Sopa de Vagens de Fava

Portuguese Broad Bean Pod Soup

Do I need to go on about how much food is wasted these days? And how the frugal recipes of the past are disappearing as people buy precut vegetables, fish without heads, presliced bread…

I can almost understand why those who can’t be bothered to cook and instead order sushi to their door or eat burgers on street corners would consider a soup made with the pods of broad beans a step down from their glamourous copycat diets. First thing they could ask: you can eat the pod? Second: Don’t you throw them away?

Fast food is the furthest you can possibly be from peasant food. It has no respect for seasonality or history. Someone may have made that fried chicken you like or the smash burger but those people (chefs?) could be replaced by robots. They are,in a way, robots. It’s the same food, day in, day out. At a market you can smell fresh ingredients, they do not come in plastic or branded bags. A farmer picked the fruit and vegetables, a fisherman dropped off the catch, a butcher was there to break down the carcass.

I read this recipe in a book by the Portuguese author Maria de Lourdes Modesto and if you have an interest in recipes and history this book (Traditional Portuguese Cooking) is one I would recommend. It took me a while to get to it but I’m nearly finished reading Claudia Rodens The Book of Jewish Food, reading and cooking from these books is satisfying and educational. Also cookbooks written and researched this way are as far removed from the cookbooks of today as can be. It’s the difference between making this soup and ordering deliveroo sushi.

The Recipe

200g broad bean pods (keep the broad beans for a salad)

1 potato

1 onion

1 or 2 cloves of garlic

1 big tbsp olive oil

Salt

A handful of chopped mint or coriander

Peel and chop the potato into chunks and cover with litre of water. Add a big pinch of salt, the olive oil, the chopped onion, and the garlic. Bring to a simmer. Remove the string from the pods and then chop into small pieces. When the potato is cooked, either put the contents of the pan in a blender or a mouli legume and then back on the heat. Add the pods and another pinch of salt and water if it needs and cook at a simmer for twenty minutes. Blend or use the mouli again or just eat as it is.

This soup is good hot or cold and if you have more pods then the recipe you can scale the recipe up and make a bigger batch.

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