Subject: Broad beans (ie Fava)

From: Alan Deacon
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1993 10:41:36 GMT

I managed to buy two kind in Cyprus earlier this year, with and without
skins. I cooked and ate both kinds, but I have a fairly robust constitution.
The kind with skins were certainly a bit tough, but hey that's roughage.
These were both dried. The skinned kind I can get locally at middle-eatern
grocers.

Better than the dried (and the canned) though is fresh. I have a small crop
growing in the garden, and have also been able to buy imported beans (from
Italy) recently. The season is quite short however, and not many green
grocers are enlightened enough to stock them. The fresh ones should not
need the skin taking off unless you are *particularly* squeamish about
that sort of thing. As far as recipes I usually just steam lightly and
use as a side vegetable or in a salad. The recipe someone posted with lots 
of olive oil sounded like one we had in Cyprus which was served cold, and
was very good - that was lima rather than fava though.

The dried ones go very well with butter beans, I usually cook them together
to make a thick bean pottage (bean pottage hot, bean pottage cold, bean
pottage in the pot 9 days old). Very good served cold with onion/garlic
sweated in olive oil.

Being a most ancient and old world variety of bean there are countless
'historic' recipes which use them. They were also called field beans I believe
and were an important part of the diet before potatoes were introduced.
Any one got any interesting old west european (as opposed to the middle-east
ones, scrummy though they are) recipes. I've heard of horse beans, but do
not know what kind these are. 
--
	Alan Deacon
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