My Italian mother-in-law always referred to a bean that she loves as a baccicia (not sure of the spelling). Today I saw some at the farmer's market spelled bacchia. Does anyone know if these are fava beans or a similar type. She now has dementia and doesn't really remember how to cook them, so I'm also looking for a recipe. Any help is greatly appreciated. Karenmi

hi karenmi,

I think Baccicia are like green beans but I'm not entirely sure. I took a look online and here is what I found:

Baccicia Beans look like kidney beans, but are less curved, a bit thinner, and sometimes with a patch of lighter shading on them.

source: http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/encyclopaedia!openframeset&frame=Right&Src=/edible.nsf/pages/bacciciabeans!opendocument

If this is what you are looking for they are not fava beans. But if shelled and dried they probably look a little similar.

What recipe are you looking for?

I never heard of this type of fagioli: I heard of borlotti, cannellini, fagioli bianchi di Spagna, fagioli rossi e fagioli neri.

Paolo

The beans you might be looking for we call Cici beans, in some areas called Garbanzo beans, and are like chickpeas.

You can view a photo of them here:
http://doma-italian-market.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=13&zenid=811d4f3f4408992315b8254476d3ffc7

The dried beans are soaked in water and then are delicious in Italian vegetable salad, Italian Pasta Salad or soups. They can be ground into flour and the flour used to make dumblings, fritters, gnocchi or breads.
Va Bene,
Your friends at DOMA

maybe this is dialect for Bacelli as in the giant peas Italians love to eat with peccorino cheese of sheep's milk in the season...Bacelli e Peccorino...awesome!

ciao,

Brian

Thanks for all the suggestions on the beans! I forgot that I had registered with this site and didn't check back after the first few responses. The beans I was looking for turned out to be fava beans. I took a sampling of the various beans suggested to my mother-in-law and she pointed to, and named the fava beans as bacicia. The name mystery solved!!!

Thanks!!!

The only thing I was able to see on line was this attached

Category: Pole
Green


Description: Heirloom Italian bush green bean. 18- to 24-inch plants bear thick, flat, green beans. Can be harvested for dry beans at maturity.

Days To Maturity: 60-60

Fava beans are good raw as they eat them if tucany in Florence to be exact with pecorino toscano some fresh bread and some red wine they (Un spuntino di pomeriggio o` anche serale!!) fava beans are good steamd with stuffed artichoke!!