Simple and healthy Italian recipes: fava broad beans and chicory 8Comments
This is the recipe:
5 servings
- 400 grams dried peeled fava beans,
- salt to taste
- 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 liter water
- 1 kg wild chicories
- 1 garlic clove
- spicy pepper
- durum wheat traditional bread
Soak the fava broad beans overnight (8-12 hours), before cooking. Rinse and place the fava broad beans in a big casserole with fresh water. Place over a slow flame. When the water starts boiling, remove with a spoon the white foam that the fava beans produce. Stir every 10-20 minutes and cook for about 2 hours at very slow flame, while the beans gradually dissolve. Add water from time to time if needed.
While you cook the fava beans, wash the wild chicories. Cook them for about 5-10 minutes in boiling and salted water. When they are “al dente”, drain the chicories.
In a large saucepan, pour some extra virgin olive oil (two tablespoons), add the garlic and spicy pepper and cook for about two minutes. Add the chicories, stir and cover. Cook at low flame for other 5-10 minutes.
When the fava beans are completely dissolved, switch off the flame and add 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (or more if you like) while stirring with a wooden spoon.
Serve the fava beans with the chicory on the side in the same plate. The chicory and fava beans are meant to be eaten together!
You can also serve them with small pieces of traditional durum wheat bread. You can add other extra virgin olive oil.
Hi Sig, wild chicories resemble dandellion…..but they are not exactly the same.
I’m uncertain what wild chicories are and wondering what I can substitute them with. (but I’m certain they don’t grow wild in Norway in winter..)
Do the wild chicories resemble ruccola/ arugula? Or maybe even the leaves of dandellion? From pictures I find on the internet they do not look like regular chicory or endives.
-sig
Yeah, we were pretty disappointed. The biggest issue is that Bulgarians have a very strict “traditional” way of eating, and they very RARELY are willing to step out of their comfort zone. So far what we’ve found is that nobody has a clue what we are talking about when we ask for fava beans.
Same thing with black beans. I simply cannot find black beans. Now, I haven’t been to EVERY store in Sofia, but the most common stores, plus the open markets, don’t seem to carry black beans (which I’d really love to get my hands on for Mexican dishes) so I usually substitute pinto beans. I’m sure if we look a bit harder we’ll find the fava beans. I’m so jealous
Tim, I cannot believe you cannot find them!
In Puglia, now the fava season has started. At the food markets it’s a sort of fava feast. Everybody sells them!…and when you go to the countryside you can smell the favas in the hair. I love fava and fresh pecorino cheese!
On a side note, couldn’t find fava beans to save my life! We looked at three different stores to no avail. I’m sure they are sold somewhere in Sofia, but they have a horrible habit in Bulgaria of labeling beans by their color and size, not by what kind of bean they are, so when you go into a store or hit the open market and you don’t see them and start to ask, everyone answers with a shrug of their shoulders. So far we’ve yet to meet someone who even KNOWS what a fava/broad bean is. Amazing that something I took for granted back in the US is something I cannot seem to find here.
Still, I got some white beans and made a nice white-bean soup instead, although it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for
Ah well, I’ll keep looking!
Fried green peppers on the side sounds delicious. I actually can’t wait to try this. I’ve been working on getting a starter going to make some sourdough bread, so hopefully I can have a loaf ready next week. However, even if I can’t, we’ll try this with some thick country bread for sure. Yummmm!
We also accompany fava beans with thick slices of country-style bread, toasted in the oven; or as an alternative with fried green pepper.
This what we do in the summer when we can’t find the wild chicories (in Puglia you can only find them in the winter season).
Some people also accompany the fava beans with pasta.
This sounds simply divine! I might have to hunt for the chicory, but the rest of the ingredients are ready at hand. We’ll be trying this out for sure in the next week or two.