Fava Fiasco

I'd never cooked fava beans before, although I'd eaten them a couple of times and loved their taste of fresh-peas crossed with baby lima beans.  So when they appeared in the store again this spring, I figured we'd finally give them a try. 

I had to consult with a few cookbooks to figure out what to do with them, and that's when the confusion began.  These beans have giant, hairy pods, the beans inside have a shell, and then there's the part you actually eat.  I needed three cookbooks to discern that much, after weeding out the canned, dried and too-little-information recipes!

The prep-chefs got to work:

Here are the three stages of Fava:

(unpeeled, beans with shell and fully peeled (in the bowl).  Oddly, the chickens loved the silvery husks, but wouldn't touch the pods!)

I thought we'd try something simple, a fava-bean spread that consisted of beans, olive oil and garlic.  We'd really be able to taste the beans, and how hard could it be to make mush?

(please hold your laughter...)

We cooked a little garlic, we added the oil and beans and simmered.  Disclaimer: I have a habit of monkeying with recipes, but this time it wasn't my fault!  (I swear!)  I didn't have the quantity of beans called for in the recipe so I had to adjust...

 

They looked good....at first.  But they were oddly hard to mush.  Even with the help of permanent-marker-monster-hands!

See what I mean?

The yeah-right-you-call-this-mush? tasted pretty good on the crackers, but olive oil and garlic have a way of doing that...no matter what.  I think we overcooked both the beans and the garlic, but if anyone out there has suggestions for these beans, we're looking for guidance!  In the meantime, maybe we'll follow the recipe next time and see what happens.