Served on our homemade rye sourdough, with a tomato & black olive salsa, this been been a very popular dish of late. If you’ve a glut in your garden, try this recipe for a delicious, versatile and surprisingly substantial purée.
Ingredients
- 500g broad beans (shelled weight – you’ll need somewhere between 1.5 and 2kg of broad beans)
- Water reserved from blanching the broad beans
- 2 handfuls of fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped
- 1 handful of other mixed herbs, roughly chopped – we recommend parsley and dill
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 to 3 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
Method
- Blanche the broad beans in around 1 litre of boiling, salted water for around 3 minutes, drain, reserving the cooking water, and allow to cool for a few minutes.
- Place the broad beans in a food processor, along with the chopped herbs, garlic, olive oil, a good pinch of salt and pepper, half of the lemon juice, and around 100ml of the reserved cooking water. Blitz until you have a fairly smooth purée.
- Taste, and add more lemon and salt and pepper, according to your preference.
Tip Late in the season, you might find that your broad beans have quite thick, bitter skins, which can impair the flavour of the purée. Try eating some of the blanched broad beans, skins on, and make a call on it. You can skin a proportion of the blanched beans – around a third to half, for example. This is a little time consuming, but is worth the effort – and the colour of the purée will be even more intensely green.
Enjoy!