Italian Fava Bean Purée with Wild Chicory | Fave e Cicorie
Updated: Sep 8
Fave e cicorie is one of the clearest expressions of Lucanian cooking: a plate built from dried fava beans, bitter wild greens, good olive oil and patience. The beans are cooked until they collapse completely into a dense purée, while the chicory is boiled separately so its bitterness stays intact and distinct. The two components meet only on the plate, never in the pot, and the whole dish rests on that contrast. Sweet, earthy, starchy fava on one side; sharp mineral greens on the other; raw extra virgin olive oil poured over both to bind them at the last second.
It looks like a dish with nothing to it, and that is exactly why it is difficult. There are four ingredients and no aromatics to hide behind: no soffritto, no stock, no herbs, no cheese. Everything depends on water control in the purée and on knowing when to stop cooking the greens. Get the water wrong and you have soup instead of a purée; boil the chicory into submission and you have removed the bitterness that gives the plate its reason to exist. In Basilicata the finish is often a scattering of peperoni cruschi, fried for three seconds and crumbled over the top for dry, sweet-smoky crunch.
Serves 4. Soaking: 4 hours or overnight. Prep: 20 minutes. Cook: 1 hour 10 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 30 minutes plus soaking.
The Story
Dried fava beans were the backbone of the inland Lucanian pantry for centuries. The plant tolerates poor soil and drought, fixes nitrogen back into exhausted ground, and the beans dry and store through the whole winter without any preservation beyond a dry room. In a region of mountain villages where meat appeared on the table a few times a year, the fava supplied the protein that kept agricultural work possible. Wild chicory came free: gathered from field edges, uncultivated slopes and roadsides by women and children, and eaten in quantities that would surprise anyone who thinks of greens as a garnish.
The pairing is not accidental. Fava beans are heavy in starch and mildly sweet, and eaten alone in quantity they become cloying within a few mouthfuls. The bitterness of chicory cuts that sweetness and resets the palate, which is why the two have been eaten together across the whole of southern Italy for as long as there are records. Puglia has its own famous version, fave e cicoria, and the two regions argue amiably about which came first. The Lucanian interpretation is the more austere of the two: firmer purée, less oil worked in during cooking, more oil poured raw at the table.
What distinguishes the Basilicata version above all is what it leaves out. No onion, no garlic in the purée, no bay, no stock, no attempt to soften the bitterness of the greens with sugar or fat during cooking. The dish arrived in the twentieth century intact from a cooking tradition that simply had none of those things to spare, and the region kept it that way. Adding a soffritto to fave e cicorie is not an improvement; it is a different dish.
Ingredients
Main Components
Dried peeled split fava beans — 2 cups (400 g)
Starchy potato, peeled and cut into 1 in (2.5 cm) cubes — 1 medium, 7 oz (200 g)
Wild chicory, or catalogna, trimmed and washed in several changes of water — 2 lb (900 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, peppery and fresh — 1/2 cup (120 ml), divided between the purée and the finish
Fine sea salt — as needed, plus 2 tbsp (30 g) for the chicory water
Additional Ingredients
Crusty durum bread for toasting — 4 slices, about 4 oz (120 g)
Garlic clove, for rubbing the toast — 1
Optional Components
Dried Senise peppers (peperoni cruschi), for the traditional Lucanian finish — 4 to 6 pods
Extra virgin olive oil for frying the cruschi — 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Preparation: Base Components
Rinse the peeled fava beans in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear, then soak them for at least 4 hours or overnight. Peeled split favas will cook without soaking, but soaking shortens the cooking time by roughly a third and gives a noticeably smoother purée, because the beans hydrate evenly instead of softening from the outside in. Drain them and discard the soaking water.
Put the drained beans in a heavy pot with the cubed potato and cover with cold water by about one finger's width, roughly 1 1/2 inches (4 cm). The potato is not there for flavour: its starch stabilises the emulsion later and stops the purée from separating. Bring slowly to a simmer and skim the grey foam that rises in the first ten minutes. Do not salt now. Salt added at the start toughens the skins of legumes and lengthens the cooking time significantly.
Cook gently, partially covered, for 50 to 70 minutes. Stir every 15 minutes and scrape the base of the pot each time, because fava starch settles and catches easily, and a scorched bottom will flavour the entire batch. Add small quantities of hot water only if the surface threatens to dry out; every extra cup you add is a cup you will have to cook off later. The beans are ready when they have lost their shape entirely and the potato has broken down into the mass, so that a spoon drawn through leaves a trail that closes slowly.
Preparation: Assembly
Season the cooked beans with salt now, off the boil, and take the pot off the heat. Beat the mixture hard with a wooden spoon for a minute to break down any remaining lumps, then add about half the olive oil in a slow stream while beating continuously. The purée will lighten in colour and turn glossy as the oil goes into suspension. It should hold a soft ridge when you draw the spoon across the surface rather than flowing back level. If it is too stiff, loosen it with a little hot water; if it is too loose, return it to low heat and beat as it reduces.
While the beans cook, bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and salt it generously with 2 tablespoons (30 g). Add the chicory and boil uncovered for 6 to 10 minutes depending on the age and thickness of the stems, until the stems yield to a fingernail but the leaves still have structure. Taste a piece: it should be pleasantly bitter, not aggressive. Drain, and here is the important part, do not squeeze it hard. Let it sit in the colander for a few minutes so the excess water drains under its own weight, then dress the still-warm greens with a little olive oil and salt.
Preparation: Finishing
Toast the bread until it is dry and crisp all the way through rather than merely coloured, and rub one side lightly with the cut face of the garlic clove. The bread is not an accompaniment here, it is a utensil: in Lucanian households the purée is eaten with bread as much as with a fork, so it needs to be sturdy enough to hold up under a load of hot bean purée without folding.
If you are using peperoni cruschi, heat the frying oil to about 320°F (160°C) and fry the dried pods for three to four seconds only, lifting them out the instant they darken and drop them onto paper. They crisp as they cool. This window is unforgiving: a second too long and the natural sugars in the pepper burn, the pod turns black and the flavour becomes irreversibly bitter. Crumble them over the plate only at the moment of service.
Keep the purée warm but never boiling while you finish everything else, covered, ideally over a pan of hot water. Direct heat at this stage will break the oil back out of suspension and leave a slick on the surface, and a purée that has split cannot be brought back with beating alone.
Final Plating and Presentation
Use warm shallow bowls. Spoon the fava purée onto one side and pile the dressed chicory beside it, keeping the two clearly separate rather than mixing them. This is not a presentation choice, it is the dish: mixing them in the kitchen collapses the contrast between sweet and bitter that the whole recipe is built on, and each diner is meant to combine them in the proportion they want, forkful by forkful.
Finish both components with raw extra virgin olive oil, poured generously and at the table if possible, because the aroma of a good peppery oil is at its strongest in the first seconds after it hits warm food. Scatter the crumbled cruschi over the purée if you are using them, and lean the garlic-rubbed toast against the side of the bowl.
Nothing else belongs on the plate. No parsley, no chilli flakes, no cheese. The colour contrast between the pale gold purée and the dark green chicory is the whole visual argument, and a garnish only muddies it. Serve immediately, while the purée is still soft enough to spread.
Professional Technique
Treat the purée as a starch-stabilised emulsion, because that is precisely what it is. The gelatinised starch released by the fava beans and the potato surrounds the droplets of olive oil and holds them in suspension, in the same way egg yolk lecithin holds oil in a mayonnaise. That mechanism only works within a temperature window: add the oil while the mixture is hot but no longer boiling, roughly 175 to 195°F (80 to 90°C). Too hot and the emulsion breaks; too cold and the starch has set and will not take the oil at all.
Avoid a high-speed blender. Shearing legume starch at high speed ruptures the granules and produces a gluey, elastic texture that Italians describe as colloso, and it is impossible to reverse. A wooden spoon, a whisk or a passing through a food mill preserves a softer, more granular structure that still reads as beans rather than as paste. If you want it smoother, pass it through a fine sieve rather than reaching for a machine.
For the chicory, use far more water than seems necessary and keep it at a full boil. A large volume of rapidly boiling water dilutes the bitter compounds that leach out of the greens and keeps the temperature stable when the cold leaves go in, so the cooking is fast and the colour stays green. Do not double blanch unless the chicory is exceptionally wild and aggressive: the object is to tame the bitterness, not to remove it, and greens boiled twice arrive at the plate limp and tasting of nothing.
Texture and Moisture Control
The single biggest error in this dish is too much water in the pot at the start. Fava beans absorb what they need and the rest has to be driven off by evaporation, which means a longer cook, more stirring and more risk of scorching. Cover the beans by one finger and no more, and add hot water later in small amounts only if the surface actually dries. It is far easier to loosen a stiff purée at the end than to reduce a watery one without overcooking it.
The second source of water is the chicory, and it is the one most people ignore. Greens carry a surprising amount of liquid in their stems even after draining, and if they go onto the plate wet that water runs straight into the purée and thins it in front of you. Let them drain for a few minutes under their own weight rather than pressing them, which would also squeeze out the bitterness you cooked them carefully to preserve.
Finally, remember that the purée thickens considerably as it cools, because the starch continues to set. Hold it slightly looser than the consistency you want on the plate, and check it again immediately before serving. If it has tightened while waiting, beat in a spoonful of the chicory cooking water rather than plain water: it carries salt and a trace of the greens' bitterness, and it corrects the texture without diluting the flavour.
Professional Mise en Place
The purée is entirely make-ahead and improves for it. The chicory and the cruschi are the only components that need attention close to service.
Equipment and Tools
Heavy-based pot with a thick bottom for the beans; a thin pan will scorch the starch
Large pot of at least 6 quarts (6 litres) for the chicory, and a colander
Sturdy wooden spoon, or a food mill for a finer purée; no blender
Small pan and a thermometer if frying cruschi, plus warm shallow bowls
Pre-preparation Steps
Soak the fava beans the night before and drain them in the morning
Wash the chicory in three changes of water; wild greens carry grit deep in the stems
Cook the purée up to a day ahead and hold it refrigerated; it reheats well with a little water
Reserve a cup of the chicory cooking water for adjusting the purée at the end
Serving Setup
Hold the purée warm over hot water, covered, never over direct heat
Toast the bread and fry the cruschi only in the last minutes; both soften within a quarter of an hour
Bring the bottle of oil to the table so the final pour happens in front of the guest
Chef Tips
Buy peeled split fava beans, not whole dried ones with the skin on. Whole favas need peeling after soaking, which is an hour of tedious work, and any skin left behind gives the purée a grey cast and a papery texture.
The olive oil is not a cooking fat here, it is the main flavour of the dish alongside the beans. Use a fresh, peppery, early-harvest oil and use it generously; a tired supermarket oil will make the whole plate taste flat no matter how well you cook.
Reserve a cup of the chicory water before you drain it. It is salted, faintly bitter and free, and it is the best liquid there is for loosening the purée at the last moment.
Resist adding anything to the beans while they cook. Garlic, onion, bay and stock all make a perfectly nice bean soup, but they are not this dish, and the clean sweetness of plain fava is what the chicory is there to answer.
Common Mistakes
Salting the beans at the start — salt slows the softening of legume skins and can add twenty or thirty minutes to the cooking time, with the beans staying stubbornly grainy in the middle. Season only once they have collapsed completely, off the boil.
Using too much water — the purée ends up thin and has to be reduced, which overcooks the starch and dulls the flavour. Cover the beans by one finger only and add hot water later, a little at a time, if it is genuinely needed.
Blending at high speed — shearing the starch makes the purée gluey and elastic, and nothing will bring it back. Beat it by hand with a wooden spoon, or pass it through a food mill if you want it finer.
Squeezing the chicory dry and mixing it into the purée — hard squeezing removes the bitterness that justifies the pairing, and combining the two in the kitchen destroys the contrast that is the entire point of the plate. Drain gently, dress separately, and let them meet on the fork.
Wine or Beverage Pairing
Bitterness and a large quantity of raw olive oil are the two things the wine has to handle, which rules out anything heavily tannic: tannin plus chicory produces a metallic, drying finish. Malvasia Bianca di Basilicata IGT is the local answer and the most natural one: aromatic without being sweet, with enough body to stand up to the oil and a soft acidity that does not fight the greens. Matera Greco DOC is the sharper choice, with citrus and a mineral, almost saline finish that cuts the oil cleanly and refreshes the palate between mouthfuls of purée.
Grottino di Roccanova Bianco DOC comes from the Agri valley not far from where the best cicoria grows, and it has a faintly nutty, textured quality that sits comfortably beside the starch of the beans. If you want a red, Aglianico del Vulture Superiore DOCG works only when the plate includes peperoni cruschi or is served alongside sausage, and it should be poured slightly cool at around 61°F (16°C) so its considerable tannin stays in check against the chicory. Cirò Bianco DOC from neighbouring Calabria is a good alternative when the Lucanian bottles are hard to find.
For a non-alcoholic pairing, still water with lemon is the honest choice and the one you will find on the table in Basilicata. If you want something with more presence, a lightly chilled infusion of fennel seed works well: its faint aniseed sweetness performs the same job the white wine does, softening the bitterness of the chicory without adding acidity of its own.
Storage and Make-Ahead Options
The fava purée keeps for 4 days refrigerated in a sealed container and is arguably better on the second day, once the starch has fully set and the oil has integrated. Reheat it gently in a wide pan with a little hot water or reserved chicory water, beating until it comes back smooth; it will look stiff and unpromising straight from the fridge and that is normal. It also freezes for up to 3 months, best portioned flat so it thaws evenly.
The cooked chicory is best eaten within 2 days and does not freeze well, losing structure entirely on thawing. Store the two components in separate containers: greens left sitting on the purée release water overnight and leave you with a loose, watery surface. Fried peperoni cruschi must be made fresh, because they draw humidity from the air and go soft within a couple of hours even in a sealed jar.
Nutrition Information
Estimated values per serving, based on 4 servings including the bread.
Calories: 775 kcal
Total Fat: 33 g
Saturated Fat: 4.5 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 27 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 520 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 88 g
Fiber: 24 g
Total Sugars: 8 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 30 g
Lactose: 0 g
Iron: 8 mg · Folate: 400 mcg · Potassium: 1600 mg · Magnesium: 160 mg · Calcium: 280 mg · Vitamin K: 250 mcg · Vitamin A: 220 mcg
The dish is naturally vegan and dairy-free. The only allergen is gluten, from the bread alone, so it becomes gluten-free simply by omitting or substituting it. Important medical note: fava beans must be avoided entirely by people with G6PD deficiency, a genetic condition more common in Mediterranean populations, in whom they can trigger severe haemolytic anaemia. Values are estimates and vary above all with the quantity of olive oil used.
About the Recipe
This version follows the Lucanian preference for a firm, clean purée and clearly bitter greens, with peperoni cruschi as the optional regional finish rather than a fixed ingredient. It sits deliberately closer to the Basilicata interpretation than to the softer, oilier Puglian one. Depending on how it is served it can be a substantial vegetable course, a side dish alongside grilled lamb or sausage, or, with enough bread, a complete rustic meal in the way it was originally eaten.
Summary
Cook the favas and the potato in barely enough water until they collapse entirely, season them only at the end, and beat in the olive oil off the boil so the starch holds it in suspension. Boil the chicory separately in plenty of salted water until the stems just yield, drain it without squeezing, and dress it on its own. Then put the two side by side in a warm bowl and pour more raw oil over both.
That is the whole recipe, and everything that can go wrong is a question of water and restraint. Preserve the contrast between sweet starch and bitter greens, use an olive oil worth tasting, and resist every temptation to add an ingredient. Fave e cicorie has survived unchanged for a very long time precisely because there is nothing in it that can be taken away.
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