Broad Bean Pâté

It's easy enough to make a statement about giving up salt and vinegar for a few days, much harder to do it and write a food blog. I think this recipe just about fits the bill and is still worth recording.

Firstly, is it a pâté? Probably not, but paste or mash or spread sound less appealing and pâté does indicate it's something to be eaten with toasts or crackers, probably as a starter or snack.



You need some beans. These are some I've been growing in my heritage vegetable patch. They are unusual because they have crimson flowers which makes them worth saving just for the beauty of it, but also they are an older variety, hardy and prolific. The beans mature sequentially which means a more spread out harvest and we've had a great crop from them this year.



First task is to take them out of their furry cases. At this time of year they are easy to split open and extract the green seeds. Crimson flowered broad beans are also unusual in that the seeds stay green even when mature but if you have a different sort don't be surprised if they are much lighter in colour than this. My favourite broad bean actually has pinky chestnut coloured seeds but I haven't grown it this year.

Later in the year, when I will be saving fully mature beans for seeds they are often infested by earwigs which is pretty scary but we won't think about that now.

When you have your seeds, drop them into a big pan of boiling water for 3 or 4 minutes to blanch. Drain and allow to cool a little.



For this dish you'll need to pop the seeds to remove the chewy seed coat. I feel I must point out this is in no way a traditional practice in the UK where the beans are supposed to be taken young enough to eat them seed coats and all. When I first read about skinning the beans it seemed to be excessive, unnecessary and somewhat precious. If you look at the picture you can see a row of beans along the edge of the plate. Those on the left, with a black scar, will have tough seed coats (but full of valuable roughage!), on the right the skins will be tender enough to be eaten by all and should be in my opinion.

However, in the interests of texture we're going to skin all of these. It's a pleasant task provided you're not being watched by a dog who has clearly never eaten a broad bean in her life but is sure she'd like one.



Then you'll need to pick some herbs. I just went mad and picked some of everything, two types of parsley, dill, chives, mint, coriander, tarragon and basil but you could show a little more restraint. My coriander is flowering, isn't it pretty?

Make sure your herbs are really dry and your knife is really sharp. Chop the herbs finely. You need about 4 teaspoons of chopped herbs for this meal but if you chop too many there are plenty of ways to use them.

Mix your herbs with 4 tsps. lemon juice and a couple of tsps. olive oil. and mash it all together with the shelled, skinned broad beans. You can use a fork for this, no need for a processor.

I was strong and didn't add salt or pepper. It really doesn't need it but taste it and see if you need some.