Mideast Feast

Monday 4 June
Sometime about a decade ago, I was browsing through Dean's Mediterranean store and came upon a tub of dried fava beans. On a pulse impulse, I bought a pound, and it's been sitting in a glass jar just being decorative since then. But now I am growing fresh favas out in the garden, so I thought that this was the time to use up the dried ones.
I spent a lot of summers eating and excavating in Turkey, so I have a very high opinion of the creativity and freshness of that cuisine. My go-to guy for recipes is Özcan Ozan, who runs the Sultan's Kitchen restaurant in Boston and published a cookbook of the same name, both featured on his fetchingly-misspelled website.
His suggestion for dried favas was the following, which I annotate in my usual smartass fashion here:
Kuru Bakla Ezmesi/Dry Fava-bean, Its Purée
Warning - this takes two days.
1 lb. dried fava beans (a favorite of the Department of Redundancy Department)
1 onion, chopped
ca. 1 tsp. salt
3 1/2 cups water
extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1 handful of fresh parsley, chopped
1 shallot or half a red onion, chopped
Soak the beans overnight. The next day, get a nice early start; peel and throw away their dark-red skins. Ozan then says that you bring the beans, chopped onion, salt, and 3 1/2 cups water to a boil, turn down the heat, and let them simmer for an hour, until tender. This confirms my belief that cookbook writers live in a fantasy land, at least where beans are concerned. Two hours of simmering, and the beans were not even past crunchy. It took another full hour IN A PRESSURE COOKER before they were anywhere near soft. And don't say it was because the beans were old - we've had the same process with beans we'd just bought.
Once they're finally done, throw the beans and a splash of the cooking liquid into a food-processor and purée, adding a bit more liquid only if it needs it - the result should be quite thick. Spread this out in lightly oiled flat square baking dish (or the like), and although it's been a full 24 hours since you started this, let it chill in the refrigerator overnight.
The next evening, bring it out, score it into bars with a knife, and sprinkle it with the oil, lemon, parsley, and shallot. Serve each bar on a plate, or mash them up a bit for a sort of fava hummus.
Of course, you can't make a meal just out of what Holt called "Turkish fart-cakes" (though in fact they had very little of that beany effect). So during the endless simmer, I had made tabouli, using the simple Moosewood method that makes all others look silly: to a cup of bulgur wheat and a tsp. of salt in a bowl, add 1 1/2 cups boiling water; cover and let sit for 20 mins., then fluff it up with a fork. Dress it with more olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and a huge amount of parsley, and let it chill overnight with the fart-cakes. Just before serving, chop up lots of tomatoes, feta cheese, scallions, more parsley, and anything else you feel would be good, and toss it in, adjusting the dressing and seasoning.
Just to round out the meal, we had olives and Israeli-style pickled turnips and beets - the latter is Dvorah's recipe, which I'll give when I do up the next batch. Right now, I'm tired. Bean-cooking really takes it out of you.