The Dinner Files

Shelling, blanching, and re-shelling fava beans keeps lots (most?) people from cooking them very often. If you find yourself with a nice selection of young fava bean pods – slim and smooth and soft and green – you can actually cook them whole and eat the whole thing.

You don’t end up with the very prettiest dish you’ve ever seen, but it sure is tasty.

I learned this fact and this basic recipe from a clever lady who learned about them from a Turkish friend, if I have my history correct. Perhaps that means these are Turkish. I’d be happy to hear any further intelligence anyone has on the matter.

I don’t get to eat these as often as I’d like. My dashing husband will eat them, but he doesn’t relish them and tends to mention his lack of relish whenever I make them. That means there are usually plenty of leftovers and I get to eat them for breakfast. Now that I think about it, I should go ahead and make them more often.

Braised fava beans with dill

The yogurt on the side is optional but is so fabulous I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to add it. I find a whole milk yogurt works well, but sheep milk yogurt, if you can get your hands on it, is even better.

2 lbs. fava beans

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 – 4 spring onions or 1 sweet onion

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon sugar

1/4 cup chopped dill

Whole milk yogurt or sheep milk yogurt to serve on the side

Snap the end of the fava bean pods and pull off the stringy bits that run down the side. If it breaks off, take a moment to dig it out – you’ll be glad you did when you don’t bite into a weird, out of context fibrous string in the middle of your luscious, delightful braised fava beans.

Chop the onions.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan or saute pan over medium high heat. Add the onions and salt and cook, stirring a bit, until the onions start to wilt, 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the fava pods. Stir to combine. Sprinkle with sugar and add 1/4 cup water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and reduce heat to low to maintain a steady simmer. Cook, more or less undisturbed, until fava pods are fairly tender, about 20 minutes.

Add about 3/4 of the dill, stir to combine, return cover and cook until pods are completely tender, another 10 minutes.

Serve, hot, warm, or at room temperature with a dollop of yogurt on the side of each serving. Garnish with remaining dill.

Delicate green spring vegetables – the asparagus, the peas, the fava beans – are plentiful, but our San Francisco spring is not keeping pace. Lots of gray and rain and chilly wind and not as much sunshine and clear days as we’re used to this time of year. It’s hard to get excited about simply steamed asparagus with aïoli when I’m chilled to the bone.

A big warm bowl of creamy risotto, though? That I can tuck into with glee.

Spring risotto

Go ahead and play around with the proportions of veggies here – nothing’s set in stone. Add some chopped fennel in with the green garlic, use spring onions instead of green garlic, add mint or dill or chervil at the end.You will find plenty of risotto recipes than demand that you stir the rice constantly. This is not one of them.

1 to 2 pounds fava beans

1/2 pound sweet peas/garden peas/English peas

1/2 bunch asparagus

2 green garlics

5 cups broth (I use homemade chicken stock – if you used commercial broth dilute 4 cups of it with 1 cup of water)

2 Tablespoons butter

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

1 cup aborio rice

About 3/4 cup freshly shredded not-super-aged Pecorino cheese

First things first – and experience spring cooks know what this is going to be – you need to double shell the fava beans (I even have this step-by-step guide on how to do it!). I’m sorry. It really is a complete pain if you’re not in the mood to slowly but surely work your way through those beans. Grab the phone, put on the radio, have a chat, or just take a moment and have a little day dream while your hands and eyes are busy.

Set the shelled, blanched, and shelled favas aside.

Shell the peas – doesn’t that seem like a breeze after the favas? – and set them aside with the favas.

Snap the asparagus spears where they break naturally and discard the ends. Cut the asparagus into relatively thin, angled slices, leaving the 1-inch to 2-inch tips intact. Set aside.

Cut off the root ends off the green garlics. Cut the white and light green part of the stalks in half lengthwise – the darker green top will hold the whole things together. Chop the white and light green parts. Reserve the dark green tops for making stock, if you’re so inclined.

Put the broth in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Keep it at a very low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat another medium-ish saucepan over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter and the olive oil. When the butter is melted and stops foaming, add the chopped green garlic and the salt. Cook, stirring, until the green garlic is wilted, about 2 minutes.

Add the rice and stir to completely coat it with the butter and oil. Cook, stirring until the opaque rice grains turn a bit translucent around the edges.

Add about a cup of the warm broth to the rice and cook, stirring as you like. Adjust teh heat so that when you’re not stirring the mixture simmers a bit but doesn’t boil or get too excited. When most of the broth is absorbed – when you can see the bottom of the pot for a few seconds when you stir because the mixture is thicker than the broth – add another 1/2 cup broth. Continue cooking, with some stirring, and adding 1/2 cup of broth at a time until the rice is almost tender to the bite but still has a kernel of uncooked-ness in the center – it took mine a bit over 15 minutes to get there.

Add the asparagus and more broth and continue cooking and stirring and adding broth as needed until the asparagus is almost done and the rice is al dente – tender but with structure to each grain. Add the peas and fava beans.

Continue cooking, adding a bit more broth and stirring, until the peas and beans are warm, just a minute or two. Stir in the cheese and remaining tablespoon of butter and taste – add more salt if you want. We found more cheese on top and some freshly ground black pepper was tasty indeed. As mentioned above, a bit of chopped spring herbs would be lovely too.

We had ours with a boiled egg on the side – we have all these picture-perfect pastured eggs in the house and they are difficult to resist. I meant to soft boil them – start in cold water, bring to a boil, cover, remove from heat, let sit exactly three minutes, remove from hot water, and peel. But the risotto timing with the rice and vegetables and whatnot had the bulk of my attention and the eggs sat around on the counter after I took them from their hot water bath and kept cooking and they weren’t soft-boiled at all. They were, however, delicious and super-spring-y with the risotto.

We had a quick, light dinner last night before heading out into the blustery freezing chill that was Valentine’s night in San Francisco. Going out on Valentine’s Day, you ask? After my rant against it? The short answer is yes. The long answer is we did a quick stop-by at my cousin’s and her girlfriend’s dual birthday bash and V-day party. We stayed just long enough for me to make a batch of wickedly boozey punch, for my dashing husband to set up a basketball game with someone about twice his height, and for Ernest to get 4 temporary tattoos before getting things moving on the dance floor with a pair of fuzzy dice and a move that brilliantly combined the hop of a bunny and the limited range of a robot in need of maintenance.

But I digress… for dinner we snacked on a little salmon salad on toasts I whipped up with some leftover salmon fillets our departed house guest cooked up the other night: a few pieces of leftover salmon flaked up with a fork, enough mayo just to bind it together but not to look creamy, salt, plenty of freshly ground black pepper, and more Meyer lemon juice that you think might really be a good idea. Had we had some green onions around I might have thrown in a few as well.

These snackies were consumed while I finished off the Fava Bean Soup. Too early for fava beans? Yes, you’d be right. But dried fava beans are always in season.

Fava Bean Soup

Dried fava beans don’t look a whole lot like their fresh, grassy green origins. Dried favas are allowed to mature in the pod, so they’re pretty big. Some dried favas are sold with their skins still on, and those are great for other dishes but not this one. Look for dried and peeled fava beans: They are pale yellow and cook quickly for dried beans. This soup is a super-simple puree topped with freshly toasted and ground (or just smashed) cumin seeds and a swirl of olive oil. This is the time to break out the good stuff. I like a really green and fruity oil with this soup. You could also garnish with some fancy-schmancy finishing salt if you have any lying around the cupboards.

12 to 16 oz. dried and peeled fava beans
Salt
1 tsp. vegetable or olive oil
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
4 to 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock (optional)
Fruity olive oil
Cumin seeds

Put the fava beans in a large pot, cover with water and let sit overnight. Drain, cover with water again and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a nice little bubbling simmer and cook until beans are very tender, about 30 minutes (start checking them after 20 minutes, sometimes they cook really quickly). Remove any foam that develops on the surface as the beans simmer. Turn off the heat, add about 1 Tbsp. salt, and let sit until cool. Drain, reserving the cooking liquid if you want to use that instead of stock or if you want to use it as the liquid in another soup.

While the bean cook, chop the onions and garlic. You can also toast the cumin seeds now, if you’d like. Heat a small frying pan over medium high heat. Add the cumin seeds and cook, shaking the pan every now and then, until they smell, well, toasted. Take pan off the heat and set aside. When seeds are cool crush them in a mortar and pestle or put them in a small resealable plastic bag and smush them with the bottom of a small frying pan or saucepan.

Heat 1 tsp. oil in the pot, add onions and 1/2 tsp. salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are translucent, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add cooked fava beans and 4 cups stock or reserved bean cooking liquid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook until flavors blend and beans are falling apart a bit, about 10 minutes. Use a hand-held blender to puree the mixture in the pot or whirl in batches in a blender. Whirl much longer than you think you need to to get the soup to a luscious, creamy texture.

Add more stock or cooking liquid to create the thickness you’d like. Taste and add salt is necessary. Beans really really need salt to bring out their inner sweetness, so don’t be shy.

Ladle into bowls, drizzle with some fabulous olive oil and sprinkle with some toasted, crushed cumin seeds. A bit of hot sauce, harissa, finishing salt, or pepper would also be in order if you were so inclined.

My theme of “spring-to-summer” cooking continues. I developed this lovely risotto with fava beans and sweet corn yesterday before heading off to see Sex and the City with a bunch of women from my crafting group. I’m not sure how it could have been more clichéd. Oh, yes I am: we could have dressed up or snuck in a thermos of cosmos. We were all happy to see it, all happy to meet beforehand for a strawberry-lemon vodka concoction whipped up by our fearless leader, all happy to walk to the theater through the wind-blown sun that defines San Francisco this time of year, all happy to get a break from what seems like a work-intensive month for each and every one of us. One of us was thrilled with the movie because, by her own account, she had decided to be. Me? I would have used some of that product-placement money and hired an editor.

Full disclosure: Like so many movies of this ilk, this one is designed to make you cry. And I am not dead inside. Quite the opposite, in fact. I like nothing more than expressing emotion through fictional characters and will cry at the drop of a hat when it comes to books, movies, and television. I once cried watched All My Children. I literally sobbed at Juno. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I’ve teared up listening to This American Life. I cry easily in real life too. My husband and father have placed bets (actual wagers than involve an exchange of cash, I tell you!) on whether I can make it through wedding toasts dry-eyed.
All that to say: I was not completely dry-eyed through SATC. I don’t think I’m giving anything away: when Samantha spoon-feeds Carrie some yogurt, well, the tears were flowing. Did I feel manipulated? Did I steel myself against further cheap moves by the script? Yes and yes. But the tears were there.

May I highly recommend keeping some tamales in your freezer? My lord, but they make a quick, delicious dinner when you’re maybe not so much in the mood to cook or otherwise inspired.

While Ernie would like to live on tamales and other carb-heavy fare alone, my dashing husband and I had both had late, big lunches. So, instead of tamales my aunt threw in a plastic bag for us to take home after my cousin’s graduation party last weekend (thanks Nancy!), we tucked into this lovely spring salad. Mixed baby greens, thinly sliced raw asparagus, and a generous few handfuls of fava beans (see how to double-shell them). Each item tossed in a vinaigrette made from 3 parts left-over artichoke-curing olive oil and 1 part left-over vinegar from pickled garlic before the whole thing was sprinkled with some slightly over-toasted pine nuts. I used the last bit of that dressing, itself made from the last bits of the last jars of each from last year’s batches.

So Sunday’s complete insanity will pay off with much delicious vinaigrette as well as scads of impressive antipasti plates. That’s a real comfort.

My Very Tall Cousin Sam came to dinner last night. The evening was marked by two big events. First, Ernie let go a bit too soon while showing off on his trapeze for Sam. He gashed his head on the pea gravel and bled profusely. Sam, who was in town for a job interview, carried Screaming Ernie up the back stairs to the kitchen trying simultaneously to comfort the child and, understandably, not to get blood all over his nice clothes. Once we got the blood cleaned up we all realized the cut was small. Ernie was back outside with Very Tall Cousin Sam within three minutes.

Second, I perfected the spring vegetable couscous (cuckoo!) that has haunted me lo! these many days. We ate it with grilled peppers and spicy Italian sausage from Boccalone, a cured meat CSA in the Bay Area (what won’t they think of next…).

The nice people at Lindsay olives sent me some samples of their “Naturals” line. Ernie is a fan. He not, however, a fan of having his picture taken:

We had a first course of creamy fava bean soup that my dashing husband declared was “like restaurant food.” The comment was mainly observation, with a dash of compliment on the side. It was rich and creamy (what with the heavy cream I added) and perfect, as long as one only ate a little of it. A huge bowl would have rendered me ill. But a tiny ramekin of it topped with minced chives was divine. Shell 3 pounds of fava beans. Blanch them in salted water for 3 minutes. Run through a food mill or shell them again. Cook resulting beans in 1/2 cup chicken broth until very soft, mushy even. Whirl in a blender until super-duper smooth. Heat over lowest possible heat, add salt to taste, and stir in 1/4 to 1/2 cup heavy cream. Serve in tiny portions garnished with minced chives. The chives are key. Do not skip the chives.

Our main course was my attempt to fix the spring vegetable couscous (cuckoo!) I made last week. Sadly, I must try again (yes, I’m secretly pleased because even the less perfect versions are delic!)–someone, and I’m not saying who (me?) bought two bags of English peas and no snap peas AND I forgot to ask my intern not to shell and use ALL the favas yesterday. The couscous (cuckoo!) lacked the wide variety of spring vegetables I had planned, but the peas and spring onion couscous (cuckoo!) with feta was tasty. I’ll work on it. I’ll get back to you.

p.s. Happy Birthday Mom!

It must be spring–have you ever seen a dinner so green? We stirred a bit of horseradish cream into the stinging nettle soup and added plenty of extra pepper, as is our way. I put scads of shallot-y marinated fava beans on top of some extremely tender lettuce greens. Those made me swoon, no matter how much shelling and re-shelling they require. My dashing husband had the foresight to toast some whole wheat walnut bread. It was all so healthful I’m worried it was bad for us. Are we on the edge of overly healthful eating? I’m willing to live on this edge. This edge tastes good.