Fresh Fava Beans

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. And when fresh favas show up in your CSA box for the fourth week in a row, any patient fondness you had for the quaint pastime of shelling broad beans tends to give way to a sudden need to drastically reduce the proportion of your life spent wrestling them out of their pods as compared to, say, sleeping.

So here, then, are the shelling shortcuts that turned two big bags full of favas into one smallish bowl full of beans in about half the time that it would have taken me a few days ago. I suspect these have already been discovered by many fava aficionados, but here they are in detail for the rest of us.

Shortcut #1: Speedy Shelling

Step 1: Set yourself up with a pile of unshelled beans on one side of you and a big colander or bowl on the other. I found it easier to stand with the bowl below me (so that I could angle the beans down into the bowl more easily).

Step 2: Take a pod and hold it horizontally in front of you. With your right hand (if you're right-handed), pinch the first bean (within the pod) from the right between thumb and forefinger.

 

Step 3: Push the bean forward with the flat of your thumb, bending the pod until it breaks open. Try to place your thumb about a third of the way down the bean, and push diagonally (forward and to the left). You want to break the pod so that a little bit of bean is already sticking out (rather than breaking it right in the middle of two beans, in which case both will be stuck inside the pod).

Step 4: Keep pushing with your thumb, and pinch the pod to squeeze the bean forward and to the left, out of the pod and into the bowl. (Warning: once you get good at this, the beans start shooting out very quickly, so aim down into the bowl if you don't want beans zinging around your kitchen.)

Step 5: Move down the pod to the next bean, and repeat.

Play around with where exactly you're pushing on each individual bean until you find a sweet spot that allows you to break the pod and push the bean out in a single quick motion. When you find it, you'll be able to do the whole pod in just a couple seconds.


Shortcut #2: Faster Peeling

Step 1: Bring a pot of water to a rapid boil. Drop your shelled but still unpeeled favas in and blanch for 2 minutes or until the skins just start to turn white. Drain and run under cold water until the beans are about room temperature.

Step 2: Take each fava bean and break open the bottom of the bean (the fat end, where the skin is thickest). With your other hand, gently pinch the skin on the unbroken side, to squeeze the inner bean out through the opening you just created.

Saute your favas with olive oil, pancetta, and slivered garlic, or combine with other fresh and mild ingredients for a simple pasta or risotto. Favas remind me of fresh peas -- they seem to work best in dishes that are simple enough to complement their fresh, springy flavor without overpowering it.

Quinoa with Fresh Favas and Crispy Kale

We've been getting fresh fava beans in our CSA box. I'm still not sure if they're amazingly delicious, or if you just end up thinking they're amazingly delicious to justify all the effort that goes into preparing them. But either way, I suppose, you end up enjoying your dinner. This recipe only calls for a few, so it doesn't actually take too long, and although I think that perhaps you're supposed to do some complicated blanching thing with favas after getting them out of their outer pods, I am impatient and just used my fingernail to peel off their outer skin and it seemed to work fine. 

Ingredients
1/2 cup white quinoa
1/2 cup red quinoa
1 cup veggie or chicken broth
1-2 shallots, quartered lengthwise and sliced
3 stalks green garlic (bottom half only), sliced crosswise
One or two handfuls of fresh fava beans, shelled
Salt
1/2 bunch dino kale, sliced crosswise into strips


Rinse the quinoa well in a sieve, then set in a bowl of room-temperature water and let soak for 10-20 minutes. Rinse once more, and drain well.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Heat a little olive oil in a pot over medium heat. When hot, add the shallot, green garlic, and a pinch of salt, and saute for a 2-3 minutes until soft.

Add the quinoa and cook for another minute, stirring, then add the broth and just barely under 1/2 cup of water. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to let simmer 10 minutes.


Add the fava beans, stir once, replace the cover, and simmer for another ten minutes.

Meanwhile, toss the kale with a little olive oil, spread on a baking sheet, and roast in the oven for 6-10 minutes until crispy, stirring once.

Fluff the quinoa, and serve with small crispy pieces of roasted kale over the top.

Serves 2-3 as a side dish.

Pappardelle with Mushrooms and Radicchio

I think that sometime in the last few months I may have suggested, somewhere between one and fifty-six times, that there is nothing better than homemade pasta. Correction: There is nothing better than getting home late on a weeknight, wondering what to have for dinner, and taking out the extra pasta you made last weekend for a quick and easy, throw-it-together dinner that tastes like you must have secret Italian house elves working away in your kitchen at all hours. So here is what you should do: Make a double-batch of this recipe on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Cut half the sheets of dough into pappardelle noodles and make the recipe below, but let the other sheets dry for a couple hours (so they're not sticky anymore) before running them through your fettuccine attachment. Carefully lay the noodles in wax paper in a wide tupperware, cover tightly, and stick them in your fridge. Later in the week, you can just drop them in a pot of salted boiling water for two minutes and toss them with some olive oil, garlic, sauteed greens, black pepper, and parmesan.

On Sunday, meanwhile, you have this:

Ingredients
2 servings homemade multigrain pappardelle
2 strips Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon (or sub pancetta), sliced crosswise into strips
Olive oil
1-2 shallots, quartered and sliced
1 clove garlic, halved and slivered
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 spoonful Aleppo pepper
3 small heads radicchio, bottoms cut off, sliced crosswise into ribbons, rinsed carefully and dried in a salad spinner (about 3 cups)
2-3 sloshes chicken broth
Scant 1/2 lb crimini mushrooms, sliced
Scant 1/2 lb shiitake mushrooms, sliced
Salt and ground black pepper 
Slosh of the red wine you're having with dinner
Small handful flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil for the pasta.

Heat a wide saute pan over medium high heat. When hot, add the bacon and cook, stirring, until it begins to brown very lightly. Push to the side of the pan, turn the heat down to medium, and add the shallot and slivered garlic to the other side of the pan. Saute, stirring, until soft, turning the bacon once or twice as well. Mix together, add the pressed garlic and a pinch of salt, and saute for another 30 seconds or so.

Add the radicchio and saute, stirring, for a couple of minutes, then add a couple sloshes of broth, cover, and turn heat down to low. Simmer for five minutes. Uncover, adjust the heat up to medium, and boil off any excess liquid.

Add the mushrooms and drizzle lightly with olive oil, and saute, sprinkling with salt and pepper, for 2-3 minutes. Add a generous slosh of red wine and another slosh of chicken broth, turn the heat down to medium-low, and simmer until liquid is reduced by half, stirring occasionally.

Add the pasta to the pot of boiling water and cook for a few seconds less than two minutes or until al dente.

Meanwhile, add half the parsley and a bit of the parmesan to the sauce, stir once, and turn off the heat.

Drain the pasta, add to the sauce, toss, and serve. Top with grated Parmesan and parsley.

Serves 2-3.

Plants for Breakfast: Prosciutto-Wrapped Pears

Who says whole food breakfasts can't be quick and easy?

Ingredients
2 ripe D'Anjou pears, wedged
(they're ripe when they yield easily to a firm press)
3-4 slices prosciutto, cut into strips

Wrap a strip of prosciutto around some or all of the pear wedges. Pop in mouth. Or, if feeling generous and patient, arrange on a plate to share.*

Serves 2-3 for breakfast, a light appetizer, or dessert.

*Sharing can also be useful if someone else is holding your morning coffee hostage until you reciprocate with edibles.

Spring Salad with Beet and Black Radish

Last weekend, my culinary experiences were forcibly broadened when a black radish was foisted upon me by my very own mother.

I had, until that moment, considered my mother to be a rather mild-mannered and gentle purveyor of food-related provisions, offering the occasional overabundance of Meyer lemons or pears or sweet potatoes to take back with us to Sacramento, or a spare pair of turnips leftover from their CSA box. Such gifts were suggested casually, and could be accepted or declined with no particular emotional consequence.

Not so with the black radish (or radishes, to be precise), which were prepackaged and waiting on the dining room table when I walked in the door of my parents' house last Saturday. The radishes were offered to me with a period at the end of the sentence, rather than a question mark, that stated an incontrovertible transition of ownership rather than a query about the radishes' future abode.
I was taking them with me.

I asked (I had not fully grasped, at this point, the severity of the situation) whether this black radish was the same kind of black radish I had heard certain negative things about several weeks before (namely "usually I love our CSA box, but eughgrh, that black radish...I don't know why anyone would plant those").

It was the same black radish. More alarmingly, I became aware that this revelation in no way changed the fact that I was taking the black radishes with me, and that this fact was as immune to future argumentation as my failed attempts as a child to acquire a kitten or (as I recall, my second choice) a baby sister. My mom looked at me. I could tell she felt a touch of compassion -- after all, she too had once owned a black radish. She tried to look encouraging, in an I-hope-you-don't-suffer-too-greatly-while-eating-your-black-radish kind of way. "Anyway," she said. "You're always taking new ingredients and figuring out recipes for them on your blog. So consider this a new ingredient."

In other words, I was issued a Black Radish Challenge. Here are the results. The bite of the radish offset the sweetness of the beets, and made for a perfect springtime lunch. Thanks, mom. :)

Ingredients
Several big handfuls of mixed baby greens
1 medium beet, peeled and grated
1 black radish, halved, thinly sliced, then cut crosswise into matchsticks (about 1/2 cup, or sub red radishes)
6 quail eggs, boiled for just under 3 minutes, peeled, and halved (or sub 1-2 hardboiled chicken eggs)

Vinaigrette: 
A couple generous glugs of olive oil
1 smallish spoonful grainy mustard
2 spoonfuls sherry vinegar
1/4 tsp minced fresh rosemary
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Whisk the olive oil, mustard, and vinegar together in a large bowl to form an emulsion (it should be thick but not sludgy -- adjust the amount of olive oil as needed). Stir in the rosemary, salt, and pepper. Next, fold in the beets and toss to coat evenly, then add in the salad greens and toss until the beets are evenly distributed and the greens are lightly coated with vinaigrette. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed (there should be just a hint of rosemary, without it being overpowering).

Arrange the greens on plates, sprinkle with radish, and top with the egg and a bit of extra black pepper.

Serves 2 for a light lunch or side salad.

Sauteed Turnips and Carrots

Turnips again. But so very good that they deserve their own post, even though this is similar to at least two other recipes already on here. So in case you have these ingredients on hand and need something quicker than roasting, the combination of sauteing and then steaming works beautifully, allowing the veggies to caramelize and cook through in just a few minutes.

Plus, this is the sort of dish that gets even better if you accidentally forget about it for a couple of minutes and almost burn the bottom. Which is basically my favorite sort of dish (the "of course I meant to do that" kind).

Ingredients
1 stalk green garlic, chopped (or sub 1 clove garlic, pressed)
3-4 yellow turnips, peeled, halved (or quartered if large) and sliced about 1/8" thick
4-5 red carrots, scrubbed and sliced
Olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper
1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

Heat a glug of olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the turnip and carrot slices, and toss to coat with oil. Continue sauteing for a minute or two, then add the green garlic and stir. Cover the pan and allow to steam as it browns on the bottoms (about 2-3 minutes). Stir, cover, and repeat. The vegetables should release some juices that allow them to steam, but if and when they start to look a little dry, add a pinch or two of salt to coax some liquid out.



Add a tbsp or two of water, cover, turn heat to low, and steam until nicely browned and very tender. Toss with white pepper and parsley to taste, and serve hot.

Serves 2.

Roasted Kale with Balsamic Reduction

Warning: If you're already addicted to this recipe, this variation is not going to help, although it does allow you to preserve an illusion of variety in your cooking while secretly fulfilling your deep-seated roasted kale obsession.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then clearly you haven't had roasted kale before.

This also works well with baby kale, which you might come across at a farmers' market or in your CSA box -- simply adjust the cooking times down a little bit if the leaves are very small.

Ingredients
1 bunch Red Russian or German flat kale (or any sweeter variety)
Olive oil
Salt
Balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice kale crosswise into wide strips, then rinse very thoroughly to remove any grit and dry in a salad spinner. Toss kale with olive oil and spread out on a baking sheet a couple layers deep. Roast for 6-8 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces and how many layers you have on your baking sheet, until the edges of the leaves are lightly toasted on the bottom. Turn the leaves over with tongs, and continue cooking another 3-5 minutes until edges start to crisp.

Meanwhile, heat 2-3 tbsp balsamic vinegar in a small pot over medium-low heat. Simmer gently, adjusting heat as necessary, until volume is reduced by half (and try not to breathe deeply right over the pot...evaporating vinegar is not fun to inhale).

Sprinkle the kale lightly with salt, drizzle with balsamic reduction, and serve.

Roasted Squash and Fava Green Risotto with Lemon

This was kind of like having pumpkin pie and lemon bars for dinner. The Sibley Squash from our CSA box this week was particularly amazing, but I think the recipe would still be very good with a plain old butternut squash instead. After halving lengthwise and scraping out the seeds, slice the squash crosswise into 1/2" slices, then toss with a little olive oil and roast in the oven at 400 degrees, turning every 15 minutes or so, until browned and tender (about 45 minutes -- sometimes I start with the slices still pushed together in the shape of a halved squash for the first 15 minutes, to keep them from drying out too much, and then spread them out for faster cooking). Let cool for a few minutes, slice the skin off, and dice. If there's extra, you can serve the risotto over the slices.

Ingredients 
2-3 cups diced roasted squash (heirloom or butternut)
4 cups broth (chicken and/or vegetable)
Olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 medium shallot, sliced
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 generously rounded cup Arborio rice
White cooking wine
Four big handfuls of fava greens (or sub spinach and/or baby arugula)
Large handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
Zest of 1 lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat broth in a covered pot until it boils, then set aside.

Meanwhile, heat a large pot over medium heat. When hot, add a generous glug of olive oil. Add the onion and saute, stirring, until it begins to soften. Add the shallot, stir a few times, then add the garlic. Continue cooking for another 2-3 minutes until soft and fragrant.

Add the rice, and stir to coat the grains. Toast, stirring, for about 2 more minutes, then add 1-2 ladlefuls of wine. Cook, stirring, until liquid is absorbed, then begin adding broth by the ladleful, stirring until each one is absorbed before adding the next.

When you have a couple of ladlefuls of broth left and rice is just tender, stir in the squash. Add another ladleful of broth, and stir. When is has been absorbed, add the fava greens and the remaining broth. Cook, stirring, until the greens are wilted. Stir in some of the lemon zest and parsley, cook for a minute more, then turn off the heat. Add the parmesan, then salt, pepper, and additional lemon zest and parsley to taste.

Spoon into bowls, then allow to cool a minute and sprinkle with a little extra parsley before serving.

Serves 3.

Plants for Dessert: Strawberry Kumquat Salad

I can't quite get over how good kumquats are. I think last time I tried them I was under the impression that you had to peel them before eating, which meant a lot of work for a very sour bit of fruit. The skin provides a zesty sweetness to complement the sour when you pop them into your mouth whole and unpeeled...but in case you're not a fan of the burst of tartness in the midst of the sweet, here's a way to enjoy kumquats that balances out the sour with strawberries and limoncello.

Ingredients
Fresh, fragrant strawberries, sliced crosswise
Kumquats, thinly sliced crosswise (about 1 kumquat for every 3 strawberries)
Limoncello

Lightly drizzle the strawberry and kumquat slices with a bit of limoncello (about half a shot per small bowl of fruit salad) and toss to combine. Serve immediately, or let marinate in the fridge for 10-15 minutes first.

Black Beans and Rice with Cilantro and Lime

I'm not sure it's possible to go wrong with rice and beans, but this version turned out to be particularly addictive. I suspect adding some avocado on top would do delightful things, as well.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 medium shallot, chopped
1 1/2 cups black forbidden rice (or sub brown and adjust water and cooking time)
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Spoonful Aleppo pepper (or sub a hot pepper, minced)
2 cans black beans, drained just slightly (or sub home-cooked beans and some of their cooking liquid)
1-2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup grated extra sharp white cheddar
Salt & black pepper to taste
Lime wedges for garnish

Heat a glug of olive oil in a smallish pot over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute for 2-3 minutes until soft, then add the black rice and saute for a minute more. Stir in 1 3/4 cups water, bring to a boil, then turn heat down and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat another glug of olive oil in a larger pot over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent, then add the garlic, peppers, and a pinch of salt and continue to cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes more. Stir in the black beans with their cooking liquid, bring to a simmer, and turn the heat down to medium-low. Simmer for about 10 minutes, with lid either on or off to evaporate some of the liquid, depending on how much cooking liquid is in the pot (you want just enough at the beginning so that the beans can simmer in it, and to have some left at the end without it being very soupy).

Add the cilantro, simmer another minute, then turn off the heat. Adjust cilantro, salt, and pepper to taste. (This is a dish that will do fine if you have to let it sit for a little while before serving -- in fact, it will allow the flavors to blend even more).

Serve the beans layered over the rice, sprinkled with just a little cheese and garnished with a wedge of lime.

Serves 3-4, and does well reheated the next day for lunch.