Pasta alla Gricia with Fava Beans

Celebrating the harvest of spring! 🌱

Pasta alla Gricia is one of the four famous pastas of Rome. The others, Amatriciana, Carbonara and Cacao e pepe are well known but Gricia often gets let off the list. This pasta is another simple combination of good quality ingredients, guanciale (if you can find it) or pancetta, Pecorino Romano DOP, and black pepper. Also, at the moment, I am knee-deep in fresh fava beans from my garden and I think they make an amazing addition to this simple dish.

May Day (May 1st) in Italy is traditionally celebrated by eating fresh fava beans and young Pecorino cheese. The holiday, the rough equivalent of the USA Labor Day celebrates hard work and that Springtime is in full swing with summer just around the corner. After a one-year hiatus, my fava bean harvest is back in a big way.

Just the beginning

I used to have a not-so-deep raised bed for fava beans and then summer tomatoes. I’ve known for a while that the bed wasn’t deep enough to handle these two crops or to get the benefit of beans adding nitrogen back into the soil. A year ago I took on the project to rip out the old 6-inch deep planters and install a new 3-feet deep raised beds.

My first summer tomato crop was amazing. I canned, and canned, canned tomatoes all summer. And this spring, a truly bumper crop of fava beans is underway with it only starting to produce beans. Again, we had a lot of rain this spring so the beans are arriving late and the tomatoes will go in a little late too. But the beans have arrived just in time for May Day.

If you can find fresh fava beans, there are many ways to be creative. We’ve published a lot of recipes over the years for them. Often when cooking fava beans, you need to remove the tough outer husk and then the inner skin. This recipe is a way to avoid the second peel which is the hardest part.

Enjoy springtime before the hot days of summer arrive. Savor this time with pasta dishes filled with lots of springtime vegetables.

Saluti… 🥂🥂🥂

Joe

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