spicy favabean salad
(vegan)

recipe by m-c

just the recipe

what I was looking for

a way to celebrate favabean season

what I made

A delightful favabean salad based on a warm dish in Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Beyond the Great Wall (pp. 102-103). A+D said the dish was traditionally made with favabeans, but they prefer to make it with soybeans (edamame), I just switched it back to favabeans.

chit-chat

Rhubarb? Yawn. English peas? OK. Strawberries? Well, yes, I suppose so. The plant that sings spring to me is the favabean. It's ugly, it's a pain in the neck to cook, but oh I love it.

Many times when people talk about a food or a dish as "just for family," they mean something kind of thrown together, second-rate, and similarly when they designate a dish as being "for company," they mean it's a big production.

Myself, I go in exactly the opposite direction. Favabeans are a huge lot of work for two people. No way I would make them for more than two -- the effort would be insupportable. And what if somebody had the gall not to like them? Long ago, Mark failed to praise a favabean salad sufficiently, and I cut him off for a year. No applause, no favabeans. Luckily, he's back in my good graces again.

grades for my version

healthy	A	So good for you!
fast	A	Done in minutes.
easy	A	A snap. (Note that I'm starting to find stir-frying easy.)
cheap	B	Favas are a little bit of a specialty item.
delicious	A	Yummy.

yield

Serves two as a side dish.

equipment

   a bowl
   a small bowl
   a measuring cup
   a wok
   a long-handled pancake turner

the favabeans

ingredients	A+D scaled	m-c	why?
beans	½ pound shelled soybeans	3 pounds whole favabeans	tastier [1]
Notes
[1]	Nothing against soybeans, I just like favas better.

   Put something great on the record player -- do other people still have record players? Well, queue up some great songs on your IPod. Find a comfortable chair. Organize a big brown paper handle bag for the trimmings and a small bowl -- a painfully small bowl ‑‑ for the beans themselves.

Every favabean comes double-wrapped. I like to shuck all the big pods first and then skin the individual beans, but you might rather do a pod and then all its inhabitants before moving on to the next pod.

First there is the large, cottony pod. There's a knack to stringing the pod with a fingernail and then twisting it open; sometimes I have the knack and then I'll lose it again, midway through a huge pile.

The individual beans come tight-wrapped in a layer of thick, tasteless skin. I try to get a fingernail (or the tip of a sharp knife) in right at the crux of the skin, peel it around, and then pop off the two ends. But many times the skin doesn't cooperate and I end up peeling the whole thing.

If all this sounds ridiculous to you, Whole Foods carries frozen peeled fava beans under their 365 label. Like most frozen beans, they are very good. I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell them from fresh, except that their size is more uniform than fresh ones. They're delicious.

And you can serve them to company.

Maybe in the future I'll make fresh favabeans only for myself and serve frozen ones to everybody else. I think I've talked myself into the idea. Why should poor Mark live with this air of resentment I carry around from peeling favabeans for him? Which would he rather have, fresh favabeans or a pleasant companion?

OK, revised ingredient list:

ingredients	A+D scaled	m-c	why?
beans	8 oz. shelled soybeans	8 oz. (half of a 16-oz. package) frozen shelled favabeans	tastier

The beans don't need to be defrosted.

Here's what I did with the other half of the package of frozen favas.

getting set up to stir-fry

ingredients	A+D scaled	m-c	why?
peanut oil	1 Tablespoon	1 Tablespoon	no change
pickled chiles	1 Tablespoon sliced thin	1 Tablespoon sliced thin	no change
garlic	3 cloves sliced thin	6 cloves sliced thin	tastier (to me)
star anise	¼ teaspoon broken pieces	¼ teaspoon broken pieces	no change
water	½ cup	½ cup	no change
salt	½ teaspoon	½ teaspoon	no change

Line up your stir-fry ingredients:

(1)                The bottle of peanut oil.

(2)       A small bowl containing the sliced chiles and sliced garlic.

(3)       The bowl from above containing the favabeans, with the star anise added.

(4)       A measuring cup containing the water and the salt.

stir-frying

   Heat your wok hot hot hot.

Add the peanut oil and swirl it around.

   Add the chiles and garlic. Keep them moving in the hot oil till the garlic starts to color and smell fragrant, 60-90 seconds.

Add the favabeans and star anise. Keep everything moving in the hot oil for 60 seconds.

Add the salted water. Let the mixture cook undisturbed till the liquid has almost completely evaporated. Right at the end (after 5-6 minutes), start stirring again.

Serve hot or room temperature.

go-withs

We had these as part of an enjoyable supper with giant wheat flatbreads (sold as "Indian tortillas"). We put lettuce leaves and various stuffings in and rolled them up. Besides the favabeans, we had a tofu and scallion salad, also from Beyond the Great Wall, page 75. And for the third salad/stuffing we had braised kale, fresh heirloom tomato chunks, and not‑quite‑hard hard-cooked eggs flavored with five-spice powder.

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