Broad beans are back – long, green fingers with the odd black nail. And so are the warning signs, for those who suffer favism (a rare but acute haemolytic syndrome), as well as for those, such as my neighbour, who think that fave are an abomination. For fans, the first young beans are good raw, with pecorino or cheddar. In Lazio and central Italy, scafa is dialect for a broad bean pod, and scafare the verb for removing the beans from their pods; therefore, scafata is a dish involving podded beans. As you might expect from a dish shared by different regions, scafata has as many variations as cooks that make it, but, broadly speaking, it can be described as somewhere between a brothy stew and a dense soup involving broad beans and other spring vegetables, such as chard, onions, potatoes and artichokes.
The cooking method is what I think of as a steamy braise, which is also a possible chapter title for an as-yet-unwritten detective story. One steamy braise might start with a letter containing a feather and a ring. The other – this one – starts by cooking vegetables in a generous amount of olive oil. Once they are just starting to soften, liquid is added and the pan half covered, allowing the vegetables to soften further in both the liquid and steam, which (having done its job) evaporates, leaving behind a vegetable liquor and an olive oil broth.
