La vignarola (Roman Spring Vegetable Medley)
Ingredients
- 1 kilo 2 lbs mixture of artichokes, trimmed and cut into wedges, shelled fava beans and peas
- A few leaves of Boston lettuce finely shredded
- 3-4 spring onions finely sliced
- 100 g 3-1/2 oz guanciale or pancetta, cut into cubes
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- You begin by lightly sautéing a bit of your cured pork meat in olive oil, just until translucent.
- Then add sliced fresh spring onions (scallions will do nicely as well), sauté for a minute or two, then add your artichoke, trimmed in the usual Italian manner and then sliced into wedges. Mix and continue to sauté for a minute or two longer. Then add fresh shelled fava beans and peas, season with salt and pepper, mix, and add some water to the pan. Cover and simmer gently until all your vegetables are nearly tender.
- Then add some tender lettuce (Boston or baby Romaine), finely shredded, and continue cooking until the lettuce has wilted and the vegetables are perfectly tender but not 'mushy'. As you prefer, you can cook off the liquid entirely or leave the dish rather 'brothy'. The exact cooking time varies according to the size and freshness of the vegetables but should take no more than 20-30 minutes at most.
- Serve either hot or, even better, at room temperature.
Notes
As in so many of these popular dishes, exact measurements are hardly that important, but try to balance the ratio of the main vegetable ingredients—artichokes, peas and fava beans—so they balance each other, so roughly equal amounts by weight of each should work well.