Fava beans

[flemmings]

There was a newspaper article about all the seasonal trendy foods in Toronto's trendy restaurants-- among others, white asparagus, fiddleheads, and fava beans. I can leave the first alone, dislike the taste of the second, and never had the third. So I bought a handful at the super (they are not cheap) and cooked them today. Delicious. Fun. (You have to pop them from their pods/ skins twice.) Like a cross between an edamame and a lima, but bigger and tastier than both. I wanted some more, preferably at a better price, but the little vegetable stores don't sell them. They do have them in tins-- pretty cheap tins, but beans are somehow never expensive.

But oh dear lord. The tinned ones are brown!! And taste vile! Nothing I've googled suggests there's a variety of brown-skinned fava, and the tin says fava/ broad bean, but I so Do Not Want.

And alas, favas must be grown before the hot weather starts-- 80F/ 27C. Since we reached 25C today, it's clearly too late to plant favas. Maybe next year...

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

They should grow very well for you in the spring. We used to eat deep fried ones as snacks from the Asian grocery, brown and crispy and covered in coarse salt.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

A year like this one that has snow in April seems impossible, but the webpages all say 'as soon as the soil can be tilled' which does indeed mean March, with crops just about now.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Yeah. They'll grow in the snow. I think one of my friends plants them in the fall ... but I think you get too cold for that.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(sourly) Depends on the winter. But as there's no telling what kind of winter we'll have, early spring it is.

(Wunderground has the virtue of informing me that the downtown is regularly 2C warmer at night than the airport, even though it's often cooler than that during the day.)

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

It's so very difficult to find fresh fava beans, alas (I can attest that while frozen aren't as vile as those canned ones sound, they're still far-removed from the fresh). I've had the best luck with one of the chains of Korean grocery stores around here (H Mart), though I haven't seen them in a while. They're very tasty with garlic and lemon.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ah. Thanks for the tip. Shall try the big Korean grocery. I mean, I can get them st the yuppie super, but $4 a pound is steep.

(The other brand of tinned ones isn't bad, but as you say, not like fresh.)

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

I have always been able to find them frozen in most groceries, quite cheaply. They make a rather nice variation on hummus, if you use them instead of chickpeas - also very good cooked with tomato and lots of garlic. Nowadays I dread it when foodies discover something - inevitably the price rises.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I can't find frozen favas here for love or money. Have tried three large groceries with no success. Lima beans we can do you, but favas, no.

Fortunately there's another brand of tinned ones, Italian and labelling them as 'faba', which are reasonable.