[Sca-cooks] Fava bean recipes

[Lilinah]

Gianotta wrote:
[snippety-doo-dah]
>I have never seen anything with favas at an East Kingdom feast, 
>which seems a shame considering all of the period recipes featuring 
>favas. Admittedly I have not been to that many feasts, but I've been 
>to a few major and minor events over the years. Is it because favas 
>are harder to get than other beans, and there is a general 
>unawareness of them? Is it fear of favism?
>
>So does anyone have any theories about why feasts that could feature 
>favas, do not?

We have favas at feasts sometimes, here in The West. In one dish, the 
cooks did not peel each bean, which made the dish unpleasant.

I can get a number of varieties of dried favas (small and large), 
canned favas, and fresh favas. I haven't used the dried, but i have 
used canned (for personal use) and fresh (for feasts).

First, like any pea or bean, the favas must be removed from the pods. 
That's not a big deal. But each bean must be peeled. With fresh 
beans, this works best if they are blanched. With dried, it's better 
to peel them after soaking them but before cooking. The dried beans 
are much more... mmm... floury... carbohydratey than the fresh.

I have no idea why no one's using them in Eastern feasts. It can't be 
hard to get them dried or canned in Spanish, French, Italian, North 
African, Egyptian, and Lebanese markets. And i'd bet that people can 
find them fresh in some places.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita