BEAN YEAR

BEAN YEAR BOX 4 Launches Tomorrow!

It will be sweet bean snack: candied chickpeas and Japanese amanatto , a different sort of candied beans. And Desert Beans: 2 trees, Carob and Mesquite, and a rarer Phaseolus, Tepary

***************

Fava – Vicia faba​

Fava beans are the original beans of Europe and the Mediterranean basin. If anyone before the 16th century mentioned beans, they meant fava. The whole family of plants we are learning about, Fabaceae, is named after Fava beans. My own ancestors in Scotland have been eating fava beans for around 5,000 years. They had developed a system of agriculture and food called “mashlum”, a mix of annual crops that all ripen around the same time are harvested together and eaten as the basis of porridges or potage. Systems like this were the beginning of transforming, for example, the gnarly grey peas mentioned above into the consistently ripening and shattering (an agricultural word for when the seed pod opens and drops the seed) yellow and green peas we grow today. 

The old song “Oats, peas, beans (meaning fava), and barley grow,. Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow,. Can you or I or anyone know. How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow? Waiting for the Farmer.”

has its roots in mashlum, as a mix that was grown together. The beans, grains, and pseudograins form synergistic relationships and resiliency. A lot of cover crop mixes still follow a similarsystem. A mix of Bean Family and Grass Family plants, Fabaceae and Poaceae, that are churned back into the soil. Similarly, Fava are so efficient at fixing nitrogen with theirfungal relationships, they are rarely fertilized. They are grown in orchards as a “chop and drop” mulch and fertilizer. 

Fava cultivation has selected for several different forms. The main one is the regular large fava that is rather flat. It can be eaten young and green, like a shelling or shelly pea, often called broadbean at this stage, or allowed to ripen and dry. What I have offered here is this type. 

One form is the bean dried, the skin removed as many people find it tough, and then split. The first time I ever had fava beans was at an Iraqi restaurant in the suburbs of Brimingham Alabama in the dish Ful Medames. If you need a recipe I’d suggest starting here. 

The other form of the flat fava I’m sending is the bean roasted as a snack. Similar to the roasted garbanzo beans from Bean Box 1. These still have the skin on them, so you can discover for yourself how tough it is. I personally eat the skin and all with little worry, but your milage may vary. The only place I’ve seen these available at retail is in tea cafes or in Chinese snacks. 

I was recently reading about a research program in Scotland that is trying to bring back what might have been historically grown or selected for there. Called a tic or tick bean, they are smaller round favas with a thin skin. They’re more like a common bean. You can find favas similar to this sold in North African or Middle eastern stores, but from what I’ve read the Scottish and North African breeding programs are working hard to improve this type. I am trying to find some for this box next year. 

Lupin – Lupini – Lupinus albus

A running theme of this box is bean family toxins. After Sweet Peas, Lupin is probably one of the most famous of these. 

These have been treated to significantly remove the toxins, which also removes a lot of bitterness. Very healthy, like allbeans, this is traditionally eaten as a bar snack in Italy and around the Mediterranean. There are efforts to breed “sweet”Lupins that don’t need advanced processing, but mostly for livestock feed. They make striking plants, and are very beautiful in the garden. 

Lupins are considered a note-worthy allergen in other parts of the world, so this is me warning you about that, if you have other bean family allergic reactions travel more cautiously here. 

In addition to bean toxins, another sub theme of this box is about continuing efforts to breed better versions of these beans, and all beans. Whether to make them easier to harvest, disease resistant, require less inputs like fertilizer or water, people all over the world are still improving their bean plants, just as we have for well over 10,000 years. However, the disconnect between breeding to growing to having available at a retail point is great. If, when?, this project grows I’d really like to find these interesting new bean crops and contract farmers to grow them so that I can offer them. There is a reluctance for the food industry to adopt new supply chains. But as climate change affects what we can grow, we will need to change what we eat. I’d like to try and get out in front of that by building this community of people who already eat delicious resilient crops. So that when more people need to join us, the ground work is already laid. And we can become the people with rivers of beans flowing through our hands. May the Bean be with you, Brian