Video: Ingredients To Make a Traditional Italian Arugula Salad

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Learn how to make an Arugula salad in this free Italian cooking video lesson.

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Video Transcript

Next we’re going to make a salad of arugula, fava beans, asparagus and shaved Parmesan cheese. The fava beans look like this when you buy them, now if you can’t find them where you live you can also use edamame, which are the green soybeans, they often come frozen or you can buy them in the pod and shell them, but I really wanted to show you what fava beans look like, the way they come, because I’m going to open up one of these for you. They have strings like a green bean; just peel them down the side and they’re really, really worth the trouble, because you’ll see that they are trouble. So you see I’m opening the shell, can you see that? And they’re all snuggled up in there like little babies in a nest, peas in a pod and the inside of the fava bean is so furry, I just think it’s just lovely. They’re a bit deceiving when you go to buy these, if you can find them and they’re often in Armenian markets, Italian markets, look for ones that are green, not bruised and still crisp. If you don’t get to them right away just keep them in the refrigerator. So, I’ve already precut the asparagus stalks, which I will be chopping in a minute, but first I want to blanch the asparagus tips which will be going into the salad and I’m going to explain what blanching is at this moment. I’m also adding the shelled fava beans that I’ve taken out, out of the shell and I’m going to be putting these in boiling water, I’ve already bought water to boil and they go in for one minute. I’m not going to time it, but the best thing you can do is and I’ll show you this. You can just wait till everything is bright green. So they’ve just got a little bit more to go, they’re almost bright green. It's as though they’re almost just one-step away from raw. Okay, so I’m turning that off and now I’m going to drain them, the asparagus tips and the fava beans and then I’m putting them in a bowl of ice water and what this does is it stops the cooking action right away. And we’ll just let them sit there a minute. But I want to show you something with the fava beans, you may give up before you start on these, but each and everyone has to have that little peel taken off of it and its really not that easy, after boiling a minute they’re supposed to slip right off, you really want that peel off and well this took an hour and I did them already. These have been blanched and peeled.