It's been a while since I posted and it seems to be the time of year for foodie posts. The end of June saw a quick return from garden leave in Dubai to garden eave in the garden proper at Oaklands. I must confess that I have never planted a broad bean or handled a home grown one myself before. Alan, who comes and helps Jane with the big jobs in the garden like the strimming and lawn edging once every few weeks brings a few broad bean plants each year. I missed the harvest last year but last night I jumped on them and picked a whole basket. If you get them young enough you can hopefully avoid the tedium of "double podding" - more later !
I love the pods themselves. They remind me of sleeping bags that I had years ago for cubs and then scouts. Each pod has around 4-7 individual beans. The connecting tissue on each bean can be a faff to remove and I gave up doing this opting just to run my finger inside each pod. I expect at Le Manoir Aux Quatre Saisons each bean is individually trimmed up and polished.
You need patience for this task. If you said supper will be on the table at 6.3o pm it won't be. Allow a good 30-40 minutes for preparing a bowl of broad beans - especially if you are going to double-pod. The beans themselves need to blanched for a couple of minutes in simmering water. If you are using them for a salad you then plunge them into cold water to prevent them from going mushy. Mushy might be your thing though - a nice broad bean and mint humous can be made with a drop of olive oil. Double podding is where you then soldier on with infinite patience to remove the papery inner-covering to each tiny bean. Inside are a brighter smaller pair of kernels for each bean. I have to say I do not have the patience for that and was warned off the extra process by Jane and Sam. Pick them young !
You can see that I gave up on removing each of the mini connector tissues. I got a good pound of beans I think from my basketful of pods. I went for a simple recipe for my pasta dish guesstimated and cobbled together for a number of online sources. No measurements - play it by ear - what can go wrong ? :-
Broad beans (blanched) - lots
Mint leaves (torn) - big handful (some reserved)
Pancetta - packet if you are feeling naughty
Fresh Tagliatelle - a whole packet if you want to overface your partner with supper and have lcold pasta for lunch for the next day - otherwise a sensible amount (150-175 g per person - less if you are Italian or French)
Elephant Garlic Bulb - or just garlic
Small tub of Double Cream - or half if you have strawberries for pudding and only one tub - we didn't so I chucked the whole lot in
Olive Oil
Salt and Black Pepper to season
Good parmesan and the reserved torn mint leaves to finish
Prepare and blanche the broad beans. Put the pasta on in boiling salty water. Finely chop the fresh elephant garlic bulb and gently fry with the pancetta in a pan with olive oil. You don't need to use elephant garlic but it's what I had to hand picked and dried by Jane before she visited me in Dubai for a couple of weeks. It is milder than ordinary garlic and doesn't overpower the broad beans which are obviously quite a delicate flavour.
Add the broad beans once the pancetta is cooked and crisped up a little and finally the double cream and some torn mint. Heat the sauce through but be careful not to boil. Put a couple of tablespoons of the pasta water into the sauce which should help to emulsify everything. If you are not using fresh pasta try and use bronze cut ("bronze") dried pasta which takes up creamy sauces better and drops plenty of starch into the water to help emulsify the mixture. A good tip learned from peripatetic "Major Nick" who keeps a room at the Villa in Dubai on an off. We obviously have too much time on our hands when it comes to weekend cooking.
When the pasta is cooked drain and toss with the creamy broad bean sauce. Serve with more torn scattered mint leaves and a good grating of parmesan. Retire with a tray and catch up on Gardeners World.
I am starting to see what the raised beds really bring to the party now. This is a good discipline to cook what is ready. At the moment it is all about broad beans, french beans, ,lettuce and potatoes.
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