Fava Beans

How to prepare fava beans:
Remove beans from the shell. The beans have a white or green-white papery skin which must be removed by blanching. Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Blanch beans for 3-4 minutes; you may hear the skins tearing and popping. After 3 minutes, taste a bean for doneness; the bean should be bright green inside the skin and just barely cooked. When the beans are cooked, drain, and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking. When cool, pop the beans out of their skins. Discard skins. Do not rinse beans after they have been removed from their skins, because you will wash away flavor.

For this dish, I mixed some onions which were sauted until they softened with some blanched de-skinned fava beans, and mixed it with a salad dressing made of 1.5 Tbsp olive oil, 0.5 Tbsp sherry vinegar, 1/2 tsp dijon mustard, and then I added salt and pepper to taste. I was trying to make this fava bean salad just with ingredients I had on hand, but next time I would add some sort of pork product (e.g. cooked bacon and perhaps some bacon fat), and/or some mint or parsley, since these are some well known combinations that go well with fava beans.