Fava bean sweatshop

The times I've tried fava beans in the past, I've liked them quite a bit. I've only had fava beans that had been dried, soaked, and cooked (they are usually yellow), but I had seen various descriptions of fresh fava beans as being much better than the dried ones. As far as I knew, the fresh variey were to be found only in prohibitively expensive and intimidating restaurants. I had never seen fresh fava beans for sale before, so I tried my hand at growing some this year. So far, my plants are mostly flowers and a few immature pods. This weekend, I spotted some at our local yuppie farmstand and bought a bagful to finally see what the hoopla was about.

I remembered the last time I tried to prepare dried fava beans - lots of peeling the tough skin off the individual beans after cooking, plus they're kind of hard to cook evenly. I figured that with fresh beans, there would be less work because maybe the skins on the beans would be edible. Nope. I still had to peel the beans after blanching them. And before peeling the beans, they had to be removed from the pods. This is why they're only served at the fancy-pants restaurants because they're pretty labor intensive. I don't think that the preparation of fresh favas was significantly more involved than dried ones, though. Certainly it takes less planning since you don't have to soak them, and they cook evenly when fresh.

Another discovery was that a fava pod looks huge, but it's almost all pod, spongy pod lining, and bean shell. After de-podding and shelling the giant bag of beans, you're left with a small handful of bright green favas. But they are very good - lovely texture and flavor, not grainy at all like some frozen large beans I've had. I've recently seen the rule of thumb that 1 lb of pods yields 1 cup of shelled beans. Hmn, maybe I should have planted more than four fava bean plants and less than four zucchini plants.

I will follow Jeshica's lead of asking questions at the end of a post to get the comments rolling in: What else have you made that made you think, "Damn, that was fiddly and ridiculously involved. But heck, this is pretty tasty!"?

The NPR method of blanching beans is as follows: First remove the beans from the pods. Bring enough water to a boil to cover the beans. Drop beans in boiling water for 30 seconds, then immerse beans in cold water. Peel beans.

I have no idea whether fresh favas are ever traditionally used in ful nabed, but I thought it was good:

Ful nabed (Egyptian fava bean soup),
based on a recipe from Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant
(sorry for the crappy picure; the sun went down)

1 c chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, pressed
1/4 c olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp sweet paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne, or I used a random assortment of finely diced seeded chili peppers from my garden
2 bay leaves
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 c fresh tomatoes
3.5 c vegetable stock*
2 c blanched fava beans**
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and black pepper to taste
mint leaves to garnish

*Being cheap and lazy, I keep a jar of vegetable "Better than Boullion" in my fridge, which is a couple steps above using boullion cubes, is pretty common in supermarkets, and no I don't really want to think about what sort of preservatives must be in there.

**See above instructions for blanching fresh favas. I only had 1 cup - should have bought more!

In a soup pot, saute the onions for a few minutes. Add garlic and saute until onions are translucent. Add cumin, paprika, cayenne, bay leaves, and carrots; cook on medium heat for 5 minutes, adding roughly a teaspoon of water at a time while stirring to prevent spices from burning by deglazing the pot. Stir in chopped tomatoes. Add vegetable stock and simmer until the carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, add cooked fava beans, parsley, and lemon juice. Add salt and pepper. Garnish with mint.

Serve with... chianti, of course (groan!).

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DISCLAIMER: Please note that there is a serious genetic blood condition called favism. G6PD deficiency can result in red blood cell destruction after ingestion of fava beans (it is more prevalent amongst certain ethnic groups, and the gene for G6PD deficiency is on the X chromosome, hence it is expressed much more frequently in men). Don't say I didn't tell you so when your RBC's start exploding.