Earth Day Puree

Earth Day is everyday for us, especially when we get to celebrate it with beautiful and lush produce from our local market. The Hollywood Farmer’s market is of course ablaze with flowering herbs and vegetables every spring, but the real gem of the season is hidden in a big, plushy pod: Fava Beans. These little emerald beans are a meditative kitchen project: unzipping the pod, blanching and then popping the beans from their skins. 2 lbs of pods will yield only 1 cup of favas, but I promise it's worth it. Once the beans are peeled, you can use them instead of chickpeas for a beautiful spring hummus, or you can puree them with garlic, top it with fresh spring herbs and serve it up on one of our gluten free, vegan Jalapeno bagels. Delicious. In this recipe I pureed 1 cup of the favas with garlic then I mixed a ¼ cup of the cooked whole beans with some fresh herbs to put on top of the puree for a little more texture. You could just dump everything in the blender and puree it all if you would like!

Ingredients

• 2 ½  lbs fresh fava bean pods
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 3 tsp lemon (or lime) juice
• 1 tbs water
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Fresh dill
• Fresh basil
• Fresh tarragon
• Edible flowers for garnish (we used chamomile for a unique flavor profile)
• Salt to taste

Method

The meditative part is peeling the beans.

1. To remove the favas from their pods, crack the tip off and unzip the seams of the pod. The favas should be easy to pop out.
2. Once all the beans are out of the pod, boil them for a couple minutes, strain the water then rinse with cool water to stop the cooking.
3. Now, they must be peeled. Each bean has a milky shell that once slit open should quickly reveal the bright green fava. Pinch the tiniest slit into each bean shell then squeeze the green favas out one by one. I find this task super satisfying, especially because the favas are such an amazingly rich green color, so pretty to look at!
4. Once all the beans are peeled, put 1 cup into a blender with 2 tbs oil, 2 tsp lemon juice, 1 tbs water, 3 cloves garlic and salt. Puree.
5. To make the herb mix: pick sprigs of dill, tear leaves of basil and pick tarragon leaves to generously fill your palm. Toss the herbs with 1 tbs oil, 1 tsp lemon, salt and the whole cooked favas.
6. Toast up a Super Bloom Jalapeno Bagel, spread on the puree, then spoon the herb mix on top and garnish with edible flowers