Habas Fritas

I had the deep fat fryer out today to make a whimsy for the other blog, brightly coloured crisps from the blue and red coloured heritage potato varieties we've grown this year. And since the oil was hot, there seemed no reason not to make another snack food more popular around the Mediterranean and Middle East than Europe; crispy seasoned broad beans. This is the way to use up those fully mature broad beans where even shelling and skinning appears inadequate as a preparation for enjoyable eating.

You can, if you're lucky, find these as a ready made bagged snack from Turkey or the Lebanon. They can be bought as a tapas dish sometimes in Spain. I noticed several suppliers offering them via mail order over the internet but nobody seems to have mentioned how easy they are to make at home.

Take the biggest oldest broad bean pods for this dish and pod them. Then spend a pleasant while in the shade carefully peeling each seed to reveal the chunky cotyledons inside. Pull the two halves apart and when you have sufficient for your needs spread them out in a single layer and allow them to dry in the sun for an hour or two.

I have made this starting with dried peeled split broad beans, soaked for six hours and then laid out to dry. It works but this is better, and unless you are very fortunate you won't be able to get dried peeled split broad beans any more easily than over-mature pods. Entirely dry beans won't peel. Save these for seed for next year's snack.

Heat a pan of oil to nearly very hot. Now, I can't emphasise too much how careful you need to be near hot oil. Don't leave the room, don't overfill the pan (about a third of the depth is plenty), have a fire blanket handy and know what to do.

The heat you need should be sufficient that when you add a small cube of bread to the oil it sizzles gently and comes to the surface. Any smoke or haze turn off the heat immediately and retire to a safe distance while it cools.

I hope I haven't frightened you but I still have the scars from a fire when I was very young and I think it's important people are warned to take care.

O.k. let's continue...

Add your very dry split beans to the pan and fry for a few minutes until they rise to the surface and start to colour a little. Drain, dry on some paper towels in a warm place for few minutes, salt (or season to taste with pepper, chilli flakes etc) and serve. Alternatively you can toss the dried bean halves in a little oil and seasonings and just bake them in the oven for 20 minutes or so. I'm sure that would work but I had a hot chip pan and I wanted to use it. It's too hot for the oven at the moment and I can't spare the gas.

Now, I was a wuss, the beans foamed and frothed a good deal more than I was expecting today so I turned off the heat, let them cook a while and them removed them to a tray in a hot oven for 10 minutes to finish cooking. I don't really think that was necessary but it's been a long hard week and my confidence is low.

If you need to store them allow to cool fully and then put away in an airtight container but this is very unlikely to ever happen.

Since I ate so much fried stuff today my supper was a very simple vegetable broth, not worth photographing so lets finish up with some of those home made crisps.