How’s your fava?
Greek fava is made from yellow split peas. Confusingly, in Turkey it’s made from fava beans, as you would expect by its name. Somehow, at some point, it evolved when it was introduced to Greece. Now each country has its own version that it swears is totally different from the other.
This recipe is for the Greek version, with the yellow split peas giving it a quite neutral but sweet and earthy taste that pairs well with salty or strong flavours. It’s eaten traditionally as a meze, or to accompany proteins. Anyone who’s been to Greece will have fond memories of eating fava with octopus on an island. I have two distinct memories of it, from my first trip to the Mediterranean. First in a restaurant in Thessaloniki, where it came set in a cube shape and was topped with salty, smoked mackerel. Then at Ntounias, a restaurant in Crete where I worked. There it was slathered in olive oil and sprinkled with capers and chunks of raw red onion.
I’d ended up working in Crete while searching for the most traditional Greek food I could find. Ntounias restaurant in the mountains near Chania served slow food in the slowest way possible. The service was terrible. But they raised animals for milk and meat, grew vegetables, milled their own wheat and cooked without using any electricity. Everything was heated by fire. This meant the wait for olive oil fried chips could stretch more than 40 minutes if it was windy outside where the pans were set up.
It was utter chaos. Responsibilities were amorphous, and there was never anything prepared. Over and over, waiters would walk into the kitchen yelling orders, at which point everyone would scramble into the garden to collect the vegetables needed for those specific dishes. I’d be on my hands and knees tearing up garden beds, trying to find onions to top the fava.
The food was utterly delicious, though, and the land around the restaurant totally pristine. I would have stayed in that village forever, just to eat what came out of that kitchen. This recipe for fava comes from Ntounias, with this version having slightly less olive oil but just as much heart. I’ve paired the fava with pickled sardines – a sort of midpoint between my first two memories eating it. It’s excellent with crunchy toast on the side, and even better with Cretan barley rusks, if you can get your hands
• on some.