Ful Medames
This dish is is a simple yet flavourful and filling dish made with fava beans that are mashed, simmered and seasoning like cumin, paprika, salt and pepper used to flavour it. Lemon is sometimes mixed into the beans as well. This version starts off with briefly sauteed onion and garlic before the beans are added and is finished off with an array of toppings including chopped fresh tomatoes, hot peppers, herbs like cilantro and parsley, garlic and olive oil. It is served with pita and therefore a pita recipe has been included below but of course store bought pita is just as fine to serve with this delicious meal.
Ingredients
Ful Medames
- 2 cans of fava beans
- ¼ - ½ red onion diced
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 tablespoon cilantro chopped
- 1 tablespoon parsley chopped
- salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 1-2 cups of vegetable stock or water
- juice for half a lemon Lemon
- Pita to serve recipe below
- To serve
- 3 boiled eggs quartered
- Olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 3 tablespoon of chopped parsley and cilantro
- 1-2 tomatoes diced
- Salt to taste
- 2 hot pepper chopped
Pita
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup 35 grams whole-wheat flour, preferably freshly milled like spelt, einkorn etc.
- 2 1/2 cups 310 grams all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
Pita
- Place your water, yeast and sugar into a mixing bowl and stir to dissolve.
- Add your whole wheat flour and ¼ cup of all purpose flour. Place in a warm place to rest for 10-15 minutes.
- After resting add more all purpose flour 1 ¾ (reserved ½ cup), your olive oil and salt and mix well with a wooden spoon until all the flour is moistened.
- Pour dough out onto a work surface and knead with lightly floured hands for 2 minutes. The dough should be soft and moist.
- After you knead your dough, cover it with a kitchen towel and let it rest for 10 minutes.
- Turn dough onto your work surface. Knead lightly for 2 minutes, until smooth. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes, then knead again for 2 minutes. You will have ½ cup of reserved all purpose flour but try not to add it all back in, if any.
- Place in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
- After an hour, take your dough out of the bowl and divide into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, leave on your work surface but cover with a damp kitchen towel and let sit for 10 minutes.
- Preheat a cast iron skillet on medium high.
- Roll out each piece of dough using a floured rolling pin. Roll each ball out to about a 6 to 8 inch circle and about ⅛ of an inch thick.
- The dough will shrink a bit but that is okay.
- Place your dough into your hot skillet and bubbles should start forming, turn your dough over and after about 2 minutes, it will puff up. Watch the heat of your skillet because the dough may burn too quickly. You may have to turn the heat higher and lower depending on how your pitas are cooking.
- Transfer cooked pitas into a kitchen towel lined dish and wrap to keep warm.
- Repeat with all the pitas and serve with your ful medames.
Ful Medames
- Drain each can of fava beans and place them in a sieve, run water, oven them and rinse.
- Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and add the diced onion and saute until translucent.
- After about 3-4 minutes, add your minced garlic and saute for another minute.
- Add your rinsed fava beans and water or vegetable stock to the pan.
- Turn heat down and heat for about 10 minutes, stirring periodically so it does not burn. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mash some of the beans in your dish. You can mash as much or as little as you like, it is sometimes nice to keep about half of your beans still whole.
- Stir in cumin, paprika, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Remember you can add more stock or water as the beans cook and the liquid evaporates.
- Stir and cook for an additional 5 minutes and stir into your cilantro and parsley.
- Add more or less liquid depending on the final consistency you desire, thicker or thinner.
- Serve your cooked beans in a shallow bowl and place diced tomatoes and chopped pepeprs in the middle. Season the tomatoes with a sprinkle of salt.
- In a small bowl mix together your parsley and cilantro, minced garlic closed and salt to taste and drizzle this on your ful. Drizzle ful with more olive oil or as necessary.
- Arrange slices of boiled eggs over the beans and serve with pita.
- Plan International Canada's Website