MACCU

is a puree of dried fava beans that have been soaked and then cooked, usually with wild fennel greens, salt, and olive oil. It's a plain dish -- a staple of Sicilian peasants since antiquity, when the Romans introduced it there -- but it can be absolutely great. I finally found a source of peeled dried favas -- Bob's Red Mill -- and that makes it very palatable: dried favas with their skins on are extremely chewy . . .

Favas, along with chickpeas, lentils, and peas, were the only principal legumes available in Europe and Asia (where they also had soybeans) until the conquistadors brought "true" beans (as well as potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc.) back from the New World in the 16th century. They formed the protein base of the diet of millions (and stoked the engines of the imperialist Roman armies). Maccu is an Italian equivalent of, say, Indian dal dishes, or the biblical mess of pottage (a lentil and bread stodge, apparently).

The Maccu dish I made the other day is derived from a couple of recipes: one in Mary Taylor Simeti's Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-five Centuries of Sicilian Food (a rare cross between a cookbook and a compelling social history), the other in Nancy Harmon Jenkins's The Essential Mediterranean, which has a whole section on "The Oldest Legumes" full of insight and intriguing recipes.

Maccu
1/2 pound dried peeled fava beans
1 tsp. salt (or more to taste)
2 pints water
olive oil
wild fennel greens

Soak fava beans overnight in water. Drain and place in a heavy pot with 2 pints of water (or enough to cover generously), the fennel greens, and 1 tsp. salt. Cook slowly until beans can be mashed against side of pot into a puree (or use a hand mixer). Adjust salt and add olive oil (1 to 4 tbs., as you prefer).

What you should have at this point is a porridge with a consistency somewhere between a thick dal and hummus. It's great slathered on thick slices of toasted bread as a snack, or served with steamed greens (dandelion leaves, collards, chard, kale, etc.) on the side (as Jenkins suggests) and/or with a mixture of sauteed onions and tomatoes (as Simeti suggests). Alternatively, you can add more water and cook a small pasta (ditalini, orzo, etc.) in the pot for the final 10 minutes or so, to make a more filling main course. That's what I did when it was freshly cooked, serving the resulting dish with the onion/tomato mixture.

You have to eat it while it's hot, though -- like polenta, maccu sets into a solid mass as it cools. But like polenta one can then cut it up and grill or fry it, which I did the following night, sauteeing slices of it with black Kalamata olives and Mozzetta's great bottled Tuscan peppers.

Notes: for the wild fennel greens that Italian, Sicilian, and Greek recipes so often call for, I use the fronds of the non-bulbing variety of fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) that's easy to grow anywhere: in the Mediterranean-like climate of San Francisco, it really does grow wild in the parks. I use it from spring onward as a flavoring, and was able to pick the last fronds for this dish even after a couple of light frosts. Now that it's gone until March or April, I'll be relying on the fronds clipped from occasional bought bulb fennel (Florence fennel, Foeniculum vulgare var. azoricum), and use the bulb in any of several recipes that are great with pasta. Recipes suggest you can use fennel seeds instead, but their flavor is much less subtle, as anyone who's tasted Emeril's bottled fennel pasta sauce can attest.