Slave of the Great Fava

What do I know of beans, or beans of me?

--Henry David Thoreau

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Fava beans demand intimacy. Unlike string beans, which can be thrown into a pot as is, and unlike peas, which are stripped in small sibling units from their pods, the fresh fava insists on individual attention. Each bean not only must be extracted from the pod, it must also be peeled. Each bean must be peeled. Each bean. Each one. Each bean must have your undivided attention for as long as it takes to remove the inner skin, a process akin to removing tiny green boxing gloves from swollen hands.

Which explains why a side of fava beans cost $7 recently in a restaurant. Just beans? said the friend with me. $7 for a plate of beans? They came, lightly cooked, mounded on a 7-inch plate. Still crunchy, glistening in butter, they were nutty, just shy of bitter in a way that made you want to eat yet another mouthful.

We shoveled them down as best we could, but it was a generous portion, and some were left. A few tablespoons. Too many to leave behind, considering what it took to prepare them. Certainly there were enough to scatter on a bowl of pasta. (That’s how it can be with me around favas: I get all hoardy and careful. Especially when they’re peeled and not too cooked, like this pricey plateful.) Loath to waste them, I had the beans packed to go. Otherwise I knew I might wake up in the early hours and rue that I’d let these already shucked, peeled, parboiled kings of beans--a good $2 worth--slip away.

This fava thing happens to me. Every few years is a fava year, when I feel compelled to buy them every time I see them, insinuate them into every meal, enslave myself to their endless busywork.

Actually, I have gone a few years--five, in fact--since my last bout of fava fever, when, for an entire spring, several times a week, dinner took 30, 40, 60 minutes longer while I addressed it, bean by bean.

Since then, I had closed down to favas. I could see them, the long, shiny, often limp green pods, heaped in the specialty section of the supermarket or set out in boxes at the Middle Eastern grocery, and I could push on, unmoved. Last year a friend proudly displayed rows of fava vines in her garden, stranger and lacier than the commoner legumes, with gray-blue leaves and fragile, star-white flowers, and I was not awed or tempted. In a barely conscious way, I connected only with the difficulty, the time, the meager results involved with favas, and I remained as indifferent as rain.

The bad memories eroded over time, however, enough so that a small plate of favas could rekindle the craving to eat these most superior beans. Driving home from the restaurant, my little friends in a clear plastic box on the seat beside me, I came up with several things I could do with them. Before I knew it, I had thought up far too many things for so few beans. Favas and pasta. Favas and lamb. Favas rolled in mint and olive oil. Would it be worth it to make a fresh fava ful? (Ful, of course, being that rich brown mash made of cooked dried favas, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil.)

So the next thing you know, I was checking out my suppliers. My favorite Italian market in Pasadena stocked some pretty sad, limp and slimy favas; the super tienda down the street had none. At an upscale supermarket near my home I found favas for $1.99 a pound, but I was already beyond reason, and even though most of the poundage is pod, I cleaned the place out.

I had a friend coming for dinner at 7. I left the store at 5:30, was home five minutes later. I put a big pot of water on the stove to boil for blanching the beans. Within a few short minutes I had lamb chunks and broth hissing in the pressure cooker. I planned a thin stew with baby carrots, porcinis and a few red potatoes, to be finished with bright, nutty, lightly cooked favas and slivers of fresh mint.

It is quicker to stew lamb than ready a cup of favas.

I sat down. I had a bag for discarded pods, a bowl for the unpeeled beans. I set to work, shucking. And for a while, the pods’ furry, thick-walled construction beguiled me, seemed proof of universal kindliness, that these seeds are nurseried in a womb as tufted and soft as a flannel sleeping bag. Then, I stopped noticing, lulled by repetition and monotony.

I shucked and shucked and then I heard some scritching on the floor, and along came my parrot. She seemed to know immediately that I was in possession of the world’s most desirable beans, for she climbed right up my trousers and took an unpeeled fava right out of the pod. As if she’d been eating them all her life (which she hasn’t--this was her first fava), working with a sharp beak and a tongue like a little black pencil eraser, she quarried the inside meat from the skin, discarded the mostly empty sac and appropriated another, all with breathtaking, highly enviable speed. And who could quarrel with such shared relish? It was an added handicap however: I extracting five beans from a pod, she dispatching two immediately.

By the time my guest arrived, I was almost ready to blanch a cup of unpeeled favas. A quick bath in boiling water enabled us to peel a fava almost as quickly as my parrot.

Peeling favas is like the proverbial riding of a bicycle: Once you get good at it, you stay good at it. After a quick blanch, all that’s required is a tiny rent in the skin, made with fingernail or knife, and the bean shoots right out, bright green, neatly bifurcated. Here is another pleasure: If you unfold a peeled fava bean like a book, you behold two perfect, tiny green lungs.

In the meantime, the fava insinuates itself into the tiny spaces under your thumbnail; eventually, there’s a familiar soreness.

All this work, only to plunge the favas into the lamb stew where, though they looked bright as green suns, their other virtues were muted. It was a great stew, but not a great showcase for favas.

I can’t count how many pounds I’ve since shucked and peeled so far this spring. I next tried a risotto, a kind of fava risi e bisi with pancetta, but even the bacon was too dominant. Favas, with all their quiet complexity, require a plainer backdrop, a nearly bare stage.

I remembered the favas I ate in Guatemala: mature, dried, possibly rehydrated, then deep-fried so they were like a rich, heavenly nut. I tried frying fresh favas, unpeeled, and a glorious thing happened: In no time, the peels turned golden and split. Pulled from the oil, drained and salted, fried favas were deeply flavored, rich, perfect except the skins were tough, like Scotch tape. But sometimes a certain cellophanic quality can be good: think of oven-roasted shallots and soft-shell crabs. Some eaters spurned the fried shell, and while it was easy enough to discard, I rather liked eating it.

Finally, I made a mild, butter-drenched risotto with an undertone of mint, a bit of crab for sweetness, and let the favas make their noble, intelligent appeal unimpeded. A success, I think.

Next year, or perhaps in 2001, I’ll attempt that fresh fava ful.

FRIED FAVAS

1/2 pound fava beans, in pods

1/4 cup oil

Salt

Shuck but do not peel favas. Heat oil in deep pan to 350 degrees. Fry handful of beans at a time, 4 to 5, until beans burst and shells are attractive shade of brown, about 30 seconds. Remove from oil with slotted spoon. Drain. Salt to taste. Eat like popcorn. Delicious.

Makes about 1/2 cup fried favas.

Each tablespoon contains about:

127 calories; 77 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 4 grams fat; 17 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 0.84 gram fiber.

FAVA AND CRAB RISOTTO

2 pounds fava beans, in pods

3 tablespoons butter

1/2 large onion, finely chopped

1 cup arborio or other short-grained rice

Zest of 1/2 lemon

1 sprig plus 4 leaves mint

5 to 6 cups vegetable broth

Oil

1/4 cup crab meat or meat from 8 crab claws, heated (optional)

Shredded fresh mint leaves

Shuck fava beans. Cook beans in pot of boiling salted water 2 minutes, then drain. Place immediately in ice water to stop cooking and peel all but 16 to 20 beans. Set aside.

Melt butter in heavy saute pan. Add onion and stir until onion is soft. Add rice and stir until rice is opaque, about 1 minute. Stir in lemon zest.

Add mint sprig to vegetable broth in saucepan, bring to a boil, then keep at a low simmer. Add 1 to 1 1/2 cups broth to rice and cook, stirring constantly, until broth is absorbed by rice. Continue adding broth in this manner, stirring constantly, until rice is chewy but tender, about 18 minutes. Mixture should be rather soupy. Add peeled fava beans and keep cooking, stirring, 2 to 3 more minutes.

Heat enough oil for frying in skillet. Quickly deep-fry reserved unpeeled favas until shells brown and burst, about 30 seconds.

Serve risotto in bowls. Garnish with crab and fried favas and a few shreds of mint.

Makes 4 appetizer or 2 main-course servings.

Each of 4 appetizer servings contains about:

628 calories; 1,434 mg sodium; 40 mg cholesterol; 19 grams fat; 90 grams carbohydrates; 28 grams protein; 2.46 grams fiber,