Now, part of my deal with myself re: New House is that I have to be A Good Tig from now on and eat proper food every day. Now, as you all know, I love to cook, but, sometimes by the end of a week I just can't be arsed and Emergency Pizza gets used. I also can't be arsed to make a packed lunch normally and I just end up eating crap. So, I've been VIRTUOUS and set up a weekly delivery on a Monday with the lovely people at Abel and Cole for a box of vegetables. I don't really like many fruit so rather than having a box of them, I am just adding one or two items of fruit to my veg box each week. At some point during the moving-in-process, a mysterious box appeared in the hallway brimming with beetroot, sweetcorn, broad beans, magnificantly pungent spring onions, potatoes, carrots and a very handsome onion squash.
Last night, when thoroughly knackered and just wanting to eat takeaway pizza and collapse in a heap, I remembered those humongous broad beans and put the phone down and got my Le Creuset on the hob before you could say "Tig, you angel". I made a very simple salad with broad beans, tomatoes and spring onions and a very limited array of utensils. I cut the tomatoes with a Stanley knife and the onions with scissors! Mea culpa.... My excuse is that I can't unpack the kitchen until the fridge-freezer has been delivered today (it's not so much a fridge-freezer as an American "food centre" - carbon footprint be buggered!) so there.
Broad beans (Vicia faba L.) aka fava beans in the USA are something I admit I rarely eat, but I do enjoy them. I just can't normally be arsed with the hassle of peeling the little swines, so I rarely buy them. They belong to the same genus as the delightfully named bitter vetch (V. ervilia (L.) Willd.) which is something used to feed cattle in hot countries.
Broad Bean Salad
Broad beans (Vicia faba L.)
Spring onions (Allium fistulosum L.)
Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.)
Balsamic vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Liberate the broad beans from their leather-lined-with-ermine housing and throw them into boiling salted water. Bring back to the boil and cook for one minute, then remove them from the pan and plunge them into cold water. Now for the fun part - remove the sweet, soft and beautiful green beans from within the tough, bitter, white husks. When you've done this, but the green beans back into the pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain them and allow them to cool in a covered dish.
Chop the spring onions (remembering to use all of the green bits) and slice the tomatoes and arrange on a plate. Add the broad beans and drizzle with oil and vinegar and season with salt and pepper.
This is best eating sitting on a cold, hard, tiled floor whilst using one's laptop on a cardboard box makeshift desk. Wash it down with a can of warm cider.
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