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Despite my response to Gina in A bite to tide you over…, the real reason why I am vegetarian is I hate all vegetables and I am on a mission to personally destroy them all, especially the fava beans (or broad beans depending on where you hail from).

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Ok, all joking aside, I love, love, love fresh fava beans. They are one of my favorite things to eat. Fantôme Chocolat even almost made me cry over them once.

I apologize to those of you that just experienced a strong gust of wind blowing through your hair. That was Fantôme Chocolat sighing deeply across the internet because I am about to tell *that* story again.

Fantôme Chocolat also enjoys fava beans, but not as much as beets and not nearly as much as I do, as I am about to illustrate. Any time he drives to work during fava season he stops at the Wegmans by his office and begins scouring the produce section for fava beans. At Wegmans he is not known as Fantôme Chocolat or by his given name, he is known as “The Fava Bean Guy”. This has been going on for two years now. This year has been a particularly bad year for fava beans. Our favorite restaurant, where we first began enjoying fava bean salad in early spring of 2006, could not get their hands on enough this year to offer the salad at all. They were only able to have them in one of the pasta dishes since it requires less of them. Any time either of us found them this year, there were fewer than normal and they were significantly more expensive than last year. (Bear with me… this is all context for the story.)

Typically we make fava beans on Saturday nights since they require a little bit of effort. We have them with dinner and then divide the left overs to “have during the week”. Mine rarely last until Sunday night. I was at Fantôme Chocolat’s place one week night to cook and he sent me into the refrigerator for something where I discover not one but TWO containers of left over fava bean salad. We were not able to get fava beans for the previous Saturday’s dinner so these portions had to be two and three weeks old. I nearly burst out into tears on the spot. The man took the fava beans, did not eat them, and did not even have the decency to hide the evidence of this travesty. Yes, the man that I learned how to preserve beets for, which I won’t even eat, took the fava beans right out of my mouth.

It still hurts, but I am learning to move on. After all, he is known as “The Fava Bean Guy” at a distant grocery store in order to bring me these delightful treasures. And he just did bring me some last week and it was the end of September! That made me do a little jig of joy.

Now on to the fava beans….

Fava beans are native to north Africa and southwest Asia. Despite what Hannibal Lecter says, I think you would be doing fresh ones a disservice with Chianti and I suggest a nicely chilled dry white instead (see the wine aside below). There is a hereditary abnormality called favism (not to be confused with fauvism which is an early 20th century modern art movement) prevalent in people with ancestry from Africa, the Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia. If you have favism, you should not eat fava beans! They should also be avoided by people taking MAOIs (antidepressants). The good news is they are a very rich source of L-dopa so they have positive effects on hypertension and L-dopa is used in the treatment of Parkinson’s.

You know favas are good because Mother Nature saw fit to double wrap them to protect their yumminess and this is where the effort comes in. First, you have to remove them from a long pod which is somewhat furry inside.

When you get them out of the pod, they are still encased in a skin that you want to remove. However, I cook them inside of that skin. Just throw them in a pot of boiling water for a minute and then drain. Rinse with cool water so you can handle them. Pinch the end of the skin and slide the bean out.

Tada… fava beans! I discard any that are too yellow or mealy looking.

Our salad recipe has evolved over time. I believe the restaurant does some type of provolone, a bit of olive oil and an acid. Fantôme Chocolat and I eat them with some tomato, a white cheese that has been marinated with some hot pepper which he also picks up at Wegmans, white wine vinegar and salt.

One night when we didn’t have a lot of them and also did not have our usual cheese of choice, I served them with sliced tomatoes and basil (they were tossed with white wine vinegar and salt first and those are some zebra tomato slices on the bottom).

I guess that is all I really have to say about fava beans. I really prefer to just eat them. I am not a fan of having them made into a dip and I am sad when the season is over. In all fairness, I have never tried them from a can but I really don’t have any plans to either. I am thinking about trying to grow them next year.

If you have had them anyway that you really enjoy them, please feel free to share!

Wine aside: my house white of choice right now is Meinklang’s 2005 Burgenland Dry White(there are two links buried in there… one for Meinklang and one for a description of the wine). It is a blend of grüner veltliner, welschriesling and pinot blanc. I picked up a case at Whole Foods for under $70 between a sale and the case discount when the wine guy told me what they had out was all that was left (I had just been buying a bottle here and there before that) because Meinklang was completely out of it. Apparently Austrian wines have suddenly become fashionable in the US now that the Austrians have figured out how to satisfy their thirst and still produce some for export ;-). I have been drinking them whenever I can find them ever since I spent a cumulative total of about 3 months in Austria in 1999 and 2000. If you ever need to bribe me, a lovely Zweigelt or a trocken Austrian Riesling is a good bet (I was not a fan of Riesling until I tried an Austrian one… keep the sweet German ones away from me! Do the Germans make any dry ones?). A nice Grüner Veltliner never hurts either.