Choosing a summer side for a languorous alfresco dinner or lunch is always a bit of a challenge—most cookbooks for the season center on recipes that highlight the tomato, which is wonderful, until one realizes they only have options with tomatoes. So, Vogue asked James Beard Award-winning chefs Jody Williams and Rita Sodi—of the critically acclaimed New York restaurants Via Carota and I Sodi—what they were making this June. Their answer? This fava bean salad, or baccelli e pecorino.
“We grab the moment while we can,” Williams says of the fava bean season, which begins in spring and lasts through June. “We sit with a pile of favas on our narrow wooden table and talk over mounds of paperwork and other minutiae, peeling fava beans mindlessly and nibbling them with fresh pecorino.” Served at Via Carota, it’s one of their most popular dishes as the weather warms and their customers begin sitting for hours at their sidewalk tables.
Below, they share their beloved recipe.
Via Carota Baccelli e Pecorino (Fava Bean Salad)
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 2 spring onions
- 1¾ cups/240 grams blanched
- Peeled fava beans
- 7 fresh mint leaves
- 5 fresh basil leaves
- 5 tablespoons/70 ml extra- virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon/15 grams lemon juice
- 1 piece of young pecorino Romano cheese, about 4 ounces/120 grams
- 10 small radishes, very thinly sliced
- Salt
- Pepper
Directions:
- Thinly slice the spring onions and soak in cold water for a minute or two.
- Drain in a fine-mesh sieve and shake off the excess water.
- Toss the onion slices with the fava beans in a bowl.
- Tear the mint and basil into large pieces, leaving the smaller leaves whole.
- Add the olive oil and lemon juice to the bowl and toss lightly to coat the spring onions and fava beans.
- Crumble the cheese and toss, with the radishes and herbs into the salad.
- Season with salt and pepper, and drizzle with remaining dressing.