Ful medames…in several guises..

 Ful medames is an Egyptian dish, typically eaten for breakfast, made with fava beans, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, parsley and a bit of chilli. Basically, a whole lovely mix of wonderful flavours, all in one bowl. It is best eaten warm, on a bed of freshly made homous. HEAVENLY!

I made a batch recently, slightly differently from the typical recipe, but with the same tasty result. I used small split fava beans, which I soaked overnight then cooked in my pressure cooker, in water with a generous amount of olive oil. I’ll be honest, I overcooked them slightly, so I didn’t need to partake in the usual mashing of the beans as they were already pretty mushy! As such, when I added the cooked fava beans to their dressing, they soaked up the flavours perfectly. 

In a large bowl I mixed several tablespoons full of lemon juice with cumin powder, crushed garlic, salt and a touch of cayenne pepper. I added the cooked fava beans to this and stirred well then left it all to develop for a few hours. It was basically a big bowl of mushy yellowy beans so not very photogenic at this stage, it got prettier as I pimped it… 

With some of the mixture I added some steamed chunks of sweet potato and mashed them slightly with the ful medames – again, not wholly a pretty dish, but…OMG! the flavours!!!!!!! sweet potato and lemon juice go so well together, add in the garlic and cumin, and wow!!!! But then I also stirred in some tahini…that took it to a whole new level of amazing! 

This is my version of comfort food – grab a spoon and dig in! 

The addition of chopped coriander was my attempt at making it picturesque 🙂 

Another portion of my ful medames formed a part of this dish of wonder… 

At the bottom of the dish is my homemade homous, sprinkled with sumac; the next layer was some of my warm ful medames; topped with a dip made of peas, coriander, parsley, quark, goats cheese, cumin and lime juice. Does that not sound amazing?? It really was! 

I ate the last of my ful, with mashed sweet potato and topped with some of my falafel mixture.. 

An absolutely flavour overload!!

What do you think? Can I tempt you??