Baby Broad Beans

Delicious!!

One of the cool things about growing your own food is deciding at what stage you want to eat it.Could you walk into the supermarket and buy baby broad beans? not a hope, and if you're shopping in Limerick forget broad beans altogether, apart from an unusual Green grocers in Newcastle West nobody else I know has them for sale.

Granted broad beans are not exactly the sexiest veg known to man(or woman) but they are extremely good. I like them at all stages, small young and green with a soft sweetness, fully grown up and mature with a pleasant mushy peas texture, and at all the stages in between.Still, I somehow find it hard to convince other people to try growing and eating them. Why is that?

Picking broad bean pods, just twist them off the main stem

The first lot of Oldambaster are podding up nicely and I picked them the other day, more out of impatience than anything else, dying for something fresh in the pea and bean department to go with lamb chops and our own new potatoes. They were small, bright green and incredibly soft. Seamus shocked me by deciding he was totally enamoured with them, and commanding that henceforth no mature broad beans shall cross the kitchen floor en-route to the pot.Quite a turnaround for someone who just about put up with them up to now.

For those of you trying out broad beans and hey! other pea and bean family members for the first time pick them young&tender not starchy and mature and you may convince your picky family members to like them too.