FAVA FINALE

While picking the last of the fava beans, I vowed to plant fewer next year. I like favas just fine, but day in and day out is a lot of beans. I had to stretch to find some new ways to cook them, beyond my favorite salteado—sauté of favas with serrano ham.

Favas beans of various sizes, ready for picking in my garden.

I also missed the springtime paean to fava beans by market maven, Russ Parsons, former food editor of the Los Angeles Times. He reliably activated the dispute about whether or not favas should, after shelling, be peeled as well. He came down firmly in favor of double-peeling, shells and skins (read Russ Parsons on fava beans here). I stubbornly stuck to no-peel, the traditional Spanish way.

But, here I was, with heaps of favas. Might as well have a go at peeling some of them. (Shelling and peeling was accomplished while watching Rafa Nadal win the Barcelona tennis final last Sunday.)

Fat favas, middle-sized and baby, plus small pods to cook in their shells.

To shell, break open the pods and squeeze the beans out of the pods. I separated them into tiny ones, called habas “baby” in Spain, middle-sized beans and big fat ones. The tiny ones were my private lunch—quickly sautéed with serrano ham and an egg. The big ones I bagged and refrigerated for making a purée another day. The mid-sized beans I decided to skin. The small (3- to 4-inch) pods with undeveloped beans I set aside for cooking “in their britches,” shells and all.

After blanching, pinch out bean.

To skin the favas, place in boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove and drain. As soon as the beans are cool enough to handle, pinch each bean, breaking the outer skin and popping out the inner green bean.

The three minutes in boiling water cooked them enough for me. I finished by sautéing them in olive oil with a handful of chopped scallions and serving alongside an ibérico pork chop.

Double-peeled favas. Three minutes blanching cooks them sufficiently.

The double-peeled beans were delicate and tender, but, in my opinion, rather blah. I quite like the textural contrast of the somewhat chewy skins and soft, tender inside bean, all in the same bite.

Here are some of the other ways I cooked fava beans this week. As you can see, fresh mint and wild fennel greens are typical with Spanish fava dishes. Parsley, cilantro or tarragon are good alternatives.

Favas in their "britches," cooked without shelling.

Silky-smooth purée of cooked favas that have been sieved.

The fava purée becomes soup with additional veggies.

Raw fava beans pounded with bread, olive oil and garlic, a rustic peasant dish called porra.

Favas in Their "Britches"
Habas con Calzón

A garlicky dressing with bacon tops the unshelled favas.

Small favas can be cooked without shelling. They need only 10 to 15 minutes to cook. Cut the potatoes in small pieces so they cook in the same time.

Serves 4 as a starter or side dish.

½ pound small fava beans in their shells
½ pound potatoes, peeled and cut in 1 ½-inch chunks
¼ onion
Salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 ounce diced bacon (optional)
1 clove garlic, sliced crosswise
Red pepper flakes, to taste
1 teaspoon smoked pimentón (paprika)
Chopped mint to serve

 

Break off the ends of the fava pods and pull off any stringy bits. Snap them in half. Place in a pan with the cut-up potatoes, onion and 1 teaspoon of salt. Add water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook until beans and potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Drain, saving some of the liquid. Place the beans in a serving bowl and keep them warm.

In a small skillet, heat the oil and fry the bacon, if using, with the sliced garlic, just until garlic begins to turn golden. Add the red pepper flakes. Remove from heat and add the pimentón and ¼ cup of the liquid in which the favas cooked. Pour the dressing over the beans and potatoes. Garnish with chopped mint to serve.

Fava Bean Purée
Crema de Habas

Serve this purée as a side dish.

Serve the fava purée as a side dish or turn it into a soup by combining it with stock. For a silky-smooth purée, after blending, sieve the purée. You’ll lose about a third of the mash—all the skins. For the soup, it’s not necessary to sieve the purée.

If using the optional serrano ham bone, blanch it in boiling water before cooking with the favas.

This recipe works equally well with peas.

Serves 4.

5 cups shelled fava beans (about 1 ½ pounds)
1 (2-inch) piece serrano ham bone, blanched (optional)
1 carrot
½ onion
3 cups water
Salt

Place the favas, ham bone, if using, carrot, onion, water and 1 teaspoon salt in a pan. Bring to a boil and simmer until favas are very tender, about 20 minutes. Drain, saving the broth. Reserve the carrot. Discard the onion and ham bone.

Place the favas in a blender with ½ cup of the reserved cooking broth. Purée them until very smooth.

For the purée:

Cooked and blended favas
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon cream
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste
Chopped fennel to garnish

Press the purée through a sieve, discarding the pulp that remains.

Add oil, cream, pepper and salt. Heat gently. Serve the purée garnished with reserved cooked carrot, cut in small dice, and chopped fennel leaves.

Combined with broth and vegetables, the purée becomes soup.

For the soup:
Use the liquid in which the favas cooked plus enough additional chicken broth to make 5 cups.

Cooked and blended favas

5 cups chicken or vegetable broth
½ cup each diced carrot, celery and leek
Diced cooked ham (optional)
Pimentón (paprika) to garnish

After blending, reserve the purée without sieving.

Combine the reserved broth in which the favas cooked in a pan with chicken or vegetable broth to make about 5 cups.  Add the diced carrot, celery and leek. Bring to a boil and simmer until vegetables are tender.

Whisk in the fava bean purée and diced ham, if using. Heat gently. Serve the soup sprinkled with pimentón.

Fava Bean Cream
Porra de Habas

Garnish the fava cream with strips of ham and cooked egg.

Traditional porra, a peasant dish of inland Málaga province, is made of mashed bread, garlic and olive oil with the addition of tomatoes—a thick, gazpacho cream. This one, which probably pre-dates the tomato version—is made with raw fava beans. It’s also known as ajo blanco con habas—white gazpacho with favas—although the color is a pale green.

The porra traditionally was made in a dornillo, a wooden bowl, and mashed with a porra, or “club,” a large wooden pestle resembling a cop’s baton. It’s quickly made in a blender. The favas should be freshly shelled, but size doesn't matter. They needn’t be skinned and the cream is not sieved. All the nutrients go into it.

Use fruity olive oil.

Use best quality extra virgin olive oil, as the oil both flavors and emulsifies the cream. I chose a fruity Hojiblanca varietal oil, so typical of Málaga province.

Serve fava cream as a dip.

The fava cream is served as a starter. But it also makes a fine party dip, accompanied by crunchy crackers and vegetable dippers. It can be garnished with either bacalao, salt cod, or strips of serrano ham as well as chopped egg.

Serves 4 as a starter.

4 ounces crustless stale bread (about 4 slices)
½ pound shelled fava beans
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
Salt
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Thinly sliced serrano or ibérico ham, cut in strips
Hard-cooked egg, chopped

Break the bread into pieces and put in a small bowl. Cover with water and allow to soak for an hour. Squeeze out as much water as possible and place the bread pulp in a blender.

Set aside a few favas to garnish the finished cream. Place the rest in the blender with the bread, garlic, vinegar and ½ teaspoon salt. Blend to make a smooth purée. Blend in 5 tablespoons of the oil. Taste the mixture and season with more salt and vinegar if needed. Chill the cream.

Porra can be served as a starter. Finish it with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Serve the fava bean cream in a bowl or individual bowls. Scatter the reserved favas on top and garnish with strips of ham and chopped hard-cooked egg. Drizzle additional olive oil on the surface of the cream.

More recipes for porra:

Mango-Tomato Gazpacho Cream.

Salmorejo Gazpacho Cream.

More recipes with fava beans:

Fava Bean Salad.

Tortilla with Fava Beans.

Favas with Ham. 

Sauté of Favas, Asparagus, Morels, Shrimp.

Rice with Chicken and Favas.

Menestra of Spring Vegetables.

Pork and Vegetable Soup.

LUNCH JUST FOR ME—FAVA BEANS FROM THE GARDEN

Fava beans from the garden.

It’s coming up to 1:30 and I’m feeling hungry. The rain has finally let up, so I grab my basket, pull on some mud boots and head to the garden. The chard, broccoli and kale have all been picked in the past couple days (vegetable soup and a stir-fry). The peas aren’t ready. But, here are some habas—baby fava beans.

Nobody else is home this weekend and a good thing, because there are just enough favas for my lunch.

I heat olive oil in a small cazuela while I shell the beans. These freshly-picked ones don’t need to have the skins removed. Truth be told, home cooks in Spain never remove fava skins. This, in my opinion, is an unnecessary refinement, not worth the bother. In fact, when small and recently gathered, even the pods are edible.

Into the cazuela go a clove of garlic, sliced crosswise, and some chopped serrano ham (pancetta would be a good substitute for the ham).

I add the beans to the cazuela and stir them around, lower the heat a bit. Earthenware cazuelas hold a steady, even heat. The beans take only about 5 minutes to cook. While they’re cooking, I fry an egg in olive oil, Spanish style, estrellado, scooping hot oil over the top of the egg, and slide it into the cazuela with the beans. Toast with olive oil is all I need to complete my lunch.

Favas with serrano ham and fried egg.

The dish, simply known as habas con jamón, favas with ham, is a specialty of Granada. It can be finished off with a sprinkle of chopped fennel fronds (wild fennel is sending up new shoots in this season), mint or parsley. 

Two pounds of favas in their shells will yield 1 ¾ to 2 cups of shelled beans. Here are two more recipes for fava beans in this blog post http://mykitcheninspain.blogspot.com.es/2010/04/season-of-favas.html . And for a wider survey (beyond Spanish borders) of how to prepare fava beans, check out this article by Russ Parsons in the Los Angeles Times.

MENESTRA--A SPLENDID DISH OF SPRING VEGGIES

Last week I was at the top of the fava bean season (see the previous blog posting for a couple of recipes). This week it’s peas, sweet garden peas, and a few long-awaited artichokes. Along with just-pulled spring onions and some asparagus (from the market), the ingredients add up to one of the best vegetable dishes of the seasonal Spanish kitchen.

This is menestra, a mixture or melange of veggies. Besides favas, peas, artichokes and asparagus, the combination can include any other vegetables fresh from the garden (or farmers’ market)—wild mushrooms, chard stems, cardoons, baby carrots, green beans, new potatoes. If served as a side dish (wonderful with grilled lamb chops), a little chopped serrano ham flavors the menestra. For a main dish, I like to add sliced sausage, such as Catalan white butifarra.

The traditional way to prepare menestra is to cook each vegetable separately in boiling water, then to combine them in a sofrito. Sofrito is the flavor base, a fried mixture of olive oil, onions, garlic and tomato. You can use fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or, if tomatoes are not in season, a few spoonfuls of canned tomato sauce (not concentrate).

Menestra de Verduras
Mixed Spring Vegetables

I like to leave the (inedible) tips on the artichokes. To eat them, you pick them up by the tips and bite off the tender bottom. But, if you prefer, the artichokes can be trimmed down to the bottoms. (More about cooking artichokes  here.)

Serves 4 as a side or 2 as a main dish.

2 artichokes
12 asparagus spears
4 ounces shelled peas (about ½ cup)
4 ounces shelled fava beans (about ½ cup)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 or 2 spring onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 ounces sliced butifarra or other sausage (optional)
1 ounce chopped serrano ham (optional)
¼ cup canned tomato sauce
¼ cup white wine
¼ cup water
salt and pepper
strips of roasted red pepper to garnish (optional)

Trim away stems on the artichokes, snap off a few outer leaves and cut the artichokes lengthwise into quarters. With the tip of a knife, nip out the fuzzy choke. Drop the cut artichokes into boiling salted water and cook until a leaf pulls off easily, 10 to 12 minutes. Drain.

Snap off and discard butt ends of asparagus and cut spears into two or three pieces. Cook them in boiling salted water for 3 minutes from the time the water returns to a boil. Cook peas 1 minute; fava beans 4 minutes. Drain the vegetables.

Heat the oil in a cazuela or skillet and sauté the onions and garlic 4 minutes. Add the sliced butifarra, if using, or chopped ham, if using, and sauté 4 minutes. Stir in the tomato sauce, wine, water, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then stir in all the vegetables. Simmer 10 minutes. Serve the menestra hot garnished with strips of roasted red pepper, if desired.

SEASON OF FAVAS

I am inundated with fava beans! I’ve just picked enough to fill a laundry basket and will spend a good hour shelling them.

It’s been a bumper crop of favas this year. Weeks ago, the first tender beans were such a delight—they can be cooked pods and all. After that, it was a pleasure to pick and shell a double handful of them to add to a soup or stew or to scramble with eggs. But now, I’ve got to blanch and freeze what I can’t eat. The Spanish saying is Las habas de abril, para mi; las de mayo, para el caballo. April’s favas for me, those in May, for the horse. So, time is running out for me and my favas—and I haven’t got a horse.

Although they somewhat resemble lima beans, fava beans (also called broad beans, habas in Spanish) are not related to limas or to green beans, haricots, pinto or canellini beans, all which come from the New World. Favas, related to peas, were known to the ancients of the Old World. Like peas, they are wonderfully sweet if you can get them just minutes after picking, before the natural sugars convert to starch.

Fava beans grow in many regions of Spain, raised for animal forage as well as human food. When they are very small and very fresh, favas can be cooked unpodded, con calzónes, “in their breeches.” Larger ones must be shelled. The best are called “baby”—really small and tender ones, a springtime treat when stewed in olive oil with garlic.

You will see recipes that direct you to remove the beans’ outer skins. But, in Spanish home cooking, this procedure is rarely followed. Unless the favas are really big and mature, the skins are perfectly edible. But, if you prefer a more “refined” bean dish, just parboil the favas about 3 minutes and drain. Use the tip of a knife to cut a little slit in the outer skin, then squeeze the bean gently to pop out the inner bean (which is very green and in two halves).

Another way to deal with the skins is to cook the favas in boiling water until tender, then puree them in a blender. Press the puree through a sieve.  Season with olive oil, salt and pepper and chopped herbs. The bean purée is delicious as a side dish with roast meats, sausages, poultry.  Chopped mint or sprigs of green fennel are a good garnish for fava dishes. The Catalans add a dash of anisette liqueur to the cooking beans.

Two pounds of favas in their shells will produce about 10 ounces shelled beans, or 1 ¾ to 2 cups of beans. Wear an old shirt or apron when shelling them, as moisture splattering from the pods leaves dark stains. Cook favas in stainless, earthenware or glass, never aluminum, which turns them dark.

Fava Bean Salad
Ensalada de Habas

I first tasted this salad at a restaurant in Valencia and included a recipe for it in my book, MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN (the cookbook has the same title as this blog). Much later, in reading Colman Andrews’ CATALAN CUISINE, I learned that the salad was original to a famous Catalan chef, Josep Mercader.

Crisp iceberg lettuce gives the salad a welcome crunch.

Serves 6.

4 sprigs fresh mint
3 cups small shelled fava beans (1    pound shelled beans)
salt
¼  cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
4 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
¼  cup julienne-cut serrano ham
finely chopped scallion (optional)

Bring 5 cups of water to a boil. Put in the sprigs of mint, cover, and let the mint infuse for 30 minutes. Discard the mint.

Add salt to the water and bring to a boil. Add the fava beans and cook them for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh in cold water.

In a bowl combine the oil, vinegar and mustard. Add the beans. Cover and let them marinate at least 1 hour.

Immediately before serving spread the lettuce on a serving platter. Stir the chopped mint into the beans. Spread the beans on top of the lettuce. Scatter the ham strips and scallion on top. 

Chocos con Habas
Cuttlefish with Broad Beans

This is a popular dish in Huelva, Cádiz and Sevilla—cuttlefish or squid stewed in a savory sauce with fava beans.  If baby cuttlefish, chopitos, are used, they are cooked whole, releasing their ink into the sauce for real depth of flavor. Large cuttlefish is thick and meaty and needs slow simmering. Squid will cook in half the time.

Use chopped fresh mint, fennel, oregano or cilantro to finish the dish.

Makes 8 tapas or 2 main course servings.

1 ½ pounds cleaned cuttlefish or squid
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 ounce pancetta or serrano ham, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tomato, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon pimentón (paprika)
½ cup white wine
Salt and pepper
10 ounces shelled fava beans
Chopped fresh herbs to serve

Cut the cuttlefish into 1-inch chunks or the squid into rings.

Heat the oil in a cazuela (what’s a cazuela? find out here ) or skillet and add the onion, ham and garlic. Sauté on medium heat until the onions begin to brown, 10 minutes. Add the tomato and stir in the pimentón. Add the wine, salt and pepper and the pieces of cuttlefish. Cook, covered, until cuttlefish is very tender, about 45 minutes (Squid needs about 30 minutes).

While cuttlefish is cooking, blanch the fava beans in boiling water for 3 minutes and drain. Add the beans to the cuttlefish and cook, uncovered, 10 minutes more. Serve hot, sprinkled with herbs.