[Sca-cooks] Re: Winter comfort food and uses for fava beans

[Christiane]

I get together with some of my bellydance troupemates on Friday evenings for dinner and geeky gaming pursuits. It's a potluck affair. Rather than buying something premade, I brought in my crockpot to work last week and made a Tuscan white bean and potato soup with kale. All I had to do was dump in cans of veggie broth, a bag of frozen kale, can of diced tomatoes, two cans of white beans, 8 red potatoes peeled and chopped, two onions peeled and chopped, two minced garlic cloves, some parsley, a little season salt, and some savory. Turned the crockpot on high and let it sit for the workday. Voila, soup. My coworkers were tortrued by the smell ...

I'll probably repeat the experiment this Friday with turkey chili.

So long as the topic of fava beans is up, I'd just like to mention again that cooks who use them in their menus should caution male diners of strong Meditteranean descent (Southern Italian, Greek, North African) about favism. Yes, it's rare here, but favas are not that popular a food item. What with immigration and loss of contacts over in the old country, folks tend to forget that Great Uncle Salvatore may have died after having a nice spring fava salad.

Gianotta