BOTANICAL NAME: Faba vulgaris
FAMILY: Fabaceae
F oul (pronounced fool) means “bean,” and this particular small-seeded fava has been the basic culinary bean of Egypt since antiquity. Although there is no way to accurately date this fava, it is undoubtedly one of the oldest vegetable varieties discussed in this book. I say this because its history is intrinsically tied to the cookery of ancient Egypt—fava beans of similar size and shape have been found in Egyptian tombs—and to a culinary continuity that has persisted to this day. Fascinated by the prospect of growing a fava bean of a type that may have been familiar to the cooks of ancient Alexandria and served at the dinner parties of Athenaeus, I pressed my old friend Naël Aziz of Tours, France, into service. His network of seed collectors all over the Near East has been a great resource for recovering vegetables of merit from unusual places, and it was not long before I received a package of favas that filled my request.
The experiment in growing Egyptian fava beans was not without its pitfalls, since my climate has very little in common with that of Egypt, except perhaps for my hot, humid Mediterranean summers. Fortunately, Egyptian favas are generally heat resistant, so they take to our hot spring weather better than most English or French varieties. My surprise came when the favas finally flowered in early May profusion. Very soon, they were literally covered with pods; indeed, this is one of the most prolific varieties I have grown. This is important because this is a fava raised largely for its small, dry beans.
Fava beans of similar size and shape have been found in Egyptian tombs.
It is possible to eat unripe Foul Misri raw in salads (they are sweet eaten this way) or, when more mature, they may be steamed or sautéed or even added like peas to soups. In Egypt, however, they are the key ingredient to foul medammes, a breakfast dish of great age that is now universally associated with Egyptian cookery. Edward Lane, the great British ethnographer of nineteenth-century Egyptian daily life, described foul medammes as he found it sold by vendors in Cairo markets during the late 1820s. In those days the beans were baked slowly overnight in a tightly lidded earthen jar buried in hot ashes to its neck. In the morning, the baked beans were eaten for breakfast with linseed oil or butter and a little lime juice.
The Cairo that Lane described was still a medieval city, and this plain fare was doubtless very close to the sort of dish Egyptians had been eating for centuries. Over the past one hundred years, foul medammes has evolved into a far more complex preparation, with the addition of eggs, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and various spices. This is foul medammes gentrified. Whether or not this fits an American image of a breakfast, one thing can be said for the favas: as a flavorful baked bean they are without competition.