Fava Beans with Mint, Lemon & Pistachios
Fava bean fans, this one’s for you. Flash-cooked favas are tossed with olive oil, plenty of mint, Parmesan, lemon zest, pistachios and dried rose petals for a bright little spring side dish that’s equally good piled onto pasta (or salad greens).
This is the time of year we load up on fava beans. At the market they arrive in puffy bright green pods, stacked high in crates. Preparing them is a labor of love, in part because most of the time you need to first remove the beans from their pods, then slip them from their skins after a quick boil. It’s not as taxing as it sounds - the beans pop quickly from their pods, and peeling them is the kind of kitchen task you can assign to someone while you sit around and chat.
That said, true luxury is walking into a kitchen to discover a bowl of perfectly cooked and shelled favas ready to go. Which is exactly what happened last night (xoxo Wayne!). I grabbed for whatever I had nearby - nuts, cheese, herbs, lemon, dried rose petals - and it all came together into something so pretty and delicious I couldn’t resist popping off a few photos so I could share the recipe.
You can take this in plenty of directions depending on what you have on hand. Pecorino or crème fraîche work well in place of the Parmesan, and toasted almonds are a good stand-in for pistachios. Basil or dill are great alternatives to the mint.
If you want to make more of a meal out if it, pile everything onto bruschetta with a thick slather of ricotta or goat cheese. And come to think of it, you can cook this pizza dough with a slather of ricotta, goat cheese and/or mozzarella, and use the favas to scatter across the pizza once out of the oven. Also, while it's not at all the same - you can do a version of this using edamame.
A couple quick fava tips before jumping into the recipe. Fava beans change dramatically throughout the season, and you start to get a feel from them over time. A lot of people love the smallest favas, they sometimes have skins tender enough to leave on. I tend to look for medium-to-large fava beans, but not so large they start to get starchy and hard. There’s a sweet spot and eventually you’ll start to recognize it.
More Recipes Featuring Fava Beans
- Vegetarian Paella (with favas)
- Citron Noodles with Miso Garlic Butter (and favas!)
- Dried Fava Soup with Mint and Guajillo Chiles
- All recipes with fava beans
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Fava Beans with Mint, Lemon & Pistachios
The vibe here is free-wheeling, l assign amounts to the recipe, but If you love lemon, add more. Same goes for the cheese and nuts. You should end up with 2-3 cups of shelled fava beans here, but it all depends on the size of the favas, don’t worry the whole thing doesn’t need to be exact, just tweak until it tastes great. Use a Y-peeler to get thin strips of Parmesan cheese, and if you have a citrus olive oil, this is the time to use it.
- 3 pounds of fava beans in pods
- 2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup shaved Parmesan cheese
- 20 mint leaves, finely sliced
- 1/3 cup toasted pistachios, lightly chopped
- Zest of half a lemon
- 2 teaspoons dried rose petals, crumbled
- 1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt, or to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper
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To prepare the fava beans, you need to shell the fava beans twice. First remove inner fava beans from large puffy green pods. Next, cook the fava beans for about a minute in a pot of salted water. Drain, run under cold water to stop the cooking, and then shell the 2nd layer skins. To do this pinch each fava to break the skin and gently squeeze to separate the bean from the skin into a bowl. Set aside.
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Toss the fava beans with the olive oil, cheese, mint, pistachios, lemon zest, rose petals, and salt and pepper. Taste, adjust, and enjoy.
Serves 4.
Related Recipes
Grilled Fava Beans
If you haven't tried grilled fava beans, you must! You can make them on a grill or in a grill pan. Toss them out onto a newspaper where people can dive in and make a bit of a mess with the pods and skins.
Citron Noodles with Miso Garlic Butter
Coated in a silky, garlic-spiked, miso butter, these citron noodles are a celebration of spring produce. Fava beans and citron zest mingle with the pasta, crunchy furikake joins the party, then everything gets a feisty chili crisp finish.
Dried Fava Bean Soup with Mint and Chiles
One of the best and most interesting soups I've cooked in years. Adapted from a recipe in Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen - a dried fava bean and roasted tomato base is topped with a fascinating cider-kissed, tangy-sweet chile topping. This soup is so special!
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Comments
This looks so close to my preferred fava bean preparation: no rose petals for me, but chilli flakes always and I’ve ended up preferring grated ricotta salata to Parmesan…. Preserved lemon is also a nice sub-in
Yes! All of those sound amazing.
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