More Fun with Fresh Fava Beans
Jun 5th, 2008 | By Hank Shaw | Category: Greek, The Garden | Comments | 12 Comments |
I grow so many fava beans I have to scour my recipe books for things to do with them all. And so far as fresh fava beans go, I have discovered over the years that there are really two kinds of fresh favas: The sweet green ones that come in early spring, and the starchy yellow ones that arrive in May.
You really can’t substitute one type for another. The green ones are a lot like sweet peas, but the starchy ones are heading into lima bean territory. And if you don’t know exactly what kind of fava you have bought from the market, you could wind up disappointed after you’ve done all that work shelling them.
I’ve already written about the fresh young favas, so I thought I’d wrap up the fava season with a few musings on what to do when you have lots of yellow ones, or the dreaded hybrids — favas not quite green, yet not quite yellow.
Anything in transition is awkward, but even the middling favas have a good use: They make an excellent version of koukofava, a mashed fava bean spread made in Crete. More of a method than a recipe, this dish is nothing more than favas boiled into submission, mashed with a fork and mixed with good olive oil and salt; I added fresh thyme for some zing.
 Koukofava isn’t terribly interesting on its own, although using the transitional favas gives it more of a “green” flavor. The dish is instead a useful foil for whatever acidic thing you have hanging around. In my case I uses preserved roasted red peppers, which went perfectly with the fava spread on a cracker.
Another use for the halfway favas is to play on the Greek habit of frying giant beans, typically gigandes. I have been playing with a master tempura batter recipe, and I thought it would be fun to tempura fry a few favas. They were excellent, but really, really needed something acidic to play with; I chose lemon and hot sauce. Lemon was better, but I am still looking for a better dip.
I gathered all my truly starchy yellow favas and dried them out in the sun on a cookie sheet. These will serve me well in winter, when I can use them to thicken soups or as a winter dip. I dried the beans without the skins so I will not have to deal with them later — and eating those thick skins is not an option, intestinally speaking…
But even though the weather had grown hot and I needed to pull my favas to make room for peppers and tomatoes and melons, there were still enough fresh young beans to enjoy them the way I did in April. I made one last batch of fresh green fava dip, and adorned a crab salad with spring herbs with a few others. I am a big fan of this salad, and may make it with some fresh crabs soon; I am headed to Bodega Bay with some pots next week. Wish me luck!
Hi Hank, Love your site.
Amanda Louden (Dave’s better half)
http://www.eatyourroots.org
Fried beans. I can’t believe it. Awesome!
Tell me – do you ever eat the leaves of a fava? I think I heard they can be a salad?
Fava tempura… sounds tasty.
Good luck crabbing!
Thanks a heap – and no, Buzzie, I have never eaten fava leaves. But I imagine they’d be similar to pea shoots, which are all the rage. And I did eat the tender tips of some vetch growing in the yard…
I just ate rabbit ravioli in a sauce made with saba and bright green young favas. It was really delicious. The whole fava beans just visually looked nice with the raviolis. At home, we’re still waiting on our fava pods to mature.
Hope you get some crabs!
Could you smash the dry-er yellow ones with some plantain and make tostones?
I bet you could, but I have never made tostones. That’s a Puerto Rican dish, right?
I love the recipe from crete. I really just love Greek cuisine in general. Ok and the fried favas that just fun. I made a ravioli recently and made a fava filling. It was really good and my daughter meg devoured the dish.
Happy Sunday Hank
I make ravioli filled with my garlicky fresh fava puree I link to above. I add a little lemon for acid, and it is a fine vegetarian meal. All it needs is rosemary butter as an accompaniment.
Those tempura fried ones look amazing! Delish!
we eat green fava beans raw in salad, as well as cooked in lemon stews. they used to be done as a dip in crete, but now we use yellow split peas to make the same kind of dip (and we call that fava, too). the broad bean dip is popular in egypt. they’re not the most versatile ingredient, and we usually only enjoy them seasonally