Monday, November 9, 2009

A foodie confession...broad beans!

I must admit I always felt a bit confounded by ye ol' broad bean. I mean I love the look of them all shiny and green sitting above a toasted piece of sourdough or pasta dura....just like the guy does from River Cottage. But, I had never tasted, cooked or grown them ever, ever before.

That is before last weekend when my first batch were ripe for the picking. Assisted by my able undergardener I began to change my food existence. I consulted a cookbook by Raymond Blanc, known round here as Ray White. My mate Ray had me peel the pods, extract the beans, blanch said beans for 5 seconds then refresh under cool water. Then a tiny incision in the skin and out popped the glorious bean. A bit of a fuss, but well worth it.



So what did I do with the beans? Cooked them in a mixture of cream, garlic and parsley of course! And it was yummy. Since then I've just steamed them with our normal greens and we've enjoyed them so much I think I will be growing them from now on. Plus it's nice to have a crop that grows over winter and enjoys the cold as much as we do!

1 comment:

  1. I love broad beans - you can also just pick them when they are much smaller, and don't worry about getting the secondlayer of skin off - just eat them whole (not the pods).ch

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog...I especially love it when I get comments. Have a great day, suzy xoxo

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