Sometimes the best things to eat are the simplest. Good bread and great olive oil. The perfect steak, simply grilled. An August tomato, sliced with just a bit of salt.
You know what I’m talking about.
One of my favorite recipes – if you can even call these types of dishes recipes – comes from Puglia: fave e cicoria. Fava beans and chicory.
That’s it. Just fava beans and fresh chicory.
The fava beans are the dried kind, cooked until they form a velvety puree. The chicory is just boiled in salted water.
The idea of mixing bitter greens with an earthy starch is a great one. And I guess you could work similar magic with other legumes and leaves. But since I had a kilo of fave I’d picked up in Basilicata, and fresh chicory from my garden in Todi, the recipe kind of made itself.
The magic comes when the bland and the bitter come together. Half a plate of thick and starchy fave puree. Half a plate of bitter chicory. A bit of salt, a healthy drizzle of fruity olive oil and you’ve got a dish full of what every self respecting Pugliese calls heaven. 
Fave e Cicoria
Fava beans and Chicory
(serves 4 as main course)
1 1/5 kilos of chicory greens
2 cups dried fave beans (not fresh fave, but dried)
salt
olive oil
Place the fave beans in a bowl of water and soak for six hours.
Drain beans and place in pot, and add water enough to come about a half inch over the beans. Add 1 tsp of salt and bring to simmer. Let simmer, undisturbed, until the beans are mushy/tender. Don’t be tempted to stir them up. You want most of the water to be absorbed, but most of what’s not absorbed should evaporate. By the end you should have just enough liquid in the pan to help the beans become mush. Using a wooden spoon, only then do you stir things up, mashing and mushing into a rough puree.
*Note: do not do this ahead of time, because the fave puree tends to solidify, sort of like polenta. If you do decide to make it ahead of time, you’ll have to thin it out with a bit more water. The consistency should be (more or less) like mashed potatoes.
In the meantime bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add chicory and cook until done, about 15 minutes. Drain.
To serve, fill each individual plate with half chicory and half fava puree. Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Serve with crusty bread, and enjoy. 
Nothing wrong with that type of recipe. Every one is free to use as much or as little of the ingredients and cook them as their heart (or stomach) dictates.
Somehow, from the title (and season) I has expecting fresh fave…
Hi Elizabeth,
First of all, thank you for your website, it’s delightful and very informative.
About cicoria, can you say which type you grow? We’re growing it from seed (purchased in Rome) but it’s so, so bitter. We love bitter greens but this stuff is inedible.
Thanks.
Thanks for the nice words about the blog!
I am pretty sure our chicory is this: http://www.growitalian.com/chicory-catalogna-pugliese/
It is pretty bitter. But like most chicories, it tends to get less bitter once it passes through a cold spell. Where do you live? Also, cooking it in ABUNDANT salted water helps leech out a lot of the bitterness.
Thanks for replying!
I live in Atlanta, Georgia so we can forget about a cold spell at this point. However, the fact that it needs to be BOILED explains a lot! I just sauteed it in oil, garlic, red pepper, like I do with most greens. I guess I should have read your recipe!
i adore this!!! such comfort food!
Wonderful! It was our bread and butter when I grew up in Italy during the war years.
Are lupini beans the same as dried fave? I have a package of lupini I purchased at a little Italian foods market/deli in Naples, Florida…have never known what to do with them. They look very much like the fave in your photo.
No, they’re not. Lupini beans are usually eaten as a snack. Mostly found from street vendors.
Now see this is one of the reasons why I love your blog. Even if it is a staple dish for many, there are so many others, like myself that would have never in a million years thought of putting these two together!
PS. that dish is one of the cutest that I have ever seen.
Don’t you love that dish? I’ve actually had these dishes for about 20 years. I got sick of them at one point, so packed them away. Now I am newly in love with them again. They are by Solimene, in Vietri sul Mare (south of the Amalfi coast).
And one of the VERY BEST of reasons to visit Amalfi coast…pottery is so very fun
Ah, now I know how to prepare the Catalogna we’re growing this season — thanks for the cooking tips!
Love eating chicory raw with my pasta….it’s the best. Thanks Elizabeth!