Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Peas and
Fava Beans
Among mankind's strongest cravings are those for sweetness and ease. That explains why
springtime cooking has always been such a paradox. To get sweetness, you have to work
for it. There is no better example than legumes.
Just sorting them all out is hard enough. The word "legume" refers specifically to plants
that carry their seeds sealed in pods. Since English peas and favas beans are so similar,
for the sake of culinary convenience, we'll lump the two together. Most people are famil-
iar with English peas, but fava beans are a relatively new addition to the American plate.
Favas are much larger than peas, both before shelling and after. In the husk, they look like
gigantic, slightly fuzzy English peas. The actual bean is flattened, looking more like a lima
bean than a round pea, and depending on its maturity, after shelling it can range in size from
about the same as a pea to as big around as a nickel.
English peas and favas appear in the same season. Both are incomparably sweet, green
and delicious - as well as exasperatingly labor-intensive. Peas need to be shucked of their
pods - a chore that, given a communal setting with friends sitting around the kitchen,
can even seem like rustic fun, like a quilting bee or something. Sylvia Thompson, in The
Kitchen Garden, noted that it takes 25 pea plants to produce 11/4 cups of shelled fresh peas
- barely a serving for a real pea fan. Fava beans are almost as bad. You have to clean 3
pounds of fava pods to get less than 2 cups of beans. Favas need to be shucked and then,
a single bean at a time, peeled of their tough skins. There's no way to put a pretty face
on it: this is more like peasant drudgery. But just when you're sitting there, elbowdeep in
bean pods, thinking there is no way you'll ever go through this again, you pop a bean in
your mouth and are rewarded with an almost lightning explosion of sweet green flavor that
somehow seems to sum up the entire beauty and promise of spring in a single burst.
That peas have come to represent spring is not just some accident of gustatory symbol-
ism. Agriculturally, they are uniquely suited to the season. In the first place, they thrive
in much cooler weather than most vegetables. English peas grow best when the temperat-
ure remains below 65 degrees. A heat spike up to 80 degrees can kill an entire field. Also,
peas mature much more quickly than most other vegetables. A pea plant must be started
