Bigilla with gluten-free galletti (Broad bean dip with gluten free crackers)
Bigilla, or broad bean dip, is quintessentially Maltese. The roots of this recipe go back to the Phoenicians, who travelled the waters of the Mediterranean, with Malta forming part of their trade routes. Throughout the Middle East, there are similar dishes that use the bounty of autumn harvests to provide food during times when it is less plentiful. Bigilla uses dried fava beans, sometimes labelled as faba beans in Australia. Fava beans are the inner beans of the broad bean pod, after you have double-podded them. As a kid growing up, I really didn't like broad beans. We grew them in our backyard, and Dad would pick them, take them out of their pods, cook them and serve them up. You'd have a couple sitting on your plate, and you had to eat them. If you didn't, they'd be served up cold the next day. There was no escaping those broad beans! It wasn't until much later in life that I discovered fava beans, which I actually quite liked. Then someone pointed out that the...
