Okay, let’s start by saying that I am not very good at making pretty hard-boiled eggs. I don’t really see the point in it – making a delicious, but maybe not pretty, hard-boiled egg is 4,235x easier than making a pretty hard-boiled egg. And they taste the same. So it’s just not something I’m going to devote a large part of my life to perfecting, and the eggs above are about the best you’ll ever get from me.
If you’re feeling sleuthy, you could consult the dozens of other pictures on this site with hard-boiled eggs, and you’ll find that none of them are winners. Those bloggers and photographers who have beautiful, perfectly-sliced hard-boiled eggs? They’re cleaning their knife after every slice, so that the yolks don’t stick to the knife. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Anyway, this is Ful Medames, an ancient dish made of mashed fava beans that is generally associated with Egypt. This dish likely predates Islam, meaning that it is thousands of years old. Fava beans, like chickpeas, peas, and lentils, are legumes from the Old World, originating in Southwest Asia about 8,000 years ago. All other beans we know today come from the Americas, and comparatively more recently in human history.