BROAD BEANS, MEET SOBRASADA.

A recipe inspired by a paprika-stained Mallorcan porky spread, and the quiet joy of over-cooked broad beans.

Broad beans are with us once again. And sobrasada, a soft, cured sausage traditional to the Balearic Islands, is newly available.

So here’s a recipe for a lighter, spring’ish chicken and zucchini and broad bean stew flavoured with sobrasada, which melts through the tomatoey sauce and makes the kitchen smell fabulous.

The zucchini and broad beans, by the way, cook for the same time as the chicken. Normally, this would be heretical - browns are never as appealing as greens, and are not well-liked by Instagram.  

But the zucchini soaks up the sauce so well that it’s like eating little round zucchini cushions, and the broad beans are so good that I kept picking them out and eating them as I was serving.

Here’s the thing. You should always have your first broad beans of the season lightly cooked, dressed in little more than extra virgin olive oil and sea salt, and enjoy them in all their pristine purity. Nothing better.

But once you’ve done that, cook them into a stew like this one, and they will come out tasting of broad beans AND slow-cooked tomatoes AND smoky paprika. They’ve been through the wars and absorbed it all and survived. They taste… wise.

CHICKEN AND SOBRASADA STEW WITH ZUCCHINI AND BROAD BEANS.

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 8 chicken pieces eg thighs, drumsticks

• 2 good-sized zucchini, thickly sliced

• 200 g broad beans (from 600 g in pods)

• 1 onion, halved and finely sliced

• 400 g canned tomatoes, chopped

• 100 ml tomato passato

• 1 tbsp tomato paste

• 400 ml stock or water

• 2 bay leaves

• Half tsp dried oregano

• sea salt and pepper

• 100 g sobrasada (see below) or 2 fresh chorizo sausages, skinned

• handful of parsley, roughly chopped

Heat olive oil in a heavy, lidded pan.

Sear the chicken for 5 minutes on either side until golden brown, and remove.

Add zucchini and broad beans to the rendered fat and toss well for a couple of minutes to kick-start their cooking, then remove and add to the chicken.

Add the onion and cook for 5 mins over low heat until softened.

Add the canned tomatoes, tomato passata, tomato paste, stock or water, bay leaves, oregano, sea salt and pepper, stirring as it comes up to the boil.

Chop the sobrasada or sausage meat, and add, stirring. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Return the chicken, broad beans and zucchini to the pan, cover and cook in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, depending on the size of your chicken.

Skim off some of the floating paprika-stained oil (and save it for frying eggs in), scatter with chopped parsley and serve. Serves 4.

#  Chop up a couple of spuds and throw them in with the chicken, or a can of chickpeas or butterbeans (lima), or a handful of kale, spinach or silver beet leaves.

# If you’re nowhere near sobrasada or chorizo, use a good porky sausage meat, breaking it up into rubble in the sauce, and add a teaspoon of smoked paprika for its lovely smoky character.

A WORD ABOUT SOBRASADA

It’s a soft, smoky, paprika-laden porky, paté-like mixture that is often referred to as spreadable chorizo, but you try spreading it. It curls around your knife like bubble gum, and you have to fight it to make it stay on your toast.

This sobrasada came to me via Salumi Australia, a small artisanal outfit run by a young couple in the hinterland of Byron Bay, on Bundjalung country. Massimo and Rebecca recently launched a range of retail-ready ‘offcuts’ from mortadella to ’nduja.

It’s a great initiative that improves our choices and reduces their waste (they weren’t able to slice the ends of their salamis, and the sobrasada is made from the offcuts of making their chorizo).

You can order it online, or find it at their Salumi Delis at Harris Farm in Leichhardt and Lane Cove, and Brisbane’s West End Harris Farm. They also sell guanciale for your next spaghetti carbonara, and the truffled salami is a cracker. The website also has some great salumi-using recipes by Saturday Night Pasta’s Elizabeth Hewson and David Lovett.

WHAT ELSE TO DO WITH SOBRASADA

• Spread it on hot buttered toast and serve it with a fried egg on top.

• Then serve that lot with asparagus, because it has just the right smoky, fatty vibe to stop the asparagus from being too healthy. Then shower the lot with grated Parmigiano Reggiano. This is the best sort of eating, when inspiration collides with the contents of your fridge.

• Smoosh it into a toastie with quite a lot of melted cheese and pickled jalapenos.

YEAH, BUT WHAT DO CHEFS DO WITH IT?

In Melbourne, Frank Camorra serves house-made sobrasada with grilled octopus and fennel at MoVida Aqui. At Sydney’s new party-time Bar Louise, team Porteno whips sobrasada into a quick tortilla omelette to serve with potato crisps. And in a typically elegant move from Lennox Hastie at his lovely new Gilda’s tapas bar in Surry Hills (Syd), sobrasada is served drizzled with warm honey.

Thanks for reading! And thanks to Massimo and Rebecca of Salumi Australia for sending a couple of samples my way. And special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for dropping his coffee and running back home when I said that someone was about to deliver some mortadella and salami. Never seen him move so fast.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.

The ‘before’ shot, with still-green broadies and zucchini. Pretty, but not a patch on the developed flavours of the ‘after’ shot.