broadly...

Yes broad beans have taken over my life. So the essential question becomes again "to pod or to double pod?" But yay for seasonal eating and finally planting enough this year. I'll do photos soon because I have a very pretty type that goes purple when you cook it.

But while I cruise the internets for ideas let me leave you with this thought from stonesoup:

The thing about broad beans is that they really are a lot of work but well worth the double peeling. With all those layers that need removing, you could think of them as the strippers of the vegetable world... sexy and nutritious... all good things.

It is very nice to see some pro-sex worker attitudes in a food simile. Yes it is.

the guinness book nachos attempt

It's genetic you know. I saw it with my Mum last night at Pesakh and I did it myself for the missus' birthday. We worry about there not being enough food. We wear ourselves out cooking way too much food. We worry about who's going to eat it all. Sometimes we worry it didn't taste good and then we worry about the leftovers going to waste.

But it was fun. Very fun. We made:

• roasted salsa verde (tomatillos)
• raw salsa verde (ditto)
• roasted garlicky tomato salsa (hot!)
• pico de gallo (fresh tomatoes, radishes, coriander...)

last of the season mango salsa
(so good, I think it was the blanched red onion)


the biggest bowl of guacamole I've ever seen


stupidly large amounts of my best black beans


and everyone piled it onto ridiculous amounts of corn chips and melty cheese.
(queso fresco/mozarella/salamini)

Perfect food for a large bunch and it goes so well with margaritas!

broadly speaking

Well, it's spring and that means broad beans. The garden is full of these little lovelies and because I'm growing them I can pick them however I want.

Tiny ones are lovely just boiled for a second and dressed with butter and lemon.

The medium ones made great pasta the other day. I used the little ones that are gnocchi shaped and just threw the beans and some asparagus pieces in a couple of minutes before the pasta was done. Drain and stir through plenty of salt and pepper, oil and lots of fetta chunks. Oh yeah!

And for the big fat beans? Well broad bean dip is pretty hard to go past. Eve dropped some around the other day - lovely and garlicky. I'm pretty sure it's just beans, lemon juice, olive oil and masses of garlic.

The hardest thing is resisting picking the pods too early - they look so big but it's all padding and the beans are still tiny inside.