Squash blossoms

I've seen many dishes on television using courgette/zucchini flowers, usually with some sort of filling and often fried. I think it's a different name for the same product?
I'm sure there are recipes out there 🙂 a quick Google search gave me this (enthusiastic) article to start with: https://www.thekitchn.com/my-favorite-sign-of-summer-squash-blossoms-220816
I've never had the opportunity to eat any myself.

Yeah, been using squash blossoms for years. For the last 10 years I get them for free from a local farmer that also supplies chefs in the area, including me. Anyway, I'm up before the sun to pick them, they're wide open in the morning and easier to work with and the key to freshness that lasts the longest and I put them in clam shells for travel and storage.

I used them in soups, different pasta dishes, in frittatas but it appears most people like the deep fried versions and that's basically how they're presented as an appetizer, but I do use blossoms throughout the menu during that season. Anyway, I'll either do the Italian version with ricotta and various other ingredients generally served with lemon wedges and marinara. Or I'll do a Japanese version which is basically non filled in a tempura batter with a dipping sauce of soy, mirin, dashi and a touch of sugar. Make sure you remove the stamen/pistil before stuffing. You can use a spoon or you can use a piping bag for filling, which is what I normally use to fill them considering I'm making more than a couple and the quicker and with less handling the better, which I find piping to achieve that goal.

If I can offer any advice for people that have never done this before, all I can say that is rather important is to buy them fully open otherwise they actually close to protect their reproductive parts which by the way happens when they're exposed to the suns rays and then they'll fuse their petals together, is the only way I can describe it, which then to open you literally have to tear the blossom petals apart, and the cavity is much smaller making you in many cases try to make the cavity bigger with possibly damaging the blossoms which can allow the stuffing to be exposed when deep frying. Basically what I'm saying if you see them in the market and they're closed, I'd pass on the opportunity.