fava beans

Have you ever had fresh fava beans before? I have had them in restaurants, and have had canned fava beans (which are brown), but until last month I never had them fresh. My friend Michael at the Dazed and Infused blog and I split a CSA share from Waltham Fields Community Farm, a great organization in our city, and they had pick-your-own fava beans for a while. So I decided to try them! They turned out to be more labor intensive than I'd thought.

First, you pick them and bring them home and wash them:

Clean and shiny. THEN you remove the beans from the pod (which is inedible unless it's really young):

But wait! You're not done! The beans have a thick coating that is not pleasant to eat, so you have to PEEL EACH BEAN.

Unpeeled, half-peeled, peeled. It is really hard to peel them raw, so you blanch the beans, then slit the skin, then poke each bean out. And only THEN can you actually prepare the beans.

I cooked them with some garlic, olive oil, and a splash of cooking sherry, then mashed them to top some toast (pictured below with a salad).

They're tasty beans, but I didn't think they were worth all that work! From now on I will probably only buy prepared fava beans, either at restaurants or in a can.