Friday, May 28, 2010

Adventures with Fava Beans

Thank you everyone for your fava bean suggestions a few weeks ago.



From doing some research online and reading your comments, I learned pretty quickly that the one thing that is essential when cooking fava beans is that they have to be peeled twice.

First, I took the beans out of the pods.






There aren’t many beans compared to the pods…



I cooked the beans in salt water for about 6-7 minutes. That was a bit too long and the beans turned out a bit softer than they should have been…

Here are the cooked beans.



And then they got peeled again. I love how green they are!



Here are the peeled beans. I had planned on sautéing them, but since they were so soft, I decided to simply dress them with some lemon olive oil (a recent Farmers’ Market splurge)… The lemon olive oil is quite strong and overpowered the taste of the beans a bit, but since we love the taste of lemon, we enjoyed the dish.




As I mentioned, we enjoyed the beans, and it was fun to experiment with a new food. But preparing the beans was quite a bit of work for not very much end product…


Questions: What is the last new food item you prepared/ate? What are your plans for the long weekend? I’m taking a girlfriend out for her birthday but other than that, we’ll just relax… :-)

Be well,
Andrea