Broad beans

Bought the first broad beans of the season on Friday. Two bowls at £1 each, not particularly good looking beans, and hardly English so early in the year, but then, we have not had any for a while.

The first lot went in a new version of pork soup. Peel half a kilo of potatoes and cut them into roughly 3cm cubes. Cook gently for 15 minutes in a couple of pints of water. Add a coffee jar lid of red lentils. Peel two medium sized onions, chop fine and add to the lentils and potatoes. Take half a pork tenderloin and cut it into roughly 1cm cubes. Add to the potatoes, lentils and onions. Simmer for a further 30 minutes. Shell the broad beans, discarding any loose stalks. Add them and simmer for a further 5 minutes, by which time the potatoes should be starting to disintegrate, but there should still be lumps. Serve with brown bread, without butter. Good gear.

The second and last lot went with cold boiled gammon, boiled potatoes and boiled carrots. More good gear, washed down with a Jamaican (?) version of a Chelsea Bun, involving coconut rather than currents and rolled swiss roll wise, horizontally rather than vertically. From 'Mixed Blessings' of 118 Mitcham Road, Tooting.

It seems a long time since I used to pinch out the tips of my broad bean crop (to keep the black fly down) on Derby Day morning before setting off for the pub. Which means, inter alia, that I would not be eating my broad beans until late June, rather than early April.