Beans Means Broad
These are one of the vegetables many of us grew up grimacing at, their worst tendencies having been encouraged by traditional over-cooking, resulting in those leathery-skinned grey objects we would push around the plate hoping they'd go away.
In fact they're delicious and versatile, and also have an interesting history, being among the oldest cultivated plant species known. One of the reasons for this is that they're very easy to grow (my own sense of achievement has dropped since learning this).
Broad beans also give this blog its name; ful medames is the Middle-eastern version of the bean stew known around the ancient Mediterranean. The term "fava" more common in the USA reflects the Italian name, from the Latin faba.
The ancient Greeks called these κύαμοι (kyamoi), and their sheer ordinariness meant they were referred to or used in many settings, from politics to philosophy.
When lots were drawn in Athens to choose office-bearers, these were broad beans - the Athenian polemarchos or war-leader was the person who drew a particular dried bean from a pot. The festival of Pyanepsia, believed to have been founded by Theseus returning with few provisions after his adventures on Crete, focussed on eating broad bean stew.
One famous refuser of broad beans was the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, whose followers maintained a strict prohibition on them. Some have suggested this was because of favism, a rare disease triggered by the beans, but it was more likely because of belief about an affinity between these plants and humans; there were stories likening the beans to human sexual organs, and anxiety that they and we might somehow be mysteriously linked...
Those of us unburdened by those possibilities can emulate the more common Greek and Roman approach, and just enjoy eating them.
Purées made from the fresh or dried beans are delicious with flat breads, or as accompaniments to other foods such as roast meats. I do at least two other things with them my grandparents don't seem to have been aware of; the small fresh pods, when about the size of your finger, can be steamed or sautéed and eaten whole; and the larger beans can first be podded and then peeled after blanching, revealing a brilliant green as visually appealling as it is delicious.
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