Fava Beans Two Ways: Friday Fail Edition

In addition to the dried fava beans we already had from last summer, we have been getting fresh fava bean pods the last couple of weeks, just like last year.  I decided to try to make both kinds (dried and fresh) for dinner one night when I couldn't come up with any better ideas.  In hindsight, maybe I should have thought harder about other meal possibilities.

The inside of a fava bean pod is pretty cool.  Each bean is surrounded by this spongy material, which makes them look so comfy cozy in there.

The first recipe I got started on seemed promising as it had a base of tomato, garlic, and onion that all got chopped up and cooked together. 

Along with some seasoning and the beans, that was basically all there was to it.  Doesn't seem like there would be a whole lot to mess up.  Unfortunately, my interpretation of "shelled, dried fava beans" perhaps was not the same as the recipe's.  That, combined with my reliance on HH to guide me when cooking dried beans, was this dish's downfall. 

If I had paid more attention to how to prepare dried beans, I would have known that they usually take hours to cook after soaking in water overnight.  Note that the recipe uses less than an hour of total cooking time.  And I don't know if you have ever seen a fava bean, but they are quite large in comparison to others like black or kidney beans.  And by quite large, I mean huge (at least the ones we have been getting).

So, the beans took forever to cook and were not done in time for dinner.  I ended up adding a bunch of extra water to the pot and letting everything cook together until bedtime.  A couple days later, I chopped/mashed up the beans and put them in enchiladas, so all was not lost. 


The second recipe with the fresh fava beans went a lot more smoothly, but the results were a little bland.  (I did the Middle Eastern Fava Bean Pilaf about halfway down the page.)  I think the recipe was pretty standard for a rice pilaf (though I've never actually made one before).  I ended up squeezing in quite a bit of lemon juice and cilantro for flavor, and thought it could have used even more. 

Sorry for my lack of pictures of the finished product.  By the time this was ready to eat I was too annoyed at my overall failure and didn't feel like taking any more pictures, I guess.

In order to redeem myself (and because we still had a bunch of fresh beans), I made this recipe that was very similar to a dish HH cooked up last summer.   The fresh fava beans were combined with orzo pasta, garlic, and onions for a nice lunch.  I have decided that I much prefer the taste of the fresh beans to the dried ones, which is a bummer since we have a bunch of dried ones still to use. 

Ful Medames

We had received so many dried fava beans from our CSA we had a tub full of them on our counter and didn't know quite what to do with them.  Soup seemed like an obvious choice but now that the weather is warming up a bit that didn't seem right.  After some Googling I came across this recipe for ful medames which is a traditional Egyptian breakfast dish.

Making it was basically a cross between making refried beans and hummus.  I was a little worried when I got home after the beans had been in the slow cooker all afternoon because they didn't have the greatest aroma. However they tasted great, though I may have added a few too many cloves of garlic (LJ never thinks there is enough garlic in a dish so I usually at least double what a recipe calls for).  I cooked up some naan and we had a very filling dinner.

Fava beans: Two ways

We've been receiving weekly installments of fava beans from our CSA for the last couple of weeks.  Before this neither of had ever eaten a fava bean and my only knowledge of them came from Silence of the Lambs.

For my first attempt I decided to roast the beans whole.  I wash the beans, removed the end that had been connected to the bean plant, and tossed the pods in olive oil and seasoning salt.

I roasted them in the oven for about 25 minutes in a 425 degree oven, flipping them half way through.

Eating the beans whole was a little difficult because the shells of the pod were a little stringy.  However, it did work well to scrape pods clean with my teeth while sucking the beans out.  The roasting with the seasoning salt provided a real meaty flavor.

The second method I tried seems to be considered the more traditional method for preparing the beans.  It is a little more labor intensive and the pods are discarded.

The first step was to remove the beans from the pod which was relatively easy.  The pods almost have a natural string on the sides that can be pulled that makes it simple to crack the pods in half.  The beans are quite large so there are usually only 4 or 5 beans per pod.

The next step was to blanch the beans in boiling salt water for 3 minutes.

The beans are then dunked in to ice water to immediately stop the cooking process.

At this point the beans reveal that they had an outer white coating.  The white coat cracked for most of the beans during the blanching process so slipping the green bean out of the shell was quite easy.

Discarded shells on the left.  Inner beans in the bowl.

The final step was to saute the beans with some garlic and olive oil for about five minutes.

The first method was easier and I would say tasted better but they were more difficult to eat.  Really you couldn't go wrong either way.