Day 212: Fava Beans with Purple Onion and Mint (but really just spaghetti) and Passionfruit Sherbet
Fava beans: I’m not a fan.
I love the look of them; I’d put them out like my mom puts out Bosc pears at Christmas, like a little bouquet of beans, if I didn’t have to eat them. I’m always tempted by the robust, pregnant-looking pods at the market, probably because they remind me a little bit of Jamie Oliver, and today I gave in. (I should have known that they are too similar to Lima beans – one of my least favourite foods after black licorice, which I don’t even like other people eating.) I did a quick google for ideas and one of the first recipes that came up called for boiling the beans and then sautéing them with purple onion, which I had a wedge of in the fridge, and sprinkling with fresh mint, which is currently taking over my yard. Perfect.
I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it, but I was hopeful. I so wanted to. In the end I ate some of W’s spaghetti (so did Mike) with the onions picked out of the fava beans (also known as broad beans), which themselves landed in the compost bin.
At least now I know.
So afterward, I made passion fruit sherbet. Makes me sound like a hero, right? Not really; it required absolutely no skill beyond scraping the frozen goods off the paddle into a bowl while attempting to maneuver past my mouth.
I’ve had this package of passion fruit puree from More than Mangos sitting on my counter for at least a month – another pouch of mango puree was turned into juice a few weeks ago when there were extra kids around, but we’re really not juice drinkers around here (even W won’t touch it. I know.) So it occurred to me that it would make a really easy sorbet. As I dumped it into the ice cream machine (with 1/2 cup of sugar – that stuff is tart) I thought I’d one-up myself and pour a cup of half and half in as well to turn it from sorbet into sherbet, which differs in that it’s made with milk ingredients. The whole process took about fifteen seconds of actual work – I didn’t even combine the ingredients before pouring them in – just let the machine do it all. I then made up for what I didn’t eat at dinner with dessert.
All in all an odd dinner, but it ended well.
July 30 2008 | dessert and sweet stuff and veg and vegetarian | 7 Comments »
