Favas (broad beans) certainly do marry well with bacon. I grill it, chop it small and mix it in and serve either hot or warm. They also make a good warm salad with vinaigrette. I grow them and can therefore pick them young and I don’t take them out of their skins. I use them smaller than those in the photo.

I’ll buy Favas when I see them in the store. They are alot of work. I once grew them, but never had again. I just don’t have the room.

I've never seen fresh favas at the store, but might have missed them. For me, fresh is a treat. I remember when blueberries just weren't seen in California (or most of it), but now they're highly available most of the year. Other things still have short seasons. I leap on 'em. :)

That’s like Okra, if you want any you’d better buy it while it’s available.. We have a really good grocery here that carries many odd fresh things from the surrounding farms. They were one of the few to carry rhubarb (from another thread). They have a whole area for just that.

I’ve never bought them as the ones I see for sale here are always bigger than I would like. And they start to deteriorate as soon as they are harvested. They are a very easy crop to grow in my climate and can be sown in October to overwinter and crop in May. There are many cultivars including dwarf varieties and red seeded. I would think they could be a winter crop in CA too.

These were grown in California and delivered fresh from the farm, still all green. They were tender and delicious after just blanching. A little waxy raw. Highly variable in size depending on where in the pod they were, like graduated beads. There used to be a lot of bean fields near wher I live, but that was long ago. It's all developed now. But I think it was mostly pintos and garbanzos. Dry beans. In general, we have a lot of those, plus black beans, cranberry beans, limas, kidney and blackeyed. Also plenty of green beans, wax beans, snow peas and snap peas. Others are small specialty crops, and fresh favas are rare (I think dry favas are from elsewhere. We comsume far more beans than we produce). Whereas local stores often have dragon beans and fresh garbanzos. I have nowhere to grow my own, even if I were a good gardener.

So there was a handful of beans left on yesterday's platter. I put them in a lunch of (also leftover) portabello ravioli in arrabiatta sauce with turkey pepperoni and arugula. They held their own, and increased the delightfulness.

okay .... Hannibal

Dragged elephants over the mountains conquring cities he lacked the administrative staff to rule, so lost them quite promptly, A story of tragic heroism and the waste and futility of war. Bureaucray is the stuff of empires.

So, this week’s beans were easier. I timed the prepping to coincide with times I wanted to watch TV anyway, and did the shucking and slits one day, and the blanching and peeling another. Plus, I was inspired to use a table knife instead a paring knife to make the slits. My flatware knifes, ostensibly butter knifes, are wickedly serrated and sharp, and perfect for making the openings in the thick skins, so that part took half the time.

I had a recipe for "spicy fava bean soup", but while I really liked the ingredients, as I was starting to make it and looking at the proportions, I decided I really wanted something else, and just did my own thing with it. Instead of canned tomatoes, I used a 15 oz. can of fire roasted, four fresh tomatoes that never ripened, cut into fairly large chunks, and more than a dozen air dried grape tomatoes. Instead of a couple of onions, I used a giant purple spring onion. Instead of four average cloves of garlic, I used three giant ones (probably about three times as much). Instead of a lot of chicken stock, I used water and some concentrated green stock. I checked my spices before using them as usual, but I was not impressed by the spiciness of the proportions, which I adjusted for the extra tomatoes. I really did like the idea of plenty of cumin, plus judicious amounts of coriander and allspice, but it was...unimpressive. Maybe the tomatoes did more to mess with the spice? Whatever. I just added more. It needed zing. I added some chipotle powder. Then some mostly seeds left in the bottom of a crusted red pepper jar. And some turmeric to add a little mellowness. The recipe called for brown rice, which I never really planned to use, but it needed something on those lines so I put in maybe twice as much (no swelling involved) green lentils. The rounded kind, not the pea style ones.

This soup was so good I wanted it for breakfast, heated up with the blanched fava beans, and topped with pistachios (from the recipe) but not the recommended yoghurt.

I don't think I can ever replicate it, but I could maybe interpret it again in a similar way.

Maybe all the flavors had a chance to meld. It looks delicious.

What's that noise?? Oh my, it's my tummy growling!!!

Smiles,

Sooz