OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. To keep you sated between episodes, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for risotto with fava beans and spring greens pesto.
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Readers of a certain vintage may remember the public service announcements that reminded us to go easy on the condiments, to eat some kind of breakfast every day, and that a protein-packed meal of beans and rice is nice. Beans and rice can take many forms — there are innumerable variations eaten throughout the Americas and the Caribbean, all over East and South Asia, the Middle East and the Levant. This week’s recipe is a celebration of this heroic food pairing, but if we’re splitting hairs, risotto with fava beans technically isn’t rice and beans — do you know why not? Read on to find out!
Have a cuppa or a cold one with the crew, tap a tree, gustatory gardens, and good things in markets, gardens and the kitchen
On Sunday, June 2, come to the Buckman Coffee Factory for a newsletter subscriber EXCLUSIVE to meet the team behind ‘Superabundant’, and enjoy samples of coffee and beer featured in the Coffee and Hops episodes. Following the meet and greet, the screening starts at 1:30 at the Clinton St. Theater (doors at 1:00). We can’t wait to see you! (Note: Registration for the meet and greet automatically registers you for the free screening.)
Maple lovers, take note — Oregon State University is hosting a bigleaf maple field day in Oregon City on May 18. Come learn how to manage woodlands for the Northwest’s largest native maple, learn how to tap syrup and more (earlier this spring we harvested some bigleaf maple blossoms for tempura — they were delicious). Tickets are $50 and include a pancake and waffle lunch plus a bottle of bigleaf maple syrup for you to take home. And stay tuned for a bigleaf maple “Superabundant” episode, coming soon.
Summer traveling can be kind of a hassle (especially if you have a garden and animals that require care), but luckily there are tons of ways to enjoy the nicer weather without going far. We’re always down to pack a cooler full of snacks and hit the nearest body of water, but if you prefer staying in your neighborhood, Eater Portland has compiled a nice list of spots with outdoor patios. If you want to dine in close proximity to an actual garden, the Oregon Garden in Silverton has a resort that includes a restaurant with a view of the garden, and some restaurants even have their own micro-farms to produce the vegetables used in the kitchen. Here are a few of our favorites:
🌱 ōkta — Helmed by Michelin-starred chef Matthew Lightner, this regenerative farm in McMinnville has a special focus on preserves and pickles.
🌱 Hiyu Wine Farm — if you’re already headed out to the Gorge for fruit-picking, this is a lovely place to have a lazy, family-style lunch with wine pairings.
🌱 Nostrana — Their new outdoor space l’Orto overlooks the urban plot where the restaurant grows a range of Italian heirloom vegetables and flowers, perfect for afternoon spritzes.
🌱 Abbey Road Farm — This wine farm in Carlton is open for wine tastings and picnics, or you can stay in one of their converted grain silos and enjoy breakfast the next day.
Peas, asparagus, morels, garlic scapes and fava beans are all excellent right now, and Graham Chaney, chef at Stammtisch in Portland, gave us the hot tip that artichokes, one of his favorite ingredients, are better in the spring. (There are two seasons for the giant thistle buds — the spring season wraps in May and the second, smaller season, comes in the fall.)
Tip from a reader: Fred Meyer on Southeast Cesar Chavez and Hawthorne in Portland had the big (almost two-pound!) cans of Cougar Gold on sale a few days ago, half price. Get some if you can!
Now that strawberry season is kicking off, maybe this is the year you’ll learn to make jam? Oregon State University’s extension service will be hosting two different jam and jelly events on May 18 — one in Oregon City and another in Myrtle Point.
We’re starting to get edible flowers: the elder bushes are in full bloom, so we’ll start making and bottling elderflower syrup for this summer’s sorbets and cocktails (plus sharing some with a local gelateria). The sage is also blooming, so we’ll be eating lots of white bean dip and chicken salad sprinkled with the flavorful blossoms.
We’re putting in summer crops like cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, chiles, basil and tomatillos. We’re moving the many, many winter squash starts that sprouted from the heirloom squash that squirrels stole off the porch and then callously annihilated (shoot us an email if you want one!)
It’s been warm! We did very little actual cooking over the past week, but we still ate well.
✨ We assembled a fridge-purging snack platter of salami, various cheeses, smoked almonds, grapes, sliced apples, dried figs and pears, fig-chile jam and sliced baguette. It felt like a Parisian picnic.
✨ We tossed cold rotisserie chicken in a creamy paprika-lime dressing to eat on a bed of sliced radishes, shredded carrots and red cabbage, topped with gobs of fresh cilantro. This would have also been great as a wrap.
✨ We grilled some shrimp and leftover baguette to eat with a chopped salad of cucumbers, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, olives and feta (dressed in oil, lemon juice and parsley). Next time maybe we’ll serve it on a bowl of rice or tabbouleh.
Risotto with fava beans and ethnochaos pesto
Heather Arndt Anderson / OPB
Recipe: Risotto with favas and ethnochaos pesto
One of the best things about risotto is its versatility; it’s the blankest of canvases, ready for anything from truffles or peas to meatballs and cheese. But just because the name comes from Italy, don’t think you have to stay in that lane. Go ahead, use a bunch of Balkan herbs instead. Use Chinese chives instead of garlic and minced leeks instead of shallot. Embrace the ethnochaos!
What is this word, “ethnochaos”? We first heard the term from Ukrainian art-folk group DakhaBrakha, who use it to describe their music, and over the years we’ve adopted it to describe the way we prefer to cook — mixing ingredients in ways that might sound unconventional, but make perfect sense when you think about it. We at ‘Superabundant’ invite you to cook something slightly weird this week — there are fewer rules than you think, and besides, “ethnochaos” sounds cooler than “fusion.”
Another thing to appreciate about risotto is that it’s perfect any time of year. It’s just as lovely with the sweet corn and fresh tomatoes of summer as it is with roasted pumpkin and sage of autumn. In the winter, it’s nice with Oregon truffles, and risotto never met a spring ingredient it didn’t absolutely adore. Nettles, peas, fiddleheads, morels, asparagus — all of them are risotto’s best mates. Since the fava beans looked good this week and the spring herbs and greens need to be eaten before they bolt, that’s what’s going into this one. It turns out that cress, garlic chives, cilantro, parsley and lovage all work really well together as a pesto (especially with pine nuts or pistachios), and a fun coincidence is that they’re all common to cuisines historically influenced by the Ottoman Empire.
As one of the only Old World “beans”, favas, aka broad beans, have a long history in the cuisines of the Mediterranean, Southern Europe, and Asia. (We use “beans” with air quotes because favas are technically a vetch; the kinds of true, real, actual beans we use for say, burritos, are from the Americas.)
In a lot of ways, favas are just as versatile as the risotto — they can be eaten as a fresh or dried legume, roasted into a crunchy snack or fermented into a paste. The spicy Chinese bean sauce doubanjiang is made from fermented favas, and the national dish of Egypt, ful medames, is a fava stew. Holy smokes, favas are fiddly to process, but they’re only in season for about a nanosecond — an ephemeral mouthful of spring that are worth the trouble. So put on the radio, pull up a seat, and get to peeling. Serves 2-4.
2 cups (loosely packed) mixed tender herbs and greens such as arugula, cress, pea shoots, cilantro, garlic chives, parsley, mint, etc. plus extra herbs for garnish
¼ cup pistachios, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, walnuts or pecans
⅓ cup olive oil
A few fat pinches of flaky sea salt
2 tbsp butter
1 leek or 4 scallions, white parts only, finely sliced (or 2 tbsp minced shallot)
1 cup arborio or other short-grain rice (sushi rice works well)
Splash of white wine (optional)
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth (kept at a simmer)
1 lb fava beans, shucked and peeled (yields about 1 cup beans)
Finely shredded parmesan or salt-cured egg yolk (optional)
- In a blender, food processor or mortar and pestle, blend the herbs, nuts and olive oil until a paste forms — you can leave it slightly chunky or go smooth, it’s up to you! Set the pesto aside.
- Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute the leek or scallions until glossy and fragrant (but don’t brown them), about 5 minutes. Add the rice, stir to coat in the butter, and saute, stirring, until the edges of the rice become kind of clear and the white dot of starch is visible in the center of the grains. Add the splash of white wine (if using) and stir the risotto until the wine is absorbed.
- Reduce the heat to medium-low and add a ladle of hot broth, stirring in a sweeping motion until the rice absorbs the liquid. Repeat, stirring nearly constantly (this is a nice time to daydream), until the broth has all been used and the rice is almost tender but still al dente. (If you need more liquid to get the rice to the proper state, you can just add hot water.)
- When the rice is nearly ready, stir in the pesto until well combined, then fold in the shelled fava beans. Gently stir the risotto until the favas are warmed through and the rice is tender. Serve topped with grated parmesan or salt-cured egg yolk (if using) and a sprinkle of finely chopped herbs.
