Farro and fava bean salad with chives and lemon olive oil

Today’s awesome dinner included a tricolor roasted pepper salad with capers, garlic, olives and parsley, and sliced tomatoes with french feta and super aged balsamic I brought back from Italy.

However, according to my husband the star of the show was a farro and fava bean salad I whipped up, so here’s the scoop. Some of the quantities are guesstimates as I wasn’t originally planning on posting this online.

• ~1.5 cups of cooked farro (cook 1 cup dry in the usual way, similar to brown rice. You’ll have extra.)
• 1 lb of fava beans (still in the pods)
• 1 tbsp lemon olive oil (or regular olive oil, and add some lemon zest)
• ~2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 cup of finely chopped chives

Cook the fava beans. Doing this is a pain, but worth it. For each pod:

1. Either slice the vertical seam with a sharp paring  knife, or snap off the end and pull the string down, like you’d shell a snap pea.
2. pull each bean out of the pod
3. You’re not done yet! There’s still an inedible outer shell on each bean.
4. Boil some water in a small pot, drop the beans in for 2-3 minutes, then shock them by putting them into a bowl of ice water.
5. At this point you remove the outer shell from each bean. Some of the shells will have popped open on their own, or you can use a fingernail or knife to make a small hole. Then just pop the beans out.

Combine all ingredients, adding more salt, oil or vinegar to taste.