Buttered Broad Beans with Summer Savory

The pods appear all at once. One week the plants are flowering, and then suddenly the kitchen table is buried in broad beans and you're shelling them into a bowl every other evening, trying to keep pace with the garden.

This is the simplest thing to do with them, and the best. Podded, blanched for barely two minutes, then turned through foaming butter with a handful of summer savory leaves. The herb has a warm, peppery bite that meets the sweet, green softness of the beans exactly where it should. Five minutes of actual cooking. The shelling takes longer, but that's part of it. Sit down. Put the radio on. There are worse ways to spend a quarter of an hour.

I grow summer savory in the herb patch for this dish alone, and it earns its place every year. If you can't find it, a few thyme leaves will do, or nothing at all, just butter and salt and the beans themselves. But if you can get it, fresh, from the garden or a good greengrocer, do. It's the reason the recipe exists.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: broad beans, butter, savory, Tuesday. That's the whole recipe, really. The rest is just detail.