Recipe for fior di zucca and a note on Harold Pinter

Fior di zucca

Make a batter of flour, eggs, water, salt, pepper, garlic powder and baking powder and aside to rest while you wash and dry and prepare the flowers.

Don't bother to ask, because I can't tell you how much of each ingredient goes into the batter. Experiment and you'll live a happy life of daring...go by eye. like I do, for how many flowers you have. It's the way I was taught. Some friends think I hold out on them--this isn't true. REALLY. I never measured anything in my kitchen, bit have tried writing these blog recipes...and it's a total pain. And I'm not even sure they are correct measurements. I usually guess.

Clean the flowers. Cut the stems, take out the pistol and remove any sepals. Into each flower place a piece of anchovy and a piece of mozzarella. Roll the twisted flower into a bowl of flour and then dip into the batter and fry in hot corn oil in a deep fry pan.

Server hot.

The following has nothing to do with food, and is merely a not on Harold Pinter and play-writing.

I love theater and plays. Always have. I read somewhere that Harold Pinter wrote 29 plays. these include: The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming (1964), Betrayal (1978), A Kind of Alaska (1982), and Celebration (2000). He died in 2008, at the age of 78. A great talent, who basically said that he wrote the way he did because that's the way he writes. Isn't that terrific?

He may be quoted as saying, "How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and general degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."

I've written two short plays for theater and one movie screenplay adapted from one of my short stories. And I began another but only got to 30 pages before I quit because I was merely auditing the class and had to leave because my husband was whisking me off to Asia. That idea of mine was made into a movie about the killing of Aldo Moro--well, at least I had the right instinct.

All writers should try to write plays or screenplays. You are forced to write only action and dialogue--no character's thoughts, thank you very much. And it'll also teach you plot and plot points and the spinning around of the action to go in another direction. Oh, just read the book by Syd Fields, he's the expert.