowers with some ricotta mixture. Fill them up to just below the opening of their petals.

To prepare the batter, sieve the flour in a big bowl. Add some salt and pepper.

Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff (use the electric mixer).

Gently mix the beer (or fizzy mineral water) with the flour using a whisk and make sure there are no lumps in the batter. Add the egg whites to the batter and mix carefully.

Dip the flowers in the batter- chilled with a few ice cubes - and fry them in hot sunflower oil until golden brown. Don’t put too many flowers in the frying pan otherwise the temperature will drop and the flowers will absorb too much oil.

Lay the flowers on kitchen paper to remove the excess fat and serve immediately.