Fava Beans: A Labor of Love

Monday, I visited a CSA farm.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and these organizations provide their members with a weekly bag or box of organic produce in exchange for a few hours of work a week or a membership fee.  A friend of mine who lives out in Seattle was telling me about the CSA that she recently joined.  I got so jealous, I had to search my own community to see if we had anything like this in my area.  I found one online, but it only accepted 20 members a year and it was already full. 

In the meantime, my daughter had been asking me to go out and visit this farm that a friend of hers works on.  So Monday, we went.  And, in a random act of coincidence as so often happens, it turned out to be a CSA farm!  Furthermore, it was my lucky day because although I was not a member, they were bagging up fava beans and the owner let me buy a couple of pounds.  I had never had fresh fava beans before but had been stumbling across recipes for them for ages!  I recently had visited all my area grocery stores looking for fresh favas and found them to be more illusive than a fresh spring morel!  Now, I was the happy owner of two whole pounds worth!

I hurried home with my bag of fava beans and began to look up recipes online.  I discovered that preparing fresh fava beans is very time consuming!  First, you have to remove them from their pod.  Each large pod contains about four or five beans.  They are a pale green in color.

Once the beans are removed from their pods, you need to further remove the kernel from it's shell.  To do this, you blanch the beans in rapidly boiling water for three minutes and then plunge them into cold water.  The skins will crack (or not!) and you can now slip the emerald green kernel out of its shell.

The beans are a beautiful, vibrant color and I tasted one raw at this point and found it to be tender, sweet, and delicious!

I sauteed the beans in some olive oil along with about a cup each of chopped fennel bulb and onion and about three cups of chopped swiss chard.  I only had to let them cook for about 20 minutes before I decided they were done.  A little salt and pepper and they were good to go!

I served them along side Haitian chicken and rice.  The meal was delicious!  Unfortunately, I don't know where or when I'll be able to get my hands on some fresh fava beans again but I can promise you that if the opportunity should present itself, I will be buying them!