Organics to You has been bringing us fresh fava beans for a few weeks now and I’ve repeatedly put them into a green bag in the fridge until I figure out what to do with this new produce. Tonight I finally decided to cook up the pile of them as inspired by a recipe I found online for an Umbrian fava bean stew, Scafata. I didn’t have the ingredients exactly so I winged it quite a bit (so no exact recipe, just technique follows).

The result was very tasty! Here’s a rough outline of what I used and did:

Roughly 3 pounds of unshelled, fresh Favas were used in the dish. I combined them with a small onion, 3 cloves of garlic, a small bunch of green garlic spears, a bulb of fennel, and 2 large stalks of celery. The onion was sauteed in olive oil along with the bulb garlic, then the celery, fennel, green garlic and the shelled beans. Once they all got going nicely and the fennel was softened a little I layered the chopped kale on top then topped it with a lid.

Once the kale began to wilt a little I added some thinly sliced, fresh sage and basil. I tossed everything together carefully to get the kale and herbs down into the rest of the veggies, then covered again. I added a splash of Vinho Verde we had on hand since it seemed like a little more moisture would help and covered again.

After the kale had fully softened I added some dried dill and marjoram (didn’t have fresh, seems like thyme would be nice too) as well as salt and pepper. At this time I diced up 3 tomatoes and tossed them in. Given that the original recipe comes for Italy I decided to add some champagne vinegar as well as some balsamic & fig vinegar.

Simmer on low until the outside of the beans was tender – total cooking time was a little over an hour since it takes a while for the skins of the fresh favas to get tender. I served this with some garlic/pepper tempeh braised with balsamic vinegar.

Totally delicious and I’ll certainly make again!

Saturday saw us out in Parkdale with friends to check out the heirloom apple/pear/Asian pear tasting day at Kiyokawa Family Orchards. A fave from last autumn, we wanted to take our friends to enjoy tasting the many varieties they grow there as well as pick a bunch to make applesauce. Turned out the apples had all been picked, but we still had a great time trying many varieties we’d never heard of before. 31 pounds of fruit later (that’s just us), we were loaded up and off to our next stop.

Rasmussen Farms saw us leave with several fun gourds, a couple of pounds each of fresh, local walnuts & hazelnuts, ornamental corn, and 2 smallish Hubbard squash. Yes, I know we have a bunch of these in the basement, but these are the blue type we didn’t grow. Oh yes, and pumpkins. There are 7 of them on our front steps. 6 of them Christie and I picked out. What can I say, we were having fun.

Into this collection of squash and apples arrived our first box from Organics to You. I offered to take it from the deliver guy, but he then offered to put inside for me because, “its heavy”.

I ripped off the tape and opened the box to see a lovely bunch of red kale, some baby bok choy, radishes, chioggia beets, chunky carrots, onions, garlic, a huge head of broccoli, a head of purple cabbage bigger than my head (seriously), 2 big leeks, a half pint of kiwi berries and more fruit. 4 more apples, 3 more Asian pears and 3 red Bartlett pears. Uh yeah.

One good sized box of produce and a fridge already filled to the brim with mostly apples…

Yep, time to make the apple sauce. I chopped up 8 quarts of mixed varieties of apples and a few pears that needed to be used. Cooked until we had a chunky sauce and added the zest & juice from a medium sized Meyer lemon. That’s it. Nothing else needed for that much deliciousness. I’m waiting on the water in the canner to boil, 20 minutes in the bath then we have lovely applesauce for the rest of the year and to go into the little gift baskets we’re planning to do this winter for people.

That helped some. While the apples were doing the cooking thing I threw some Great Northern beans into the pressure cooker. Drained them when done and cleaned out the cooker to make soup. Into the pot I sauteed a bunch of garlic and most of the leeks, celery & Russet potatoes were added. Water, salt, pepper, and a sprig of fresh rosemary in the covered cooker, on high pressure for 8 minutes. Release valve, add in half the red kale that was delivered today along with half the white beans. Simmer with salt, some nutritional yeast, and more pepper. Serve with croutons. Yum!

The other half of the beans, more garlic and the remaining leeks have been stewed together with a little rosemary sprig, olive oil, tarragon, and some diced celery. This gives a lot more flavor to the Great Northern beans, which are not Christie’s favorite. These have been set aside for later this week when I’m going to revisit the whole squash/polenta baked casserole, but with the white beans and some fresh basil pesto.

By this evening’s end there will be lots of applesauce in jars, soup in the fridge, and some progress made towards Wednesday or Saturday’s dinners. I’ve had some ideas about the cabbage and how to use up all the produce that’s coming along with what we had already here. Right now I’m really enjoying the challenge of making food for us primarily based on what is brought each week.

I’ve decided just to write about cooking rather than always wait until I have a recipe “just right” to post. It will help me recreate delicious things so I can put together a recipe later. These posts will be noted “Food Porn” to show that there’s no recipe and have the tag FoodPorn as well, just my going on about something delicious.

Onto the food porn.

Best. Tempeh. Ever. Seriously.

We had in the house pounds of string beans from the garden and Christie asked for tempeh tonight. I stood around in the kitchen for a few minutes before deciding to make a stir-fry. Made up a marinade of ginger, garlic, tamari, red miso, agave, peanut oil, canola oil, hot chili oil, and water all whisked up together. Diced tempeh went into this yummy mix.

Pulled the the tempeh out of the marinade and set it aside. The tempeh then went into a rather hot wok with some canola oil. Kept tossing it and frying with a lid on until the tempeh was browned. Then I added in a little bit of the marinade to coat the cubes further.

Some sweet onion, a carrot and a little red bell pepper for color were cut up small. All were stir fried with a pile of the green & yellow beans chopped up. After they cooked until the beans started to soften I added in most of the marinade. After the beans were cooked all the way I added the tempeh into the pan and tossed everything together.

Cooked up some rice noodles, vermicelli, which were the weakest part. Tasty, but not great. I’m really going for more of a Vietnamese bun. The noodles were a fine, just not as great as the stir-fry. Added some shredded, Farmers Market lettuce and sliced up cucumbers from the garden.

Yes, I will admit to nearly dancing in glee in the kitchen as this came together. We sat out on the deck in the breeze to enjoy. It was a lot of fun sitting a few feet from the golden string beans growing up the south side of the deck as we ate them for dinner.

Will have to try this whole thing out again with the “right” noodles as well as some cilantro, lime to squeeze over the top and mung bean sprouts. Those things would be a really nice addition to all the flavors. Christie also noted it would be great to have the cucumbers in a little rice vinegar as well. A recipe will be forthcoming on this and really, pictures soon.