More Dirty Little Secrets

The Farmer's Market got me thinking. When I started a garden I expected my produce to look like the stuff at the grocery store, only better, and better tasting. Sort of like the farmer's market. You know the look:

Everything in neat rows. Everything the same size.

The reality? Not pretty. Tomatoes are mis-shapen, different sizes. And there are never enough for what you're planning for dinner - until there are too many.

Figs too. And beans - they ripen one at a time - until you go on vacation. Then it's whoopee! and they all ripen at once. You come home to huge bean pods weighing down the plants, turning to brown, too far gone for green beans but not dry enough for shelling beans. Don't get any ideas about making the best of things and having dried beans for soup. The raccoons have other plans.

So the following year you cancel your vacation, and wait for the garden to ripen. Sorry - not this year. That will be the year the flea beetles get the beans, the corn earworm gets the corn, and the tomatoes succumb to some of the myriad of diseases they are famous for. My sister had the most beautiful tomato plants, tall and leafy and loaded with fruit. And every year, just as they were beginning to salivate over the first almost ripe tomato, anticipating that vine-ripe warm from the sun taste, the tomato plants would collapse in a wilted heap. Verticillium, fusarium, you name it, they had it.

They tried raised beds. They tried pots. They finally moved, and now they live where it is almost too cold to ripen a tomato. I am thinking of getting them a greenhouse. Or a share in a central valley tomato farm.

In my garden, when I need a pound of ripe figs I will have ten pounds. When  I want ten pounds to make pickled figs (or Fickle Pigs as we like to call them) and to share with the neighbors I will have one ripe fig and a lot of fat happy birds. And squirrels. And rats.

I have taken a major position in Critter Ridder. I have taken a more philosophical attitude toward the garden. We eat the good, compost the bad, and are not so fussy about the ugly. But as delicious and frustrating as it is, it doesn't look like the produce department, and it sure as heck doesn't look like the farmer's market.

Farmers and Favas

Ah, the fava. The intimidating confusing mysterious delicious fava. Having prepared them several times over the last few weeks I am prepared to pay any amount for fresh favas - in a restaurant. I know how much work they are. How they blacken your thumbnails and steam up the kitchen. But I also know how delicious they are...

The farmer's market had piles of fresh fava beans. Intimidating if you haven't tackled them before, and the quantity you have to buy to have more than just a nibble is astonishing. Add a short season and it's time to talk favas. This is what you start with, this big heap of pods. Using your thumbs, pry the pods open and push out the beans. Like this...

You can see the pod to bean ratio and it's in favor of the pods. By a mile.

 Pods go on the compost heap. Beans go in a dish or colander. 

Now bring a big pot of salted water to the boil. The salt is to keep the flavor in the beans not in the water. Osmosis - remember high school science? Don't skip the salt. 

When the water is boiling briskly dump in the beans and boil for three minutes. Exactly. No cheating.

Drain the beans back into the colander and submerge beans and colander in a big bowl of ice water. The colander means you won't have to pick out lumps of half-melted ice from the beans. Smart move.

Nope, we're not there yet. Now drain the beans, and squeeze each one - you heard me, each and every one. Like this:

They will slip out of their tough skins and you will be left with a modest portion of favas and a big heap for your compost pile - 

Now toss the fava beans in a hot skillet for about 30 seconds with a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil.  Slide them into a bowl, toss on some fresh mint you have cut into thin strips - about a teaspoon depending on how much you like mint. A sprinkle of sea salt, and perhaps just a bit more oilve oil, and yum! 

Hurry - the season is short and almost over. And this fall maybe you'll want to plant some fava beans in your garden. I'm looking for a nice sunny spot. So far no luck but I'll keep looking. Maybe when something dies I will see it as a future fava spot not a failure. Maybe.