The Kitchen Gardener - Episode 8 - Broad Beans
This information is general in nature and should not be taken as professional advice.
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Broad Beans
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Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Subfamily: Faboideae
Tribe: Vicieae
Genus: Vicia
Species: V. faba
Latin Name: Vicia faba
Common Name: Broad Bean
No of Species: Numerous varieties
Fool, Fava beans, vicia, english, dwarf or horse beans (actually a different variety)
Windsor, Longpod, Dwarf Fan, Julienne, Lorraine, Black Spanish, Mazagan, Picardy, and Winter. Albyn Tick, Herz Freya, Blue Rock, Petite and Maris Bead.
Also known as:
Fava bean
Distribution/Taxonomy:
Worlwide.
The wild progenitor has not been discovered yet. Several wild species (V. narbonensis L. and V. galilaea Plitmann and Zohary) are taxonomically closely related to the cultivated crop, but they contain 2n = 14 chromosomes. Numerous attempts to cross them with Vicia faba have failed. Broadbean of cvs thereof is reported to exhibit tolerance to high pH, insects, low pH, slope, and virus.
Anecdotal:
One of the oldest known plants. The first to be domesticated. The bean of history. Broad beans have a long tradition of cultivation in Old World agriculture, being among the most ancient plants in cultivation and also among the easiest to grow. It is believed that along with lentils, peas, and chickpeas, they became part of the eastern Mediterranean diet in around 6000 BC or earlier.
Due to ancient beliefs (the hollow stem was purported to be a passageway by the dead to the life after death). Hence the broadbean is associated with rebirth and a new life fillinng our consciousness.
In Western Asia and North Africa the term fol-fass is the root for fulfil. Was the most popular stable food prior to the advent of the potato (in the last two hundred years).
In ancient Greece and Rome, beans were used in voting; a white bean being used to cast a yes vote, and a black bean for no. Even today the word koukia ( κουκιά) is used unofficially, referring to the votes.
In Ubykh culture, throwing beans on the ground and interpreting the pattern in which they fall was a common method of divination (favomancy), and the word for "bean-thrower" in that language has become a generic term for seers and soothsayers in general.
Appearance:
It is a rigid, erect plant 0.5-1.7 m tall, with stout stems with a square cross-section. The leaves are 10-25 cm long, pinnate with 2-7 leaflets, and of a distinct glaucous grey-green color; unlike most other vetches, the leaves do not have tendrils for climbing over other vegetation. The flowers are 1-2.5 cm long, with five petals, the standard petal white, the wing petals white with a black spot (true black, not deep purple or blue as is the case in many "black" colorings), and the keel petals white. Crimson flowered broad beans also exist which were recently saved from extinction.
The fruit is a broad leathery pod, green maturing blackish-brown, with a densely downy surface; in the wild species, the pods are 5-10 cm long and 1 cm diameter, but many modern cultivars developed for food use have pods 15-25 cm long and 2-3 cm thick. Each pod contains 3-8 seeds; round to oval and 5-10 mm diameter in the wild plant, usually flattened and up to 20-25 mm long, 15 mm broad and 5-10 mm thick in food cultivars. Vicia faba has a diploid (2n) chromosome number of 12, meaning that each cell in the plant has 12 chromosomes (6 homologous pairs). Five pairs are acrocentric chromosomes and 1 pair is metacentric
Taste:
Starchy sweet when young.
Eat alone with:
Bread and pesto
Fresh with cheese
Cooked with butter and pepper
Bechamel Sauce and parsley
Eat with:
Onions, Spices (Cumin, Coriander)
Other Uses:
The young leaves of the plant can also be eaten either raw or cooked like spinach.
Falafel.
Romans made cakes of meal from dried beans.
Puls (latin) means porridge and can be made into a stew, porridge, paste.
The beans can be fried, causing the skin to split open, and then salted and/or spiced to produce a savory crunchy snack. These are popular in China, Colombia, Peru (habas saladas), Mexico (habas con chile) and in Thailand (where their name means "open-mouth nut").
In much of the Anglophone world, the name broad bean is used for the large-seeded cultivars grown for human food, while horse bean and field bean refer to cultivars with smaller, harder seeds (more like the wild species) used for animal feed, though their stronger flavour is preferred in some human food recipes, such as falafel.
In the Sichuan cuisine of China, broad beans are combined with soybeans and chili peppers to produce a spicy fermented bean paste called doubanjiang.
Egyptians eat fava beans in various ways: they may be shelled and then dried, bought dried and then cooked by adding water in very low heat for several hours, etc. They are the primary ingredient in Ta`meyyah (Egyptian Arabic for falafel), and Egyptians have made deriding Levantine felafel (made from chickpeas) as inferior something of a national sport. However, the most popular way of preparing fava beans in Egypt is by taking the mashed, cooked beans and adding oil, garlic, lemon, salt and cumin to it. It is then eaten with bread. The dish, known as ful medames, is traditionally eaten with onions (generally at breakfast) and is considered the Egyptian national dish.
In Iran, cooked broad beans served with pepper and salt are sold on streets in winter.
Fava beans are common in Latin American cuisines as well. In central Mexico, mashed fava beans are a common filling for many corn flour-based [antojito]] snacks such as tlacoyos. In Colombia they are most often used whole in vegetable soups. Dried and salted fava beans are a popular snack in many Latin countries.
In Greece, broad beans (Greek: κουκιά, koukiá) are eaten in a stew combined with artichokes, while they are still fresh in their pod. Dried broad beans are eaten boiled, sometimes combined with garlic sauce (skordalia). In Crete fresh broad beans are shelled and eaten as companion to tsikoudia, the local alcoholic drink. Favism is quite common in Greece because of malaria endemicity in previous centuries, and people afflicted by it do not eat broadbeans.
Note: The Greek word fáva (φάβα) does not refer to broadbeans, but to the yellow split pea and also to the legume Lathyrus sativus, either of which are boiled with salt to the local variety of pease pudding, also called fáva. This creamy fáva is then served hot or cold, sprinkled with olive oil and garnished with a variety of condiments and seasonings such as diced onion, capers, parsley, pepper, lemon juice, etc.
Harvesting:
Broad beans are eaten while still young and tender, enabling harvesting to begin as early as the middle of spring for plants started under glass or over-wintered in a protected location, but even the maincrop sown in early spring will be ready from mid to late summer.
Beans mature 90–220 days after planting. Harvest can be delayed a little longer for hand than for mechanical harvest. In either case, crop should not be cut until the lowel pods are matured and the upper ones fully developed. If harvest is delayed until the upper pods are ripe, loss from shattering is great. An ordinary mowing machine can be used, but the drop-rake reaper is more satisfactory and reduces shattering. Crop should be cut on cloudy day and maybe cut at night and shocked early the next day. Large-seeded cvs are threshed with a common bean thresher with special adjustments to the cylinder. Small-seeded types can be thrashed without difficulty. After threshing, seed are cleaned with ordinary fanning mills. For canning, beans are allowed to swell and then are picked by hand before they become hard. As a dried vegetable, they are prepared the same way as other common beans.
Growing:
They are still often grown as a cover crop to prevent erosion because they can over-winter and because as a legume, they fix nitrogen in the soil.
Sow autumn or early spring. Broad beans need around 6ml of water a day to grow at an optimal rate.
Companion Plant:
Potatoes, Carrots, Cucumber, cauliflower, most other vegetables and herbs. Maize, Strawberry, Celery, Summer Savory.
In part of Suffolk during the 19th and early 20th centuries the farmers used to sow a Broad Bean with every potato
Propagation:
Seed
Pollination:
Insect. One study concluded that bees increase seed production by 15–20%.
Probably the most important observation concerning the pollination of field bean was that by Drayner (1956,1959) and confirmed in more elaborate detail by Bond and Fyfe (1962) who showed that continued inbreeding causes a progressive loss in the ability of the plant to set selfed seed, but upon hybridization (cross-pollination) this ability is restored. This means that the plant can survive several generations (not indefinitely) without cross-pollination although production continually decreases. A similar situation apparently exists in many other so-called self-pollinated crops; continued inbreeding leads inevitably to elimination of the strain.
Holden and Bond (1960) concluded that 30 to 40 percent cross- pollination may represent an equilibrium point in a balanced breeding system in which the cross-pollinated third of the flowers self and the selfed flowers produce one-third selfed and one-third crossed seed. Such a system, they concluded, would be self-perpetuating, yielding one-third cross-breds and two-thirds inbreds each generation. They also observed that the pollen is in contact with the stigma 24 hours before the flower opens, therefore the cross-breds are capable of selfing.
The grower wants the plant to set its crop of seeds as soon as possible and to produce as much as possible. Bees can contribute in this respect. Wafa and Ibrahim (1960) excluded insects from some plants by use of cages and included bees in other cages over plants. At harvest time, the bee cage had ceased flowering and most of its pods were ripe. The plants from the cages without bees had many green pods when the cages were removed. This showed that bee pollination accelerated the rate of set of bean pods. Hanna and Lawes (1967) showed that the percentage of crossing was higher on the lower nodes (51 percent below, 33 percent at upper ones), showing that the plant strives first for cross-pollination then for survival.
Flowers:
Orchid like.
Extrafloral nectaries are on the underside of the stipules, the small leaflike parts at the base of the leaf. Koreshkov (1967) showed that these nectaries function throughout the vegetative period of the plant, and that repeated removal of the nectar stimulates further production.
There are two to four white, blotched, deep maroon or blackish- violet flowers, each an inch or more across in clusters at the base of the leaf. Free (1970*) stated that a normal field bean plant has 50 to 80 flowers, bul a large proportion of these flowers or the young pods shed - 86.7 percent according to Kambol (1969). Sope, (1952) stated that less than a dozen pods per plant are harvested, although isolated plants may set over 60 pods. He concluded that this heavier set on th'Windsor,' 'Longpod,' 'Dwarf Fan,' 'Julienne,' 'Lorraine,' 'Black Spanish,' 'Mazagan,' 'Picardy,' and 'Wintere exposed plant was associated with better insect pollination Rowlands (1960) recorded an average of 24 percent sel in the open but only 7.3 percent set in the glass house He concluded that some plants are highly self-sterile and some cross better than others. Free (1970*) stated that the amount and concentration of field bean floral nectar was relatively low, so the flowers are not overly attractive to nectar collecting insects.
In discussing the field bean inflorescence, nectar secretion, and bee visitation, Free (1970*) stated that bee visitors to extra-floral nectaries were more numerous at midday, whereas those visiting the flowers were most numerous from 2 to 4 p.m., when pollen was available. He concluded that pollen was more attractive to bees than the floral nectar.
Seeds:
See above.
Cuttings:
None
Growth Habit:
Grows on a long hollow stem.
Broad bean and field bean are coarse, erect, smooth-stemmed annuals, 2 to 6 feet tall, with pods 2 to 10 inches long, producing two to four flat brown seeds l/2 inch to 1 1/2 inches across. They are cool-season crops, tolerant to light frost, that are planted in the fall in areas of mild winter climate or in early spring in areas of cold winters.
Extrafloral nectaries are on the underside of the stipules, the small leaflike parts at the base of the leaf. Koreshkov (1967) showed that these nectaries function throughout the vegetative period of the plant, and that repeated removal of the nectar stimulates further production.
Pruning:
None
Soil:
Nitrogen fixer. The plant is calculated to fix 200 kg N/ha/yr
Tolerates nearly any soil type, grows best on rich loams. Moderate moisture supply is necessary. Not drought resistant. Moisture requirement is highest ca. 9–12 weeks after establishment. More tolerant to acid soil conditions than most legumes. Can be grown in nearly all parts of the United States without liming. Hardier cvs tolerate winter temperatures of -10°C without serious injury. Winter types fare well with average temperatures of 2°C, without severe frost. Growing season should have little or no excessive heat. Ranging from Boreal Moist to Wet through Tropical Desert to Dry Forest Life Zones, broadbean is reported to tolerate annual precipitation of 2.3–20.9 dm (mean of 95 cases = 8.0), annual mean temperature of 5.6°–27.5°C (mean of 95 cases = 12.1), and pH of 4.5–8.3 (mean of 87 cases = 6.6).
Aspect:
Most aspects tolerated.
Diseases:
These commonly cultivated plants can be attacked by fungal diseases, such as Rust (Uromyces viciae-fabae) and Chocolate Spot (Botrytis fabae).
Pests:
Some grubs with burrow into seed pod. Mice will eat beans.
Insects:
Hover Fly eats blackfly eggs on a broad bean plant. Blackfly love nasturtiums so grow them by your broad beans to prevent your precious crops being attacked.
Nutrition:
Good source of high quality protein and fibre. Source of minerals and B vitamins. Should be eaten with plants and grains to make up complete protein because unlike meats they do not contain all the essential amino acids we require.
The contain relatively high amounts of unstaurated fat.
Starches are digested slowly the release steady amounts of glucose which is useful for diabetics.
Most cooked pulses contain iron, p[otassium, phosphorus, manganese, magnesium, and B vitamins (except for B12) and vitamin E.
Ethnomedicinal:
Known to help control blood sugar levels so helpful for diabetics. Can help to lower blood cholesterol levels.
Medical Warnings:
Inhalation of the pollen or ingestion of the seeds may cause favism, a severe hemolytic anemia, perhaps causing collapse. It is an inherited enzymatic deficiency occasional among Mediterranean people (Greek, Italian, Semitics). The genetic disorder occurs in about 1% of whites, 15% of blacks. The favism-inducing toxins are believed to be divicine and isouramil, the aglycone moieties of vicine and convicine. Flesh of broadbeans contains ca. 0.61–2.38% vicine, common vetch contains 0.04%, peas contitin traces, and soy flour is devoid of vicine.
Pulses contain purines and should be avoided by people who have gout.
Broad beans are rich in tyramine, and thus should be avoided by those taking monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors.
Raw broad beans contain vicine, isouramil and convicine, which can induce hemolytic anemia in patients with the hereditary condition glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PD). This potentially fatal condition is called "favism" after the fava bean.
Broad beans are rich in L-dopa, a substance used medically in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. L-dopa is also a natriuretic agent, which might help in controlling hypertension.[3] Some also use fava beans as a natural alternative to drugs like Viagra, citing a link between L-dopa production and the human libido.
Broad beans are widely cultivated in district Kech and Panjgur of Balochistan Province of Pakistan and eastern province of Iran. In Balochi language, they are called Bakalaink, and Baqala in Persian. The elders generally restrict the young children from eating them raw (when unmatured) because they can cause constipation and jaundice-like symptoms.
Areas of origin of the bean correspond to malarial areas. There are epidemiological and in vitro studies that the hemolysis resulting from favism acts as protection from malaria, because certain species of malarial protozoa such as Plasmodium falcipacrum are very sensitive to oxidative damage due to deficiency of Glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase enzyme which would otherwise protect from oxidative damage via production of glutathione reductase.
Information Sources:
scpa.org.au
thebegavalley.org.au/seedsavers.html
Classic vegetarian Cookiing, Interlink Books, Habeeb Salloum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tuinboon_voor_zaad.jpg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_beans
gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/book/chap4/broad.html
www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Vicia_faba.html
uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index
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Recipes:
Basic Cooking:
Blanch seeds in boiling water for 3 minutes. Refresh in cold water immedioately. Slip outer skin off and toss in butter, salt and pepper.
Fesh very young pods can be eaten raw or cooked per long bean.
With lamb
Serve lamb cuts on a bed of broadbean puree.
Puree
Cook for 15 minutes and beld with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Addd optional spices or herbs for various flavours (eg oregano, mint, garlic)
Mixed delight
Saute with artichokes and peas.
Summer Antipasto Mix
Combine raw broad beans with fetta, kalamata olives, mint leaves, olive oil, ground black pepper. Serve with a small jug of olive oil and bread, Can add balsamic syrup, parsley. Serve with a salty cheese style such as pecorino or parmesan.
With Pasta
Toss fresh cooked pasta with cooked broadbeans in a pan with proscuitto or bacon with a binder such as breadcrumbs. Serve with olive oil, salt and pepper and lemoin juice to taste.
Byessar - Broadbean dip
Mix cooked broadbeans with oregano, cumin, cooked onion and garlic to a paste. Serve with a drizzle of oil mixed with paprika, chilli powder, cumin.
Fava Beans in Oil
In a saucepan combined broad beans, onion and garlic, 1/4 teaspoon allspice, fresh coriander, and lemon juice.
Fava Beans of Fez
Combined beans with oilve oil, red capsicum, garlic, cumin, 1/4 tsp chilli powder and fresh coriander. Cook for 10 minutes. Serve hot or cold.
Falafel - Syria/ Lebanese style
Combine fava beans and chick peas soaked overnight with onions, parsley, garlic, ground coriander seeds, cumin, chili powder, 1 tsp baking soda and salt and pepper. Cook in oil as quenelles or as patties. Serve with tahini, salad, bread.
For Egyptian style
Add hot green peppers.
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