We have pasta for lunch nearly every day.  We have to, otherwise we would be disowned from Italian society.  It’s one of the rules of holding an Italian passport.  In the Summer months, the thought of a hot pasta dish can sometimes feel like a little too much, so we welcome pasta salads!  You CAN have your pasta and eat it too!  The great thing about pasta salads are that they can even be made the day before.  That way you don’t have to be standing over a hot stove-top in the middle of the day, wiping sweat from your feverish brow in order to feed your family.

This pasta salad is a fabulous Spring dish as it uses fresh fava beans (or broad beans) and peas.  It’s best for this salad to use the freshest vegetables you can get, though frozen peas and favas work well too. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret…….I actually did use frozen fava beans for this recipe as I didn’t get around to buying any fresh ones…….

As the temperatures are starting to climb up to Summer levels already, I thought I’d leave you with a Travel Photo of the Week from sunny Florida, U.S.A. this time around.  Just look at that beautiful turquoise sea!  We were there quite a few years ago, but the coastal western side of Florida still stands in my memory as one of the more beautiful and interesting places I’ve been to, with its abundance of wilderness and wildlife.  We saw manatees, alligators, eagles, and even a cougar sloping along the side of the road one time! The only wildlife I wasn’t so keen on were the “no-seeums”: these tiny black midges that showed up in rave party dimensions when the sun went down to crawl into your hair and bite you.  Now I understand why all the big houses have giant net cages over the top of them!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

Print Pin

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 2 servings

Ingredients

• 200 g 7 oz Short pasta (such as penne rigate or fusilli)
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup Fresh fava beans
• 3 - 4 medium sized Tomatoes
• to taste Parmesan Cheese
• 2 -3 Tbsp Olive oil
• to taste Salt and pepper

Instructions

• Cook the pasta as per packet instructions. Drain and run cold water over it to cool it. Put the pasta into a bowl and stir in 1 Tbsp of olive oil if not using immediately, so that the pasta doesn't stick together.
• Prepare the fava beans.  If they are fresh, open the pods and boil the beans for 5 minutes in lightly salted water. Run cold water over them and then slip each bean out of it's papery skin.  If they are frozen, thaw them as per packet instructions.
• Chop the tomatoes.
• Use a vegetable peeler to shave off pieces of parmesan cheese.
• Put all the igredients together in a serving bowl. Add 1 Tbsp of good olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Toos the pasta salad and serve immediately or cover and chill until needed.

The signs of Spring: flowers, tourists and fresh broad beans

“Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder  where the birdies is?” as the eminent writer Spike Milligan was said to have recited, and my Mum always used to say when I was a kid.  And indeed, Spring has finally come (boy, did it take its time to get here!).  There are tulips, irises and daffodils popping out in the garden, and, more tellingly for the area I live in, foreign tourists everywhere (though not in our garden).  It MUST be Spring! There are strawberries and asparagus appearing at the markets, and also fresh fava beans!  Fava beans are lots of work to prepare, which means that I don’t buy them as often as I should as I’m terribly lazy, but when I do decide to buy them and they don’t go rotten as I’ve taken too long to get around to actually using them…….then, they’re wonderful!

About using Pecorino cheese in the frittata

This frittata recipe is based on one from Tuscany.  It uses pecorino cheese which is a salty sheep cheese (try saying that fast 3 times in a row!) that you find in many, many different forms in Italy from Tuscany all the way to Sicily and over in the west to the island of Sardinia.  If you go to a market in Tuscany, you have a choice of 50 or so different types of pecorino, from hard and flaky, to soft and very delicately flavoured.  I love using the one in the photo below, called pecorino pepato, to make this frittata. Pecorino pepato actually comes from Sicily (yes, I had to find another way to sneak that place into a post again!).  It is filled with whole black peppercorns, which gives it quite a kick. The only problem with it is that my kids and husband like it so much that when I go to use it for cooking, it has often mysteriously “disappeared” from the fridge never to be seen again.

When to eat frittata

I’ve talked once before about the work  it takes to extract delicate green fava beans out of their prison.  It is totally worth it, which I realise each time I set my kids to opening them while I sit back with a cup of tea in hand and watch them. The frittata tastes like Spring, and that’s a wonderful reason to make it!  It’s great made the day before at eaten and room temperature as a first course, or as a light lunch with a green salad.

By Lisa Watson

Print Pin

Broad bean and spring onion frittata

how to make broad bean (Fava Bean) And Spring Onion Frittata

Course Breakfast, buffet, entree, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 1 frittata

Ingredients

• 6 Eggs
• 200 g Fresh fava beans (broad beans) 1 cup - once taken out of their pods
• 2 Spring onions
• 6 Tbsp Pecorino cheese grated
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Italian parsley a small handful
• 2-3 stems Fresh oregano

Instructions

• Shell the fava beans and cook them in boiling water for about 1 minute.  Once they have cooled, squeeze them out of their skins and roughly chop them.
• Mince the white part of the spring onions, and chop the parsley and oregano. Grate the pecorino.
• In a bowl, whisk the eggs and salt and pepper together.
• Add the other ingredients and mix together.
• Heat olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat.  When the oil is hot, pour the egg mixture in.
• Cover and cook on medium-low until the frittata is set.
• Slide it out onto a plate.  If you want to brown the upper side, flip it over carefully and leave it to cook for 2 or 3 minutes.

Notes

This is great eaten at room temperature.

Places that are hard to leave once you stay there a while

Too many years ago, we lived in California in our pre-kid era and didn’t appreciate enough how easy it was to go out, like, whenever we felt like it to where-ever we wanted to go at the drop of a hat.  But, like, you know, like, whatever (that’s my Californian alter-ego dropping in). Anyway, back in the day, when we got the urge to eat Italian we would jump in our giant car, and speed up the valley to that shining star of cities, San Francisco.  To paraphrase the song, I really did leave my heart there!  I should really be careful about where I live, because another town I lived in in Germany, beautiful Heidelberg, had a song with the same concept, and I left a little bit of my heart there too.

A great Italian restaurant to go to in San Francisco

Anyway, I digress: as I was saying, when we got the urge to eat Italian, we would go to a fabulous restaurant in Noe Valley called “Bacco“ (which thanks to Google, I see is still there!). Once when we went there, I gobbled (I mean daintily nibbled on…) some mouth-watering crostini slathered with fava bean spread, shaved Parmesan and truffle oil.  Since then, I’ve spent hours shucking fava beans to try to recreate it, and Eureka!!! I think I’ve got it!!

How to enjoy fava beans without all the work

I have a love-hate relationship with fava beans: I LOVE to eat them, but I really hate to wrestle them out of their many layers of clothing.  Boy, those little guys play really hard-to-get! Sometimes I cheat a little and buy frozen favas, though even then, you generally have to peel the skins off them.  It does get rid of the shelling step.  I have also found that young kids LOVE to shell legumes, so I often outsource this part of the job to my two willing helpers. But, it’s all worth it when you bite into crispy/chewy toasted bread with this spread on top!

By Lisa Watson

Print Pin

Crostini with Broad bean (fava) spread and Parmesan shavings

How to make Fava Bean Spread With Parmesan Shavings. Slather it on rustic bread!

Course Appetizer

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 kg Fresh fava beans 2.2 lbs - yields about 300 -400 g of beans
• 1 clove Garlic
• 6 - 8 Tbsp Olive oil - good quality
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Parmesan cheese to shave on top
• Truffle oil optional
• Rustic bread cut in thick slices

Instructions

• Shell the fresh fava beans, then cook the legumes in boiling salted water for 1-2 minutes.
• Drain and run cold water over them to stop the cooking.  If using frozen beans, follow the packet instructions for cooking times.
• Pop the beans out of their skins when cooled.
• Put the beans, garlic, and half the oil into a small food processor and blend them together.
• Add oil one tablespoon at a time and continue to mix until you achieve a smooth consistency.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.  For this batch I used a mix of 5 different types of peppercorns and it was delicious!
• Cut slices of bread and pour a little oil on them.
• Grill in the oven on both sides until the bread is lightly toasted.
• Spoon the spread onto the crostini.
• Use a potato peeler to shave thin slices of parmesan on top, then if using, sprinkle with truffle oil.
•