Another Early Morning ..........

My elder daughter has been working a few extra days at what is normally her "Saturday Job" - as this is in London she has to go out early - so yet another morning I was up early to ensure breakfast was had and to drive her to the station!  I thought this was supposed to be holiday time.

Still, one benefit is that I have more hours in the day to get things done.  Today was cooking day - I decided that as we wouldn't be going to Cyprus this year I would make something that we generally get to eat when we are there, it hasn't turned out exactly as I had expected but I am hoping that by tomorrow it will be as it should be!  I'm talking about a turkish recipe called Fava .........  this is made with dried broad beans which need to be soaked overnight.

Once the beans are cooked the thick puree is moulded into a wedge shape and cut into slices and served with a dill dressing.

225g dried broad beans, soaked for at least 8 hours

2 onions - chopped

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 teaspoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

1 pint/600 ml water

juice of half a lemon

For the Dressing

2 tablespoons of olive oil

juice of half a lemon

a few sprigs of dill - chopped

salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a saucepan, soften the onions in the oil.  Stir in the sugar and salt and pour in the water and lemon juice.  Drain the beans and add to the pan.  Cook gently, uncovered, for at least 1 hour until the beans are really tender and most of the liquid has evaporated.

*This is where I made my mistake by simmering the beans and onions with the lid on when it quite clearly says to cook them uncovered - and is probably why they took a lot more than one hour to soften and actually cooked for about 4 hours!!  And still some of the beans were a little hard!  Oh dear!

Mash the beans with a fork or blend in an electric mixer - I used a hand held blender and blended in the saucepan.   Spoon the mixture on to a dish and shape into a narrow wedge. Leave for  1 - 2 hours to dry out and harden. 

*Again I didn't follow instructions and have spooned the mixture into a plastic container!  Maybe because of this the mixture hasn't yet hardened so I will have to finish this off tomorrow.  I have tasted it however and it is absolutely delicious.

This is how it looks whilst cooking.

This is how it looks in it's plastic container.

To make the dressing simply mix all the ingredients together and pour over the top.  To serve, cut the fava into slices.  You can eat it soft and serve in a bowl after mashing - it has the texture and consistency of houmous.  Lovely, lovely.