Fava Bean Central

Late 2012, one of my last gardening acts before boarding a plane for a southern hemsiphere Christmas, was to plant my first ever Fava Bean cover crop. One of the pleasures of winter gardening in Marin County is the free garden-watering-rain, but this wasn't the year for that. After 5 weeks away we got home to a decidedly brown lawn and barely surviving vegetables. Thankfully the Favas survived and then the rains began. They grew tall and lush and filled the vegetable garden with abundance. I used some Favas for their nitrogen fixing properties and so cut down a small forest of them shortly after they bloomed. (Prior to producing fruit the plant returns nitrogen to the soil, rebalancing nitrogen lost after a summer's worth of growth.) I left other plants growing and have been picking a steady supply for salads and soups. The favorite so far was a super simple salad inspired by Alice Waters (who else!) which goes something like this:

FRESH FAVA SALAD

Freshly picked Fava beans, preferably younger (ie not too huge and still bright green)
Olive Oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Parmesan cheese

Shell the Favas and boil for about 5 minutes to loosen the skin on the beans, remove from heat and drain the water off.
Once the beans are cool enough to handle, pop them out of their outer skin (dont let them cool too much, warmer means easier skin removal).
Toss them in olive oil with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a sprinkle of salt and a generous amount of parmesan cheese.

The only 2 problems with the salad are (1) the two times shelling of the beans to get the sweet green nugget from the center, but it is worth it and only happens once a year (2) there will be none left over

Thanks to my lovely husband and garden helper for the photo.