Habas for every occasion

When we came here there were habas - silent h please - (broad beans) growing on our veg plot but we didn't do much about them and eventually they took the hint and stopped self seeding. I think they might have bought back memories of school dinners or something like that - large, dry beans, not very tasty, best not bothered with.

But they are eaten a lot here, so you get them on the bar as tapas to pod and eat fresh, stir fried with garlic and jamon, all sorts of ways, plus I'm told but have never tried, battered and deep fried when they are very tiny, pod and all.

So over the last couple of years we have grown more and more habas. Some we keep for next years seeds, we pick and cook the very small pods whole like you do french beans, small podded ones are cooked very quickly, served with a slosh of olive oil (garlic oil quite often) larger ones are double podded and cooked the same way and just last weekend we slow roasted the large ones in a little oil till they were dried out but still green and ate them as tapas. They have a very nutty taste - delicious salted. If there had been any spare we did think about grinding them down to a flour as it can be added to bread flour and batter for a richer flavour.

Unfortunately they have come to the end of their season although we have lots frozen until they come around again. The roots are still in the ground releasing nitrogen for the cabbages and sprouts which are following on, the plants I stood up in the empty compost till the leaves dried and dropped off and then the dry fibrous stalks have gone into the wood pile for fire starters.

Is there anything this plant can't do??

Oh yes, I forgot, the pods also make wine. Whether it's good wine or not we don't yet know but as they were off to the compost anyway, 10 litres of wine as a by-product seems worthwhile.