What to do with hoary old broad beans

A recipe for byessar

I sowed broad beans (Claudia Aquadulce to be precise) in the polytunnel in February and have just pulled them and harvested the last of their bounty. When they were in bloom – they have striking white and black flowers – the tunnel was filled with their fabulous scent, vaguely reminiscent of hyacinths.

The very first of them, almost embryonic to be honest, were dipped in very good olive oil – ours is Al’ard from Palestine – and flakes of sea salt and nibbled with chilled, bone dry fino sherry in late Spring. But the final pick was a different proposition and very mature indeed. I was reminded of a recipe from Elisabeth Luard’s Saffron & Sunshine, published a quarter of a century ago. This is for a Moroccan dish called byessar, usually made with the kind of dried broad beans that go into falafel but much better and quite different if you use mature fresh beans. If you pick very ripe and notice a black mark on the bean where it had been attached to the pod instead of the usual green or white, you will know that they are gone over and turned starchy. This is what you want for Elisabeth’s version of byessar. “As befits the sophisticated French-influenced cuisine of Morrocco, this is flavoured with marjoram and finished with spring onions”, she writes.

I departed somewhat from her recipe and added some finely chopped preserved lemon and what I thought was some ras-el-hanout but turned out to be za’atar.

Take about 350g of podded broad beans and cook in water for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool, drain and keep some of the cooking water. Then pop each bright green bean out of its leathery grey overcoat into a food processor. Whizz with enough of the cooking water and the juice of half a big lemon to make a smooth purée then added 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic, a teaspoon of finely chopped fresh marjoram or thyme leaves, one of ground cumin and a seasoning of salt and black pepper.

Drizzle in 100 to 150ml extra virgin olive oil (Elisabeth says “the greener the better) “as if you are making mayonnaise”. Then adjust the seasoning – you may want more lemon – and stir in a couple of spring onions finely sliced, green and white parts together. Serve it with warm pitta breads for scooping or, very inauthentically – with tortilla chips.