'I like to pick our broad beans when they're still small, as this is when they're especially tasty and can be eaten without the delicate task of removing the skins. Their flavour is deliciously sweet and creamy. Serving them as a hummus on tartines with an English kitchen-garden twist, as well as in the salad on top, really shows them off'
Mushy broad beans
Stir fork-crushed, cooked broad beans through with finely-chopped spring onions, mint leaves, olive oil and seasoning. Serve with a roasted halibut fillet wrapped in Parma ham.
Broad-bean vichyssoise
Sauté three chopped leeks with 25g butter. Add a splash of white wine, 200g baby broad beans and enough vegetable stock to cover it all. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Mix with a handheld blender, splash in single cream and season. Keep chilled.
Japanese-style salad with broad beans
Create a salad of carrots, spring onions, radishes, celery and baby broad beans and pour over a Japanese-style dressing, made from a crushed garlic clove and a tablespoon each of white miso paste, mirin, rice vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. Serve with teriyaki beef.
Broad bean hummus tartine
Serves 4 as a starter or light lunch Ingredients Hummus 240g baby broad beans 240g chickpeas, canned 1tbspn tahini (optional) 2 cloves garlic Juice of 1 lemon 90ml olive oil Seasoning to taste
Salad 1 cucumber 6 radishes 3 spring onions Handful fresh mint leaves Handful pea shoots Sourdough bread, 2 slices per person 100g Pecorino cheese
Dressing 50ml olive oil 1 lemon, juiced Seasoning to taste
Method
Reserve a handful of broad beans for the salad, then place the rest in a pan of water, bring to the boil and simmer for about five minutes or until tender. Put the baby broad beans, chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil into a blender and process until a rough paste. Add seasoning to taste. (Tahini paste is made from ground sesame seeds and, although it's optional, it will add a true hummus taste.)
Slice and de-seed the cucumber and place in a medium-sized bowl. Add sliced radishes and spring onions, a handful of mint and pea shoots. Pour the olive oil and lemon juice over it and add seasoning.
To assemble the tartines, toast the sourdough bread and spread generously with the broad-bean hummus. Top with the dressed salad and add shavings of Pecorino.
* Follow Country Life on Twitter
