Favas on Santorini

Fava on the Greek volcanic island of Santorini is made from the Lathyrus clymenum, a local variety of yellow pea. It should not be confused with what we know as fava beans. Remember, in Latin fava simply means '(any) bean'

According to archaeological finds from the Bronze Age city of Akrotiri, the fava plant has grown consistently and exclusively on the island for more than 3,500 years. In clay pots, unearthed during excavations at the prehistoric settlement of Akrotiri, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption sometime between 1570 and 1525 BC, were found to contain residues of fava, whose genetic material was identical to the fava cultivated today at Santorini.

For more than 3,500 years residents of Santorini and some neighbouring islands have been cultivating the legume. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean it is only known as a wild plant.

The peculiar ecosystem that was created by the volcanic eruptions of Santorini, the volcanic ash, the cellular soil, and the combination of humidity created by the sea and the drought, make the bean a unique resource. When weather conditions are favourable farmers on the island can reap about 800 kilos of beans per hectare. Today, about 200 growers cultivate favas on the island. The low yield per hectare, but also the labour-intensive method of threshing as well as the processing and conservation, elevate its costs.

The peas are processed according to traditional methods: ground with stone mills, matured in kanaves (the island's typical underground storerooms, cut into the volcanic rock), and dried in the hot Aegean sun, resulting in a highly distinctive flavour.

It is a vulnerable crop and it can easily be damaged by strong winds that might blow away its delicate flowers before they can yield the pea, by prolonged drought or by a sudden heat wave.

The Santorini fava is known for its velvet texture and sweet, earthy taste. The peas are used to prepare a Greek dish called fava santorinis that is traditionally eaten warm, as an appetizer or as a puree accompanying a main course of meat or fish.

Bunyard's Exhibition

Bunyard's Exhibition is a tall (up to 150 centimeters high), heavy-cropping long-pod variety fava bean with up to eight pale-green beans in each pod, which have a good sweet flavour. The yields are excellent and the taste is always highly rated. The flowers are pure white with purple markings. Because the plants grow taller than most other varieties they may need staking in exposed areas.

Sow Bunyard's Exhibition seeds under cover in the last last week of February and plant them out in the last week of March. If you are sowing the seeds directly outside, the best time is the last week of March. 

Bunyard's Exhibition is an rather old variety fava bean, which appeared around the 1890s. However, there is still a great deal of mystery about its origins, but it may be an 'improved' version of an even older variety called Johnson's Wonderful, which itself dates back to the 1830s.

Bunyard's was one of the leading Victorian fruit nurseries, based at Allington, near Maidstone in Kent. Founded in 1796, it became famous especially for its apples, including such favourites as the Christmas Pearmain.

The end was sad. Edward Bunyard (1878–1939), who inherited the family firm in the late nineteenth century, became a noted gourmet, but his love of wine, fruit and roses – which he wrote enthusiastically about in a series of books – drew him away from business and increasingly into debt. On 19 October 1939, on the brink of bankruptcy he ended his own life in his rooms at the Royal Societies Club in London.

Bunyard's Exhibition seeds are widely available online.

Bissara (or Fava Bean Soup)

Bissara is a is soup made from dried and puréed fava beans as its main ingredient. Bissara is a dish in the Egyptian and Moroccan cuisine. Additional ingredients include garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, hot red pepper, cumin, and salt. In Egypt, bissara also includes herbs or leafy greens, particularly parsley, mint, dill, spinach and or mulukhiyah (otherwise known as Jews mallow), though the latter is more commonly added by Egyptian expatriates in Palestine. The Egyptians also add hot peppers, lemon juice and occasionally onion.

In Egypt, bissara is eaten exclusively as a dip for bread and is served for breakfast as a meze, or more rarely, for lunch or dinner. Egyptian bissara includes herbs or leafy greens. It is traditionally a rural farmer's dish, though it has recently become more popular in urban Egypt, because it is healthier than its urban counterpart, ful medames. Modern Egyptians tend to take more care of their waistline.

In Morocco, bissara is typically served in shallow bowls or soup plates and topped with olive oil, paprika, and cumin. Lemon juice is sometimes added as a topping. Bread is sometimes eaten dipped into the dish. In Marrakesh (Morocco), bissara is popular during the colder months of the year, and can be bought in town squares and various alleyways

Depending on the availability of fava beans, bissara is sometimes prepared using split peas or even chickpeas. The version made with split peas is akin to the Dutch snert.

Bissara is also known as bessara and besarah (Arabic بصارة). This apparent confusion is understandable, because in Arabic vowels do not appear in writing.

The dish originated in Pharaonic Egypt, some 4,000 years ago. It was known to the Ancient Egyptians as fouleya, and was made with fresh, rather than dried, beans. Fouleya was also called bees-oro (بيصارو), meaning 'cooked beans'. This later term is the source of the modern name.

[Recipe] Bissara

Ingredients:
- 1 kilo small fava beans
- enough water to rise about 5 centimeters above the beans
- 4 thinly sliced cloves of garlic
- 4 teaspoons of cumin (or more)
- 1 teaspoon of red pepper (or more)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, more for garnish
- 1 tablespoon of salt

Directions:
- Rinse the fava beans three times with water (or until the water is clear)
- Add water to the fava beans. Bring to the boil.
- Add garlic, cumin, red pepper and olive oil
- Lower heat. Place vented lid on pot. Cook for another 30 minutes.
- As the water cooks off, add more water so that it just covers the beans. Replace vented lid on the pot and increase heat slightly.
- When beans have softened, the soup is ready for blending and salt. (If salt is added before this point, the soup will stick.) Lower heat to simmer.
- Blend until silky smooth.
- Sprinkle some olive oil, cumin and red pepper on top.

Fava Beans and Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive disorder that affects nerve cells in the brain responsible for body movement. When dopamine-producing neurons die, symptoms such as tremor, slowness, stiffness, and balance problems occur. Its symptoms start gradually, sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand.

In the early stages of Parkinson's disease, your face may show little or no expression, your arms may not swing when you walk and your speech may become soft or slurred. Parkinson's disease symptoms worsen as your condition progresses over time.

Although Parkinson's disease can't be cured, medications, such as Sinemet, Madopar, Dopar, Larodopa and others that contain L-dopa (levodopa), the precursor of dopamine, might significantly improve symptoms.

Fava beans (Vicia faba) contain naturally occurring L-dopa (levodopa)[1]. Yes, because it's made by nature, the levels of L-dopa can vary greatly per plant, depending on the species of fava bean, climatological conditions, soil conditions, harvest time and other factors.

It appears that the young pod and the immature beans inside the pod contain the greatest amount of L-dopa, and the mature, or dried bean, the least. A 100 grams of fresh green fava beans may contain about 50-100 mg of L-dopa. If using the young pod as well as the beans, the amount of L-dopa may be greater than that in the fresh beans alone.

Some small studies have shown that the L-dopa in fava beans may help control the symptoms of early stages of Parkinson's Disease and may delay the moment you really start thinking about taking medication to counter the effects of this progressing disease[2][3][4].

The obvious problem, however, is that you never know exactly how much L-dopa hides in the fava beans, so you can never be sure if you eat enough to treat the symptoms.

[1] Mohseni Mehran, Golshani: Simultaneous Determination of Levodopa and Carbidopa from Fava Bean, Green Peas and Green Beans by High Performance Liquid Gas Chromatography in Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Review – 2013. See here.
[2] Liu et al: Effects of L-DOPA treatment on methylation in mouse brain: implications for the side effects of L-DOPA in Life Sciences – 2000
[3] Rabey et al: Improvement of Parkinsonian features correlate with high plasma levodopa values after broad bean (Vicia faba) consumption in Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry – 1992
[4] Apaydin: Broad bean (Vicia faba) – A natural source of L-DOPA-prolongs ‘on’ periods in patients with Parkinson’s disease who have ‘on–off’ fluctuations in Movement Disorders - 2000

Purple vetch

The purple vetch (Vicia benghalensis) is native to southern Europe, North Africa, and nearby islands, and it is utilized elsewhere in agriculture and may be present in the wild as an introduced species.

Purple vetch is an annual herb with a climbing stem which is coated in hairs, often densely, making the plant appear silvery white. It may reach a hight of 60 centimeters. Each leaf is made up of several pairs of elongated leaflets which measure up to three centimeters in length. The inflorescence is a one-side raceme of several dark reddish purple flowers. Each flower has a densely haired calyx of sepals and a tubular corolla between one and two centimeters in length. The fruit is a flat, hairy legume pod up to 3.5 centimeters long containing multiple seeds.

This plant is used as a cover crop and green manure for the purposes of soil improvement and weed and pest control. In fact, it is one of the best green manuring species for rice fieds in the USA. It is a soil improver and makes a good weed and disease break between cash crops. It is used in crop rotation, for hay and fodder, and as a honey plant, and it has a very high biomass yield.

The seeds and forage of purple vetch have been reported to cause poisoning in humans and in livestock (with a fatalilty rate of up to 69%), so caution is required when feeding them[1]. The purple vetch hides canavanine in its seeds. Canavanine is a toxic analogue of the amino acid arginine. In the purple vetch canavanine is a defensive compound against herbivores and a vital source of nitrogen for the growing embryo.

[1] Harper et al: Vetch toxicosis in cattle grazing Vicia villosa ssp dasycarpa and V benghalensis in Australian Veterinary Journal - 1993

Never peel fava beans

If you're following those seemingly endless number of cooking shows on television, you might start to think that all those Michelin-starred chefs know a thing or two about cooking. One of the things they want you to learn is to peel fava beans. Yes, you too, Martha Stewart.

It's a lot of work, removing the outer tender skin of each and every individual bean. Where does this weird practice come from? Some suspect from the French professional kitchens, where chefs are constantly challenged to come up with new tricks and trucs to keep their large brigades de cuisine in operation.

To be honest, it's a waste of time and flavour.

In Greece, Italy and Spain, where restaurant kitchens are run much more traditionally, there is no impetus to change anything that has been honed to perfection for thousands of years.

Because, by removing the skin of each bean, you also remove much of that very earthy flavour that makes these broad beans so tasteful. Without the skin fava beans taste more like peas than like fava beans.

So, never peel fava beans.

Bitter Vetch (or Ervil)

Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia), also known as ervil, is a legume that belong to the same genus as the fava bean (Vicia faba). It produces pods, each containing four seeds shaped like a grape seed and about the size of a grapefruit pip, that ripen in the late summer. The plant is endemic in areas that encompass Anatolia and northern Iraq, with an extension south along the Anti-Lebanon Mountains of Syria and Lebanon.

Traces of the earliest domesticated instances were recovered from several archaeological sites in Turkey, which have an uncorrected radiocarbon dating of the 7th and 6th millennia BC[1]. The first 'tamed' bitter vetches in Europe were discovered in Hissar, southeast Serbia and dated to 1,350–1,000 BC.

[Bitter vetch beans - Image courtesy of flora.org.il]

Bitter vetch is nowadays primarily used as fodder, but in prehistoric times the beans were also consumed by humans. These days, the beans are occasionally eaten in soups.

The plant is still considered toxic for humans, but it has been almost continuously selected for lower levels of the toxic amino acid canavanine during the last 10,000 years. Compared to other Vicia species the canavanine levels are low.

Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) states in his 'Naturalis Historia' (Book XVIII, Chapter 38) that the fitch (bitter vetch) has medicinal value like vetch (broad bean), citing the letters of Emperor Augustus where the emperor wrote that he regained his health from a diet of bitter vetch.

If you are wondering where the words 'vetch' and 'ervil' originated, the answer is somewhat surprising. Vetch stems from the same root as the genus it belongs to: Vicia. Ervil is reminiscent of Dutch 'erwt and German 'erbst' and ultimately derives from the Greek word orobus ('fava bean'). Remember that a 'v' is often pronounced as a 'b'.

[1] Zohary, Hopf, Weiss, Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Domesticated Plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin, 4th edition - 2012

First Extraction of Ancient DNA from Pea and Bitter Vetch

Ancient DNA (aDNA) is any DNA extracted from ancient specimens. The study of aDNA enables us to comprehend biological and genetic changes over time, which provides us with direct insight into past genetic variation. The study of aDNA is crucial for the understanding of (the history of) agriculture or even liguistics. The study spawned a novel discipline called paleogenetics.

[Charred seed of pea (left) and bitter vetch (right)]

Legumes or pulses, such as chickpea (Cicer arietinum), lentil (Lens culinaris), pea (Pisum sativum) or bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia), a close relative of the fava bean (Vicia faba), are among the first domesticated plant species[1]. They were already consumed around 10,000 BC by Paleolithic hunter-gatherers[2].

The first extraction of legume aDNA was done from charred seeds of pea (Pisum sativum) and bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) from Hissar, southeast Serbia, dated to 1,350–1,000 BC[3]. Hissar belonged to the Early Iron Age cultural group of Brnjica and most likely was the northernmost point of then Hellenic-based civilisation, dated back to between 1,350 BC and 1,000 BC.

These charred seeds were carefully chosen for analysis, avoiding any possibility of contamination with the DNA of modern pea or related genera, and their DNA was extracted from bulk, due to their age, a considerable degree of physical damages and assumingly low amount of the preserved DNA.

Analyses of the aDNA suggests that the Hissar pea most likely was an early domesticated pea, possibly the recently rediscovered so-called ‘tall’ pea (Pisum sativum elatius), found on the slopes of the Mount Kozjak, smome 150 kilometers from Hissar.

The peas and bitter vetches from Hissar were probably first collected by the inhabitants of Hissar or their unknown predecessors in the surrounding wild flora and then gradually cultivated. The Hissar pea could have had coloured flowers, pigmented seed coats and probably adapted to germinating in the autumn and being winter hardy[4].

[1] Tanno, Willcox: The origins of cultivation of Cicer arietinum L. and Vicia faba L: early finds from Tell el-Kerkh, north-west Syria, late 10th millennium BP in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany – 2006
[2] Aura et al: Plant economy of hunter-gatherer groups at the end of the last Ice age: plant macroremains from the cave of Santa Maira (Alacant, Spain) CA. 12000–9000 BC. in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany – 2005
[3] Medović et al: An archaeobotanical and molecular fairy tale about the early Iron Age Balkan princess and the charred pea in Pisum Genetics – 2010
[4] Smýkal et al: Molecular analysis of ancient DNA isolated from charred pea (Pisum sativum) seeds found at an early Iron Age settlement in southeast Serbia in Legume Perspectives – 2014. See here.

Fava bean tops as a leafy green

If you happen to live in a region when nothing much grows, like the very dry parts of southern Europe, you have to be creative. If not you might end up hungry.

Fava beans (Vicia faba) are widely cultivated for their immature inflorescences, fruits and seeds. Howevers, in some areas of Puglia (Southern Italy), other parts of these species are traditionally used as vegetables, instead of being considered as by-products. The culinary use of these products in Puglia, like several wild edible plants, has ancient origins and is the result of food scarcity and poverty of the ancestors in the past[1].

About 5 to 10 centimeters of the top of the fava bean plant is harvested as leafy greens. The Italian term for this vegetable is cime di fava ('fava tops'). Fava greens can be eaten raw, for example in salads (insalata di cime di fava) or cooked like spinach to be used in pasta dishes (pasta con cime di fava) or into quiches and omelets

As the fava greens have a relatively low content of nitrate, they could be recommended as a substitute of nitrate-rich leafy vegetables.

Researchers now consider fava greens to have a good potential as novel foods[2].

[1] Bianco, Santamaria P., Elia A: Nutritional value and nitrate content in edible wild species used in southern Italy in Acta Hortic – 1998
[2] Renna et al: Faba Greens, Globe Artichoke’s Offshoots, Crenate Broomrape and Summer Squash Greens: Unconventional Vegetables of Puglia (Southern Italy) With Good Quality Traits in Frontiers of Plant Science – 2018. See here.

Fava beans and dust storms

The 1930s are also known as the 'Dirty Thirties'. It was a period of severe drought that hit the ecology and economy of the American and Canadian Midwest hard. Then, in the mid-1980s, the area was again crippled by drought. "Everybody lost half of their net worth or more," Richard Roland of Crosby (North Dakota, USA) says.

Prompted by the 1980s downturn, Roland wondered what he could do about the fallow-cropping regimen. Normally a farmer would allow his (or her) fields to recuperate after successive planting, growing and reaping by leaving it empty. But empty fields in a continued dry period also feed the feared dust storms.

Roland realised that certain species of plants could be propagated in the fallow fields with minimal input and they had added benefits of replenishing nutrients in the soil. Those are so-called fallow crops, and legumes are some of the favorite types used. He then created Legume Logic in 1991, which played a role in developing field peas for North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota.

"We later found out that field peas were grown in the Yellowstone River Valley and the Red River Valley in the 1940s," he says. "So you could say we reintroduced field peas to the Northern Plains."

But i has been raining in Crosby a lot lately and peas don’t like wet feet. It stops their air flow and they need air to fix nitrogen. Fava beans, on the other hand, handle the water better and they don’t get the root diseases peas do. "They are higher nitrogen fixers than peas," Roland says. "They fix nitrogen through the flowering period. They’re deeper-rooted so they take moisture longer."

Legume Logic should have enough to supply 6,000 to 8,000 acres for commercial growers in 2016. Which also means that dust storms can be thwarted. A bit.

Let's hope that Red River Commodities is also considering processing (more) fava beans. The more the merrier.

Fava beans, broomrapes and radiation

Broomrapes (Orobanche spp.) belong to a genus of over 200 species of parasitic herbaceous plants. As they have no chlorophyll, they are totally dependent on other plants for their nutrients. As a result, they can produce serious damage to many legume crops and particularly becomes a limiting factor for the production of faba beans in the Mediterranean basin.

[Orobanche foetida (Chris B@rlow)]

Several traditional methods of pest control have been tried and tested, but none has been proven to be really effective against this parasitic plant. Research has mostly focused on breeding resistance into fava beans, but the resistance mechanisms governing the interaction between the parasite and the host are not yet well understood[1].

So, scientists thought, suppose we try to create new mutants through radiation mutagenesis[2]. Three faba bean genotypes were used in this study, the variety 'Badï' (characterized by high productivity in Orobanche-free soils and susceptibility to Orobanche foetida) and two mutant lines P2M3 and P7M3 (derived via radiation mutagenesis) were selected for field evaluations because of their higher resistance to Orobanche foetida.

The field experiments showed that low induction of seed germination is a major component of resistance in these lines against broomrapes. This was confirmed by in vitro experiments with root exudates. Also, reduction in infection was accompanied by the continuously enhancement of the peroxidase activity, the polyphenol oxidase activity and the phenylalanine ammonia lyase activity in faba bean roots.

The data suggests that these enzymes play a role in faba bean resistance to Orobanche foetida. Management of Orobanche by way of crop selection based on these enzyme systems is a possible option.

[1] Rubiales et al: Characterization of Resistance Mechanisms in Faba Bean (Vicia faba) against Broomrape Species (Orobanche and Phelipanche spp.) in Frontiers in Plant Science - 2016
[2] Mejri et al: Orobanche foetida resistance in two new faba bean genotypes produced by radiation mutagenesis in International Journal of Radiation Biology – 2018

Switch to plant-based protein could help fight climate change and hunger

Agriculture – both victim and cause of climate change. New research shows moving away from animal protein towards legumes makes sense nutritionally and environmentally.

[Mediterranean dish: fava beans, peas, Feta, mint]

Agriculture is often thought of as being at the mercy of climate change, with increasing droughts and flooding resulting in lower yields, especially across the developing world. Yet the agricultural sector also contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, itself exacerbating climate change. In fact, recently agriculture was identified as the second biggest emitter globally, producing around 10-13% of emissions. A substantial amount of these emissions comes from livestock farming with the production of methane.

Scientists have now found evidence that switching diets towards plants as sources of protein as opposed to meat, is much more sustainable. In a study, researchers scored legumes, such as beans and peas, by their environmental cost of production (including greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater pollution and land use), as well as according to their nutrient content.

[Figure: The Global Warming Potential of protein production pathways in terms of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere. Data for farm to farm-gate production pathways collated from 123 peer-reviewed life cycle analyses]  

The results clearly showed that plant protein sources (legumes) had the lowest environmental production cost, while at the same time demonstrating the highest density of nutrients. Professor Mike Williams said, "Peas have a nutrient density to environmental footprint ratio approximately five times higher than equivalent amounts of lamb, pork, beef or chicken."

Source.

Aquafaba

The word 'aquafaba' was invented by someone who clearly wanted to be interesting, but failed miserably. In Latin the word means 'bean water' and it is the name for the murky liquid which remains if legumes are cooked.

The cooking fluid of legumes such as fava beans (or broad beans), kidney beans and peas consists of carbohydrates (starches, sugars and fibers), proteins and other dissolved vegetable matter that have been transferred from the legumes to the water during the cooking process.

But the liquid contains mainly starch (amylose and amylopectin) and it has the same properties as protein. As a result, aquafaba can be used as a vegetarian substitute for the protein in eggs. Even ice cream, mayonnaise, meringues and marshmallows can be perfectly prepared with it.

In a recipe you simply replace the protein of one egg with 30 milliliters (two tablespoons) of aquafaba. You can replace a whole egg with 45 milliliters (three tablespoons).

Now you would be tempted to think that an ingredient that bears a Latin name to be centuries old, but you would be wrong. The reality is: it was only made up in 2014 by the French chef Joël Roessel.

His idea was picked up on social media and in March 2015 a recipe for an egg-free merengue was published on a vegetarian Facebook page with only two ingredients: the cooking fluid of beans and sugar.

From haba de Sevilla to Aquadulce

Broad beans (Vicia faba) are called habas in Spanish. They are widely cultivated in Spain. Culinary uses vary among regions, but they are used as the main pulse in stews (fabada, habas estofadas, michirones) or as an addition to other dishes (menestra, paella). In certain regions they can be eaten while unripe or fried and packaged as a snack.

One of the varieties in Spain that can trace its origin back to the late Middle Ages is the haba de Sevilla, also called the haba de Tarragona. It is a megalosperma (maior), which means that it has larger beans than some of its relatives.

An offspring of the haba de Sevilla is the Aquadulce Claudia. This cultivar was introduced commercially in the middle of the nineteenth century and was illustrated in the seed catelogue of the French company Album Vilmorin in 1871.

The Aquadulce Claudia is a broad bean that is recognised as the best variety for an autumn sowing. This variety will produce hardy young plants, strong enough to withstand the winter frosts and ready to grow away quickly as soon as warmer spring days arrive. The plant will eventually become about a meter tall with pods that can be longer than 15 centimeters. There are usually four or five seeds per pod. The dry seed is flat and somewhat honey-colored.

Individually, the plants are not highly productive, but a large plot of perhaps two hundred plants would amply supply a household.

I'm not sure why one would call a broad bean Aquadulce, which obviously means 'sweet water' in Latin. Maybe some of my readers will hazard an answer.

Fūl medames: a dish with fava beans

Fūl medames is a popular dish in the entire Middle East. It consists of cooked fava beans, served with vegetable oil and a bit of cumin. Depending on the local recipe cooks add chopped parsley, garlic, onion, lemon juice, chili pepper and other vegetables, herbs and spices. Fūl medames is a staple food in Egypt, especially in the northern cities of Cairo and Gizah. However, the dish is also a common feature of other Middle Eastern and African cuisines, such as Israel, Labanon, Palestina, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia.

The first part of Fūl medames, ‏fūl, means 'bean' in Arabic. It is cognate with Hebrew pul ('bean'). The second part is generally considered a Coptic word meaning 'buried', from Coptic tōms, 'to bury'.  Ian D. Morris, historian of early Muslim societies, and I would venture another meaning: medames looks like a version of dims, meaning 'ashes' in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, in the sense that the beans would be 'cooked in a pot buried in ashes'.

Fūl is prepared from the small, round bean known in Egypt as fūl ḥammām ('bath beans'). The name reflects the Medieval custom, that the making of fūl in Cairo was monopolized by the people living around a public bath. During the day, bath-attendants stoked the fires heating the qidras (qdr is 'pot' in Arabic), huge pots of bath water. When the baths closed, the red embers of the fires continued to burn. To take advantage of these precious fires, the qidras were filled with fava beans, and these cauldrons were kept simmering all night, in order to provide breakfast for Cairo's population.

It has been suggested that ful medames was already prepared in ancient Egypt, because 'ful' was discovered to be written in hieroglyphs. A hieroglyph of 'ful' ('bean') is not proof that the entire dish was prepared in ancient Egypt. Besides, ful once simply meant 'bean' and could also suggest chickpeas. The history of fava beans is far more ancient than, say, around 2700 BC, the start of the Old Kingdom in Egypt.

Valentina Caracuta, an archaeobotanist, found traces of wild fava beans, growing on Mount Carmel (Israel), some 14,000 years ago[1]. Which means that Israel beat Egypt by ten millennia.

This cooking method is even mentioned in the Talmud Yerushalmi, indicating that the method was used in Horn of African and Middle Eastern countries since the fourth century. Although there are countless ways of embellishing fūl, the basic recipe remains the same.

[2] Caracuta et al: 14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean in Scientific Reports - 2016

Was favism mentioned in the Bible?

Genesis 3:3: But God did say, “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Could this be the earliest warning not to eat fava beans?

Favism, also known as Glucose-6-Phosphate-Dehydrogenase Deficiency (G6PD), is a genetic disease that affects Mediterranean people after eating fava beans. For Jews, 40 days after ingestion, an allergic like reaction occurs where a blood disorder called hemolytic anemia occurs causing the blood cells to self destruct, and in severe cases causes acute kidney failure. It takes 100-120 days for our spleen to remove the red blood cells, and because of the two time periods, the total length of the disease process is some 150 days. Each condition causes a series of signs and symptoms. Hemolytic anemia causes fatigue, loss of appetite, fluid imbalance, bone deformities, irregular heartbeats, hypertension, heart failure and sometimes death. Acute kidney injury can cause extreme thirst, weakness, fatigue, hormones are not produced, and bone demineralisation resulting in excruciating bone pain, deformities, and fractures. In the Middle East jaundice is common, featuring yellowing of the eyes and face only days after ingestion.

A high percentage of people in the Mediterranean are are so susceptible that even smelling the pollen from a bean field causes faces and eyes to turn yellow. The bible states that the original sin was eating a forbidden fruit and the Seven Penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143) appear to document a case of favism.

Psalm Chapter 6 portrays King David begging God for forgiveness and mercy. He says that he is weak, and that his bones and his soul are vexed. He asks how long it will last, that he is weary from groaning, that all night long he cries and that his eyes grow weak with grief.

In Psalm Chapter 32 we find David continuing to groan all day and night, saying that his bones are wasting away, that his strength was sapped, and that he feels pressure from God’s hand. He acknowledges that his sin made him sick and claims that his moisture is turned into the drought of summer, which indicates extreme thirst. As he gets closer to the 40th day, the acute kidney failure begins to take effect.

Psalm Chapter 38 shows King David asking God to not rebuke him out of displeasure and to not discipline him during his wrath. He again uses the analogy that God's hand has come down upon him. He claims that there is no health in his body and that his bones have no soundness because of his sin. He says that he is bowed down greatly. That his back is filled with searing pain. His heart panteth. His strength faileth him: as for the light of his eyes, it also is gone from him. His loins are filled with a loathsome disease, telling us that his kidneys are failing. He gets paranoid, because he’s not getting the needed hormones for his brain to function properly.

Psalm Chapter 51 has him repeatedly begging for God's mercy. He says that in sin did his mother conceive him. His bones feel broken.

Psalm Chapter 102 does not mention the name of King David, but his bones are burned as an hearth. His heart is smitten, and withered like grass. He forgets to eat his food.

Psalm Chapter 130 is very short, and another unnamed person begs for mercy, and cries out of the depths. Failed kidneys flooded him?

Psalm Chapter 143 has David still begging for mercy, asking God to come to his relief. he hath smitten his life down to the ground; he hath made him to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. His spirit faileth: lest he be like unto them that go down into the pit (of death).

All these verses point toward favism as the culprit. They describe the physiological and psychological signs, plus the symptoms of this 150 day long ordeal, even going as far as naming the kidneys as the main organ affected.

Martock: a medieval fava bean

Martock is the name of a cultivar of the fava bean (Vicia faba). This variety takes its name from the village of Martock in Somerset. The deep clay loam soil common in this area grows heavy crops of beans. Now a sleepy market town, the bean once helped to make Martock a prosperous place.

Martock is probably the last of the truly local varieties of broad beans. It dates from the medieval period and was grown extensively in England in the Middle Ages. The Martock was first mentioned in parish records as early as the 12th century, but it is thought to be the same variety used in the Roman voting system, a brown or black Martock bean being used to cast a 'No' vote and a white bean for a 'Yes'. Beans turn almost black after several years of storage. In medieval times Martock beans were usually dried and then subsequently used in soups, stews and gruels.

It was rediscovered in the kitchen garden of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, probably not much changed from the small-seeded beans that were the mainstay of a medieval meal. Robust, with small pods, a real survivor with a meaty taste that was welcome on fast days. It is a primitive or antique variety usually associated with traditional agriculture, the result of generations of farmers retaining the best beans for the following year's seed, resulting in a crop often highly adapted to local conditions. In an average season a single Martock bean plant can produce over a hundred beans.

The plants are strong with pink and mauve flowers, which develop into numerous clusters of finger-sized pods each containing three or four smallish beans about the size of a large pea but with the appearance of a small modern broad bean. Unusually, the pods grow upwards rather than hanging downwards like the modern broad beans. The beans are very tender when cooked, somewhat smaller and less starchy than the usual beans, with a sweet, meaty taste.

More fava beans on your menu?

Fava beans (or broad beans) are both legumes and pulses. Legumes are all plants or their fruit, seeds or beans within the family Fabaceae (Leguminosae). Pulses is the term used to describe the dried fruit, seeds or beans. This large family is grown worldwide for food, fodder and nitrogen-fixing of the soil.

Legumes are great sources of protein. Lately one section of the legume family has been in the international spotlight: pulses, such as chickpeas (garbanzo beans), lentils and dried peas and beans. They are considered such an important source of protein that the United Nations declared 2016 the 'International Year of the Pulses'.

Many pulses are also good sources of iron, zinc and folate. They don't have unhealthy saturated fat. In their natural state, most of these have a low glycemic index, so they raise blood sugar levels less than other types of carbohydrates. In addition, pulses are inexpensive, widely available and easy to prepare.

That can mean soaking dried beans or lentils overnight before boiling or microwaving them, or using canned beans. There's really no difference nutritionally between dried and canned. If you use canned, go for low-sodium or no-sodium versions.

Enjoy pulses on their own with potatoes, as a side dish or as a base for vegetables. Sprinkle pulses in salads.

But beware:
- Sufferers of favism must avoid broad beans, since these may trigger a hemolytic crisis[1].
- Broad beans are rich in tyramine, and thus should be avoided by those taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors[2].

[1] Frank: Diagnosis and Management of G6PD Deficiency in American Family Physician – 2005. See here.
[2] Mayo Clinic: MAOIs and diet: Is it necessary to restrict tyramine? See here: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/expert-answers/maois/faq-20058035

A purple fava bean

'Extra Precoce A Grano Violetto' is a unique and colourful extra early maturing broad bean from Italy, a heritage variety with an excellent flavour. It is a very hardy variety that handles frost well and is suitable for sowing from October to November or February to March.

This variety produces long pods that are filled with 6 large beans that are a pretty purple color and are sweet tasting.

The plants grow 80 to 90 centimeters tall and are highly productive even at the lower parts of the plant. The pods are typically up to 25 centimeters in length, with six to eight beans per pod. The fresh seed is green, but the dried seed turns violet.

The exotic Italian name translates as 'Extra Early Seed of Violet', which simply means that this variety of fava bean can be harvested very early and that it produces violet coloured fava beans.

The plants are most often harvested when they first reach full size while the beans are still in the green shell stage but before the skins start to toughen. At this time the pod will still be quite soft and the seed will not be much bigger than a penny. Gathered at this time, the seeds are tender and delicious. Sweet and mild they lack that strong taste that larger broads can take on.

Do fava beans bring death and destruction?

The fava bean or broad bean is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world, a longtime staple in Asia, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Throughout history people have eaten favas — and feared them. Ancient cultures believed the bean possessed a supernatural force that could be beneficial or harmful. Classical literature associated them with death.

One of the most famous fava critics in history was the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras. In the 6th century BC, Pythagoras hated the beans so much that he forbade his followers from eating them. Whether he believed the beans were toxic, erotic, flatulence-inducing or simply dirty because they were used to cast votes, he avoided them at all costs. According to legend, he was killed in an ambush when he refused to run into a fava field to flee attackers.

Scholars debate whether Pythagoras had a genetic enzyme deficiency (favism otherwise known as glucose-6-fosfaatdehydrogenase-deficienty, shortened to G6PD deficiency) that can cause a reaction after taking certain medications or eating fava beans. This disorder, which in some cases can cause illness or death, is believed to affect some 400 million people worldwide, mostly men.

Despite the potential ills, the bean’s popularity seems to have risen in the Middle Ages, when it is said famine-stricken Sicilians prayed to Saint Joseph for food and rain and were able to survive in part because of hearty, resilient fava beans. Ever since, it has been considered a lucky bean, especially among Italians and Italian descendants, some of whom continue the traditional practice of placing favas on altars on Saint Joseph’s Day, March 19.

[Galette de rois]

The 'king's cake' associated with Mardi Gras and the Christian celebration of Epiphany on Januari 6th is sometimes made with a fava bean or small figurine hidden inside. According to tradition, whoever finds the object inside the cake (called a galette des rois in France, roscón de reyes in Spain and rosca de reyes in Latin America) could be ruler for the day.

Fava beans and salt water wetlands

The borders of northern parts of The Netherlands were always somewhat vague. The tidal Waddensea creates a dynamic landscape. A 'kwelder' is a low-lying part of an intertidal area that isn't regularly inundated anymore. It's both part of the sea and part of the land. But most of all it seems simply raw nature.

Near the little Frisian village of Paessens appearances do deceive. In prehistoric times kwelders were man-made and there are still farmers who let their cattle graze on the nutritious fields of salt-tolerant plants.

Between approximately 600 BC and 1200 AD, people were making their living on the open, unprotected salt marsh. Archeologist Mans Schepens from Groningen University wondered if you could grow fava beans (Vicia faba) on that rich, but salty ground[1]. To many archaeologists, the fact that crop cultivation was even possible at all, was already quite astonishing. In prehistoric times farmers would grow a smaller variant (Vicia faba minor) on these kwelders. They were known as paardeboon ('horsebean') in the province of Friesland en molleboon (a 'mol' being a kind of wok) in neighbouring Groningen.

Normally a kwelder is wet, cold and windy. Schepers thinks that those are simply the perfect conditions for the fava bean, because lice do not like windy conditions and slugs do not like the marshy environment.

[1] Schepers: Crop diversity in the Dutch and German terps area in 17th Conference of the International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany - 2016

Growing grain in ancient Mesopotamia

A recent study sheds new light on the agricultural and political economy that underpinned the growth of some of the world’s oldest cities in Mesopotamia, in present-day northern Syria[1].

Analysis of charred ancient grains reconstructed the conditions under which crops grew, building up a picture of how farming practice changed over time. Labour-intensive practices such as manuring/middening and water management formed an integral part of the agricultural strategy from the seventh millennium BC.

However, as populations in these early cities swelled, increasing demand for more food, farmers strove to cultivate larger areas of land, rather than plough more resources - such as manure - into existing, more intensively managed fields. Earlier research showed that amino acid δ(15)N values of grains and fava beans could provide proof if crops were grown in manured or unmanured soil[2].

Extensive, land-hungry agriculture relies heavily on the ability to access more arable land and to exploit specialized plough animals, both of which could be monopolized by powerful families and institutions.

The findings of this research therefore reveal how the growing importance of arable land, which could be controlled by the ruling few, led to increasing social inequality as urban populations grew.

‘We found that the rise of early cities in northern Mesopotamia depended on radical expansion of the scale of farming,' Professor Amy Bogaard said. 'As a result, cereals were grown under increasingly poor soil conditions: with less manuring and replenishment of nutrients. It was a solution that enabled enormous urban agglomerations to develop, but was risky when environmental or political conditions changed. Examining how prehistoric farmers coped with changing conditions could yield some useful advice for modern day governments facing similar pressures of growing populations and changing environments.'

[1] Styring et al: Isotope evidence for agricultural extensification reveals how the world's first cities were fed in Nature Plants – 2017
[2] Styring et al: The effect of manuring on cereal and pulse amino acid δ(15)N values in Phytochemistry - 2014 

The origin of fava beans

If you've been paying attention during history lessons at school, you might remember that agriculture was once the key factor that helped people to settle down. The ability to produce and store food-surplus drastically reduced the risk of famine and it was the very first step to create villages, complex societies and eventually entire empires.

It was once thought that cereals were the first agricultural products that were successfully planted and harvested. Plant domestication, most scientists think, made its debut around 8,000 BC, with grain storage cropping up about 9,000 BC. An ancient site in Israel yielded a collection of grains (wild wheat and barley), which was dated to about 21,000 BC[1].

Recent discoveries of early-domesticated cereals show that the Middle East is rich with examples of early forms of agriculture. Several notable examples of cultivation and domestication of legumes such as fava bean and chickpea have been discovered in the Levant[2].

Recently, large amounts of fava beans (Vicia faba) were found in the Lower Galilee in Israel[3]. The remains of the legumes were collected from floors and pits dating to an early phase of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (ca. 9,000 BC). Radiocarbon measurements of the legumes dated the findings between the 8250 BC and 7900 BC. These findings represent the earliest evidence of intensive farming of legumes in the southern Levant.

While findings of lentil and pea are quite common in the Levant in earlier phases, remains of fava beans are rare, and mostly found in the southern Levant. Recently, wild specimens of faba beans have been discovered in the Epipalaeolithic campsite el-Wad and dated to 12,000 BC[4].

Thus, we have people eating wild fava beans since around 12,000 BC and eating domesticated fava beans around 8,000 BC. From then on, the frequency of findings of fava bean begins to increase.

What came first, you might ask, the domestication of grains or the domestication of fava beans? The answer might be lost forever in the mists of time.

[1] Weiss et al: The broad spectrum revisited: evidence from plant remains in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – 2004
[2] Caracuta et al: The onset of faba bean farming in the Southern Levant in Science Reports – 2015
[3] Caracuta et al: Farming legumes in the pre-pottery Neolithic: New discoveries from the site of Ahihud (Israel) in PloS One – 2017
[4] Caracuta et al: 14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean in Scientific Reports – 2016

Fava: the Ancient Mediterranean Bean

As part of the Old World legumes –together with chickpeas and lentils— fava was a most nutritious bean that fed ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Called ‘broad bean’ by the British and tuinbonen ('garden beans') by the Dutch, it has been found in Neolithic sites in Israel dated back to 10,000 BC. Fava beans are the only crop known to have been domesticated in what is today Israel.

Fava remained a valuable source of protein throughout the Old World. For Greeks, like for most people in southern Europe and northern Africa, fava –both the fresh pods and the dried beans– remain an important legume and are cooked in a variety of ways. Israelis mix them into their hummus. Egyptians eat them mashed for breakfast.

[Fava bean frittata

A famine was supposedly the origin of the Sicilian tradition. Once fava beans were simply used as fodder for cattle. The hungry farmers cooked these beans and survived. Sicilians serve fava beans in frittatas or cook them with garlic.

Greeks don’t peel the shelled fava, an easy but somewhat tedious kitchen chore. Italians, however, insist that they have to be peeled.

On the island of Crete you get a handful of freshly harvested fava pods with raki (ρακή), the local grape-based pomace brandy. People shell and munch the fava as we do peanuts.

While scientists have been quite successful in tracing the domestication of wheat and other grains to specific areas ranging from Turkey to Iran, they had been less lucky with legumes, said Valentina Caracuta, an archaeobotanist[1]. One problem is that unlike grains, domesticated legume seeds have no visible characteristics that clearly distinguish them from wild varieties, she explains. If it has not gone extinct, the wild ancestor of today’s beans may be found in the area where it was first domesticated, Caracuta said. Recently, she found traces of a wild fava bean, growing on Mount Carmel (Israel), some 14,000 years ago[2].

[1] Caracuta et al: The onset of faba bean farming in the Southern Levant in Scientific Reports - 2015
[2] Caracuta et al: 14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean in Scientific Reports - 2016