In a restaurant on the left bank in Florence, a chef shared this recipe with me.

Rinse zucchini blossoms and dip while wet into flour. Fry until pale golden in hot peanut oil. Remove and salt lightly. (You can grind regular salt fine in a mortar and pestle, put a little in the palm of you hand, and blow it over the hot blossoms.) Serve immediately.

A recipe I read but did not try suggests mixing equal parts (1 cup each) flour and water to make a pastella, a thin batter. Rinse and dry the blossoms, dip in the pastella, and fry in a light vegetable oil or in half-and-half vegetable and olive oil.

The Florentine chef and I agreed that adding egg made the blossoms "tropo [too] goopy." They are very delicate, and a light coating of flour or thin flour batter seems to suit them better than an egg batter.