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.

[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.