Fava beans are a spring treat, but they require some labor of love. Not only do you have to remove them from their pods, but you also have to blanch the beans and then remove their outer skin. The fava bean plant produces all of its fruit at once, so farmers get about 2 weeks of harvest from a planting. Due to the short season, I always grab a pound of them every spring, the first time I see them at the market.
Sugar snap peas are another spring treat, and thankfully they are much more convenient given that their pods are fully edible and delicious. The flavors of sugar snap peas and fava beans pair nicely in this risotto with a background of fresh goat cheese and mint.
For the risotto, this recipe is a variant on my standard Risotto Mother Dish Technique. If you haven’t read that post, or my About Risotto post, I suggest you read them first before trying this particular incarnation. This recipe treats the fava beans and snap peas as cook-ins, but their cook time is short. They only need to be stirred in for the last 10 minutes of oven cooking time. This is great, because it allows you to do the work on the fava beans and snap peas while the risotto is in the oven.
As I mentioned, preparing fava beans requires some labor of love, and there are a couple of tricks to get you through the process. I’ve included a photo and an animated GIF to help guide you.
First, you have to remove the fava beans from their pods. The pods do have a fibrous string that runs from end to end. If you can fish it out, you can “un-zip” the pod, making it easy to pry open and remove the beans. But, sometimes the string isn’t strong, or you un-zip the wrong side. That’s OK. However you have to mangle the pods, the goal is to get the individual beans into a bowl. The beans also have an outer skin which needs to be removed, and a quick blanching makes that peeling job relatively easy. Put a few cups of water on to boil while you prepare an ice bath with a few cups of water and a generous amount of ice cubes. To blanch, simply release the beans into the boiling water and let them blanch for 1 minute, then immediately drain and transfer the beans to the ice bath. Finally, to peel the individual beans:
If you hold the bean just right, there’s a place where you can nick the skin with your thumbnail and then gently squeeze the bean out from the skin. See the animated GIF. If you nick the skin in the wrong place, you can still squeeze out the bean, but it usually splits into two pieces when you do, which really isn’t a big deal.
Preparing the peas and the mint is much easier. I remove the strings from the snap peas. It’s pretty quick, but it’s also optional. The main thing is to cut the pods into pieces on a bias. Generally I slice them into 2 to 4 pieces depending on the size of the pod. For the mint, simply make a stack of the leaves and then slice the leaves into thin, julienne strips.
The full recipe write-up is below, after a pictorial walk through of the recipe.
Recipe Walk Through
Fava Bean and Snap Pea Risotto
Equipment
- This oven assisted brown risotto method requires a small, enameled cast iron Dutch oven in the 3 to 3.5 quart range.
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion (6-8 oz) chopped
- a few cloves of garlic minced
- 5 cups vegetable or chicken broth divided
- 2-3 oz white wine
- 1.5 cups short grain brown rice
- 1 lb fava beans (in their pods) 5-6 oz shelled and peeled
- 1 pint sugar snap peas
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter cut into a dozen cubes or pats
- 2 oz chèvre
- 12 large mint leaves
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Sauté the diced onions and in the olive oil and ½ tsp of salt, over medium heat in a medium sized enameled Dutch oven. The correct amount of oil will make the onions uniformly glisten, but not pool in the pan. Sauté until the onions are translucent. Try to minimize any browning of the onions. Expect 4-5 minutes
- Add the minced garlic to the pot. You do not want the garlic to brown. Stir and sauté for about one minute.
- Add the brown rice to the pot and stir to coat each grain with the aromatic infused oil.
- Add the splash of wine to deglaze any fond that has developed and stir until the wine has mostly been absorbed by the rice.
- Add 4 cups of stock and increase the heat to high to bring the pot to a full boil. As things are heating, taste test for seasoning. It probably needs some some salt at this point, but how much depends on the how salty your selected broth is. At this point the broth should be well-seasoned.
- Once a full boil is reached, cover the pot and transfer to the center rack of the 375 degree oven. Also place the baking sheet with the carrots on the top rack. Set a timer for 40 minutes.
- While the risotto is cooking in the oven, prepare the fava beans, snap peas and mint.
- For the fava beans: They will need to be blanched after they are removed from their pods. Put a few cups of water in a small pot on the stove to bring to a boil. Also, prepare an ice bath by putting ice cubes and water into a medium bowl. Remove the fava beans from their pods. You can "unzip" the pods by pulling on the long fiber that runs from the stem to tip. When all of the beans are removed, blanch them in the boiling water for 1 minute, and then transfer them to the ice bath. Finally, peel the outer skin from the beans.
- For the peas: Remove the string from each pod, and cut the pods on a bias into 2-4 pieces depending on the size of the pod.
- For the mint: Stack the leaves into a single stack and slice the stack creating julienne cuts.
- When the timer expires at 40 minutes, remove the pot from the oven. Remove the lid and stir in the fava beans and snap peas. Recover and return to the oven for 10 more minutes of cooking.
- After 50 minutes, remove risotto from the oven. Remove the cover and stir in the butter and the remaining cup of stock. Then stir in the along with the chèvre and the mint.
- Finally, plate, add garnishes and accompaniments, and enjoy!
