A lovely way to enjoy fava flavor without the laborious process of preparing the beans.
Fava leaves are sweet like the beans and can be eaten raw or cooked. In a salad or pesto, they provide a nice burst of spring grassiness. Wilted or sautéed like spinach, they can be used in pasta dishes, piled on top of toast, or cooked into a quiche. Delicious eaten fresh or cooked, pair these leaves with Italian and Mediterranean dishes.
Looking like young spinach, the leaves are thicker, with a milder flavor, sweet like a pea shoot, but without the crunchiness, and the leaves are sweeter and more tender early in the season, which lasts through the end of spring.
Even though we don’t grow them for the flowers, we think they’re strikingly beautiful. Fava flowers taste like a lighter version of the leaves, with a mildly sweet flavor akin to spring peas.