Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
The tiniest of fava beans have an affinity with young, snow-white goat cheeses. I like to use them in an early summer salad with Ticklemore, the cheese that Robin Congdon makes at his farm in Devon with milk from Sharpham Farm, the Buddhist retreat. Otherwise, I’ll use whatever is suitably crumbly, milky, and mild. It is a salad that seems to gain much from being eaten outside, under the shade of an umbrella, when there is much new, pale green growth in the garden.
Step 2
For two of us I use a little over 4 ounces (125g) of podded beans, an equal weight of cheese, ten radishes, and three or four sprigs of parsley. I use the parsley leaves whole, adding them to the boiled and skinned beans, the cut radishes, and the thinly sliced cheese with just a splash of olive oil, the mildest I have. The coolness of the cheese, the heat of the radishes, and the buttery taste of the beans make a fresh, clean-tasting salad of utmost purity.
Step 3
The Italians, and especially the Florentines, who were known as “the bean eaters,” have some noteworthy recipes for this mild bean. In the late 1980s I ate them lightly cooked and skinned in an arugula salad, then on the same trip, in a risotto with Gorgonzola. At home, I have also used the beans in risotto with goat cheeses the texture of fudge and with the saltier blues such as Beenleigh and the majestic Stichelton.
