Italian Puglian Fava Bean and Chicory Salad | Insalata Pugliese di Fave e Cicoria
Updated: Oct 24
This is the spring salad of Puglia, and it is not the purée. Fave e cicorie, the famous yellow mash of dried split fava beans served with boiled wild chicory, is a winter dish of the poor kitchen and belongs to the months when nothing grows. The insalata is its opposite number: fresh green fava beans shelled from the pod in April and May, barely cooked or not cooked at all, tossed with blanched chicory, cherry tomatoes, sweet red onion and a lemon and olive oil dressing, and served cool.
Everything that makes the purée good, patience, softness, warmth, is absent here. The salad wants the fava bean to stay whole and to snap slightly between the teeth, the chicory to keep its bitter edge, the onion to stay crisp, and the dressing to stay loose enough that you taste oil, acid and salt as three things rather than one.
The balance is the whole skill. Bitterness from the chicory, sweetness from the young beans and the tomato, acidity from the lemon, salt from the pecorino and the capers, and the green pepperiness of a good Puglian oil. Get one wrong and the plate collapses into either a bitter pile or a bland one.
Yield: 4 side servings. Prep: 35 minutes. Cook: 6 minutes. Rest: 20 minutes. Total: about 1 hour. Difficulty: easy. Course: contorno, served cool or at room temperature. Region: Puglia, the Murgia and the Valle d Itria. Season: April to early June.
The Story
The fava bean has been grown on the Murgia plateau for close to three thousand years, and in Puglia it has always carried two lives. Dried and stored, it fed families through winter and became the purée every Pugliese knows. Fresh, for the few weeks between the first warm days and the first real heat, it was eaten straight out of the pod in the fields, with young pecorino and a raw onion, by the people picking it. That field snack, rather than any restaurant invention, is what this salad grew out of.
The chicory is the other half of the story. Cicoria selvatica grows wild across the stony ground of the Alta Murgia and is still gathered by hand in spring, and the habit never disappeared even when cultivated catalogna became easy to buy. Puglia eats more bitter greens than any other Italian region, and cicoria is the one that defines it. Pairing it with fava is not a chef idea. It is the oldest flavour agreement in the region.
The onion is worth naming. The red onion of Acquaviva delle Fonti, flat and unusually sweet because of the iron rich soil it grows in, is the one that belongs here, and around Bari it goes in raw. The tomato arrives late in the history, as everywhere in Italy, but the small dark pomodorino from the Salento coast earned its place fast. The plate reads as a map of the region: plateau, field, coast, and oil from the trees in between.
Ingredients
For the salad
Fresh fava beans in the pod, 3 lb (1.4 kg), yielding about 12 oz (340 g) shelled
Cicoria or catalogna chicory, trimmed, 1 lb (450 g)
Cherry tomatoes, preferably Salento pomodorini, 7 oz (200 g)
Sweet red onion, small, 1, about 3 oz (85 g)
Salt packed capers, 1 tbsp (10 g)
Coarse sea salt for the blanching water, 2 tbsp (36 g)
For the dressing
Extra virgin olive oil, Puglian, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Lemon juice, freshly squeezed, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Garlic clove, 1, left whole and bruised
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For finishing
Pecorino Pugliese or young Canestrato, in shavings, 2 oz (55 g)
Taralli, crumbled coarsely, 1 oz (30 g)
Mint leaves, small, 8 to 10
Extra virgin olive oil, a thread per plate
Preparation
Step 1
Pod and peel the fava beans. Split the pods along the seam and push the beans out with your thumb, then decide, bean by bean, whether the pale skin comes off. Beans the size of a fingernail are tender enough to eat whole. Anything larger has a skin that turns leathery and slightly bitter and must be slipped off: nick the top with a thumbnail and squeeze the bright green kernel out. Sort them into two bowls as you go.
Step 2
Blanch the larger beans only. Bring a small pan of salted water to a rolling boil and give the peeled beans 60 to 90 seconds, no more, then lift them straight into iced water. The small unpeeled ones go in raw. You want a bean that still holds a firm centre and tastes green rather than starchy. A fava boiled for three minutes is already on its way to being purée, which is precisely the dish this one is not.
Step 3
Cook the chicory. Bring a large pot of well salted water to the boil, drop in the trimmed chicory and cook it uncovered for 3 to 5 minutes depending on stem thickness. Uncovered matters: a lid traps the sulphur compounds that make bitter greens taste harsh. The leaves should be limp but the stems should still resist at the base. Drain, spread on a tray, and once cool squeeze gently.
Step 4
Taste the chicory and correct it. Bitterness varies enormously between wild cicoria, cultivated catalogna and one head picked a week later than another. Taste a stem. If it is pleasantly sharp, stop. If it is genuinely aggressive, give it 30 seconds more in fresh boiling water, which pulls out another measure of bitter compounds without cooking it further.
Step 5
Soften the onion. Slice the red onion as thinly as you can, ideally on a mandoline, and drop the rings into iced water for 15 minutes. This takes out the raw sulphurous bite and makes the slices curl and go glassy and crisp. Drain them on a towel and pat them dry. Onion straight from the board is too loud for a salad this quiet, and wet onion dilutes the dressing.
Step 6
Build the dressing. Rinse the salt from the capers, soak them for 10 minutes, then drain and chop them coarsely. Bruise the garlic clove with the flat of a knife and put it in a bowl with the lemon juice, zest, salt and pepper. Whisk in the olive oil slowly so the dressing thickens and holds, then add the capers. Let it stand 20 minutes and take the garlic out before it turns dominant.
Step 7
Assemble and rest. Halve the cherry tomatoes, salt them lightly and leave them on a slight slope for 10 minutes so the first watery juice runs off. Chop the chicory into pieces about 2 inches (5 cm) long. Combine chicory, both kinds of fava bean, the drained tomatoes and the onion in a wide bowl, pour over three quarters of the dressing and turn it with your hands rather than a spoon. Rest 20 minutes at cool room temperature, then taste again for salt.
Plating
Serve this cool but never cold, at around 60°F (16°C). Straight from the refrigerator the olive oil goes dull and thick and the beans lose their sweetness, so if the salad has been chilled, take it out 25 minutes before service. The plate should be at room temperature: a warm one wilts the chicory within a minute.
Use a wide shallow bowl rather than a flat plate, so the components pile a little instead of spreading into a layer. Lift the salad with a fork and your other hand and set it down loosely. Pressing it flat squeezes the dressing to the bottom of the bowl, where nobody tastes it. Aim for visible fava beans on top, because they are what tells the diner this is the salad and not the purée.
Finish at the table rather than in the kitchen. Shave the pecorino with a peeler so it falls in wide irregular sheets, scatter the taralli last so they keep their crunch, add the mint torn rather than cut, and pour a thin thread of raw oil over everything. Spoon the remaining dressing around the edge of the bowl.
Professional Technique
The defining technique here is selective peeling, and almost nobody does it. Treating every fava bean the same way is the single reason home versions of this salad disappoint. The outer skin of a young bean holds most of its bitterness and all of its toughness, and it thickens measurably in the days between picking and market. A bean under half an inch long can keep its skin and contributes a pleasing chew. Anything larger must be peeled or it reads as leathery against the soft chicory.
The second technique is staged acidity. The lemon goes in twice: as juice in the dressing, where it does the structural work of cutting the oil, and as zest, which supplies aroma without further acid. Adding more juice to get more lemon character is the obvious move and the wrong one, because the extra acid starts to cook the beans on the plate and turns them grey within fifteen minutes.
Texture and Moisture Control
Every component here carries water, and water is what ruins the dish. Chicory holds a surprising amount after blanching, tomatoes release juice as soon as they are cut and salted, and onion soaked in iced water comes out dripping. If all three go into the bowl wet, the dressing thins into a pale liquid at the bottom. Drain the chicory on a tray rather than a colander, leave the tomato liquid behind, and dry the onion on a cloth.
The emulsion is the other control. Whisked slowly into lemon juice, olive oil forms a loose suspension that clings to the leaves instead of sliding off, and the chopped capers help hold it together. That emulsion breaks if the salad stands too long or gets cold, which is why the 20 minute rest is bounded: long enough for the salt to draw flavour out of the chicory, short enough that the oil has not separated and the taralli have not gone soft.
Professional Mise en Place
This is a fast dish with one slow job, the podding, and the organisation follows from that. Do the beans first and everything else falls into place.
Equipment and tools
Large pot for the chicory and a small pan for the beans
Two bowls for sorting small and large beans, plus a bowl of iced water
Mandoline or a very sharp knife for the onion
Wide tray lined with a cloth for draining the greens
Vegetable peeler for the pecorino
Prepared ahead
Fava beans podded, sorted and blanched, up to 4 hours ahead, covered and cool
Chicory blanched, squeezed and chopped, up to 6 hours ahead
Dressing whisked and the garlic removed, up to 1 day ahead
Capers rinsed, soaked and chopped, up to 2 days ahead
Taralli crumbled in a sealed jar, up to 3 days ahead
Service setup
All components at cool room temperature, nothing straight from the refrigerator
Onion drained and dried on a cloth at the last moment
Tomatoes salted and tipped off their liquid 10 minutes before assembly
Pecorino shaved to order, never in advance
Bowls at room temperature and the finishing oil within reach
Chef Tips
Buy the fava beans in the pod and buy far more than seems reasonable. Three pounds of pods give roughly twelve ounces of shelled beans, and less once the larger ones are peeled. Pods that are limp, yellowing or bulging hard with big beans are past the point where this salad works.
Salt the blanching water properly, as salty as a good broth. Chicory cooked in weakly salted water has to be corrected afterwards, and late salt sits on the outside of the leaf rather than inside it. The difference is obvious and cannot be repaired once the greens are cooked.
Keep the best oil for the finish. Use a decent everyday Puglian oil in the dressing, where lemon and capers mask its subtleties anyway, and save the young peppery bottle for the thread poured over the plate. Raw oil that never meets acid keeps its grassy bitterness, one of the main flavours of the dish.
If you cannot find fresh fava in season, make a different salad rather than reaching for frozen or canned beans. Frozen fava turns floury the moment it thaws and canned fava is already halfway to purée. Fresh young peas are a more honest substitute.
Common Mistakes
Leaving the skins on every bean. Only the smallest beans can keep their skins. On anything larger the skin turns tough and bitter and stays chewy against soft chicory, and no dressing will hide it. Sort by size and peel the big ones.
Boiling the fava beans. Sixty to ninety seconds is the whole cooking time for the peeled beans, and the small ones need none at all. Three minutes and they lose their sweetness and start breaking down, which pushes the dish towards the purée it is meant to be distinct from.
Cooking the chicory with a lid on. Covering the pot traps the volatile sulphur compounds and forces them back into the leaves, making the greens taste harsh rather than pleasantly bitter. Cook uncovered in plenty of water, and do not crowd the pot.
Wringing the greens dry. Squeezing blanched chicory hard compacts it into a dense rope that never loosens again, and it sits in the bowl as clumps instead of strands. Press gently and accept that a little moisture remains.
Dressing the salad too early. Given an hour in lemon and salt, the fava beans go grey and mealy and the chicory collapses. Twenty minutes is the window. To work further ahead, keep everything separate and combine at the last moment.
Wine Pairing
Locorotondo DOC: The local answer and the most natural one here. Made from Verdeca and Bianco d Alessano in the Valle d Itria, it is pale, low in alcohol and built on a dry almond bitterness that meets the chicory on its own ground rather than trying to cancel it. Its citrus acidity is brisk enough for the lemon dressing.
Fiano di Avellino DOCG: A step up in weight and the choice when pecorino is shaved generously over the top. Fiano has real texture and a smoky hazelnut note that sits against the fat of the cheese, while its firm acidity keeps the raw olive oil from coating the palate.
Grillo Sicilia DOC: Chosen for salinity above everything. Grillo grown near the coast tastes distinctly of salt and green citrus, and that saline quality runs straight into the capers and the pecorino instead of standing apart from them. It also has the body to handle the sweetness of the young beans.
Cirò Bianco DOC: Greco Bianco from the Calabrian coast, and an underrated match for bitter greens. It is dry, fairly neutral and carries a stony finish that refreshes between mouthfuls without adding a competing flavour to a plate that already has bitterness, acidity and salt at work. Serve it at around 46°F (8°C).
Tintilia del Molise DOC Rosato: The rosé option, for anyone who wants more colour and weight in the glass. Tintilia gives a rosato with red berry fruit and a peppery finish that picks up the raw onion and the pepper in the dressing, with enough grip to stand against the chicory. Dry, never off dry, at around 52°F (11°C).
Storage & Reheating
Assembled, this salad has a short life. Keep it covered in the refrigerator for no more than 24 hours and expect the chicory to have gone limp and the beans to have darkened. It is still edible on the second day and good stirred through warm orecchiette, but it is no longer the dish described here. Nothing about it improves with time, which is the opposite of the purée.
Stored separately, the components hold far better. Blanched chicory keeps refrigerated in a closed container for 3 days. Podded and blanched beans keep for 2 days, covered and dry rather than sitting in water. The dressing keeps 5 days in a sealed jar and needs a hard shake and ten minutes at room temperature before it emulsifies again.
This dish is never reheated. It is a contorno served cool or at room temperature, and warming it destroys the crispness of the onion, the snap of the beans and the fragrance of the raw oil at once. If leftovers must be used hot, treat them as an ingredient: warm them briefly with a little oil and turn them through pasta. Fresh fava does not freeze well in this form.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 side servings:
Calories: 340 kcal
Total Fat: 24 g
Saturated Fat: 5 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 18 g
Cholesterol: 14 mg
Sodium: 520 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 22 g
Fiber: 8 g
Total Sugars: 5 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 12 g
Lactose: 0.2 g
Principal micronutrients: folate, vitamin K, vitamin C, manganese, iron, potassium, calcium
These figures are estimates. Most of the blanching salt is poured away with the water, so the real sodium depends on the capers and the pecorino. Anyone avoiding dairy can leave the cheese out and raise the capers slightly without unbalancing the plate.
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