Sea Beans With Fava Beans and Dill

Food

Recipe

Reading time:3min

Written by Sally Butcher. Photographed by Yuki Sugiura.

May 01, 2025

This is one of my favorite lunches. And it is super healthy.

I started by cooking it for myself, and then realized it constitutes the perfect, simple mezze dish—a warm salad of very few parts. So now everyone gets to enjoy it when sea beans and fava beans are in season, i.e., the summer months. If you want to make it out of season, use green beans instead of sea beans and frozen split fava beans.

Ingredients

Sea Beans With Fava Beans and Dill

Serves 1 hungry shopkeeper for lunch

Splash of cooking oil

1 garlic clove, minced

70 grams sea beans

70 grams shucked fresh fava (broad) beans

6-7 cherry tomatoes

Pinch of ground saffron, steeped in a splash of boiling water

Couple of fronds of dill

Splash of lemon juice

Pepper, to taste ( you won't need salt, as sea beans are naturally full of the stuff)

Lemon wedges, to serve

Heat the oil in a pan until sizzling, then add the garlic. Toss in the vegetables and tomatoes and saute gently for 3–4 minutes before adding the saffron water, dill, lemon juice and pepper.

Serve with an extra wedge of lemon. I usually eat this with crispbread I make, but store bought will do as well.

Reprinted with permission from:
Veganistan: A Vegan Tour of the Middle East and Beyond
Sally Butcher. Interlink Books, 2023. InterlinkBooks.com

About the Author

Sally Butcher
Sally Butcher is a London-based food writer and cookbook author. She runs Persepolis, the acclaimed Persian food store in London. Her most recent book, The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian: Modern Recipes from Veggiestan (also published by Interlink) has been a hugely successful and was shortlisted for the Guild of Food Writers’ Cookery Book of the Year Award. Her first book, Persia in Peckham: Recipes from Persepolis, was also published to critical acclaim and short-listed for the 2008 Andre Simon Award. It was also selected by The Sunday Times as its cookbook of the year. When Sally is not running her store, she blogs and tweets prolifically and has amassed a devoted online following.

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My mother recalls having this dish for breakfast during family day trips, such as to Mazari-Sharif (in northern Afghanistan) for the Red Tulip Festival (Guli Surkh), during the spring equinox. It would be made in a beautiful copper karayee, a shallow heavy-based pan used in Afghan cooking. The karayee would be placed directly over a portable kerosene burner, where the eggs, vegetables and spices would bubble away. The large karayee is then placed in the middle of the breakfast spread, surrounded by naans and various chais, for everyone to help themselves.

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