Damon Lee Fowler

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In History's Kitchen

21 April 2012: Fava alla Randolph Revisited

April 25, 2012

Tags: fava beans, Windsor beans, Classical Southern Cooking, Historical Southern Cooking, Mary Randolph, The Virginia House-Wife, Classic Italian Cooking, Fava alla Romana, Fava alla guanciale

fava not quite alla Randolph or Romana
Last year, a cache of fresh fava beans inspired a dip into Mary Randolph’s lucid recipe for these ancient legumes in her iconic book, The Virginia House-wife (see 10 May 2011: Fava alla Randolph):

“Mazagan Beans.

This is the smallest and most delicate species of the Windsor bean. Gather them in the morning, when they are full-grown, but quite young, and do not shell them till you are going to dress them. Put them into boiling water, have a small bit of middling, (flitch,) of bacon, well boiled, take the skin off, cover it with bread crumbs, and toast it; lay this in the middle of the dish, drain all the water from the beans, put a little butter on them, and pour them round the bacon.” (more…)

Selected Works

Cookbooks
A Celebration of the Cuisine of the Old South, hailed as a modern classic and Bible of Southern Foodways.
A loving portrait of a proud old port city in recipes
Cookbook
Classical Southern Cooking in today's kitchen
A sampling of the South's Cookery for the hundreds of regional fruits and vegetables.
cookbook
Traditional Southern Baking for modern cooks
Cookbook (editor)
Seventy five recipes that were documented to have been used at Mr. Jefferson's Monticello during his lifetime, translated for use in a modern kitchen, with essays by the Foundation's curatorial staff.

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