Green chicken meatballs

Does not contain green chickens, but beans. All of them. Green, runner, helda and broad.

It’s bean season.

Pea season is over now, for me at least, and the crispy frazzled remains of the pea canes have been removed to make way for leek planting (more of which soon). I have risked sowing a few more sugar snaps just in case. The harvest was so wonderful this year, and the bright, sweet crunch of a pod, snaffled from the vine and eaten on the hoof whilst weeding around them is a joy to be repeated as much as possible. But in the meantime, beans.

The broads have made a woeful showing.

The seedlings were weedy when they went in the ground and things only got worse from there – black fly, chocolate spot, the works. I harvest only a handful. The runners, in contrast, are abundant.

Runner beans are not a regular crop in my patch.

Why bother with runners when you have Heldas (see below)? But I was given plugs as part of the Roots Plants Allotment in a Box partnership I’m doing so in they went and now I am glad of it. Picked young, they are tender and flavourful and not at all woody. The flowers are stunning too and so, given their ease, resistance to pests, and heavy, near endless, cropping, I can now see why you’d bother.

But Heldas.

Heldas are my favourite, as I explain in the Bean chapter of my cookbook, From the Veg Patch:

Helda beans are like runner beans 2.0. They are flat and long like runners, but smooth-skinned and stringless – a runner bean after a facelift. They grow prolifically, reliably and untroubled by pests, but if you don’t grow your own, they are easy to get hold of in shops, often sold as flat beans or stringless beans.

Anyway, all are harvesting now. And, with the exception of broad beans, the more you pick the more you get. I fill a trug and head to the kitchen, grabbing a fistful of herbs on the way.

Other recipes for your bean glut

• Broad bean bruschetta in From the Veg Patch.

• Salmon, bean and bulgur wheat salad, also from my cookbook.

• Griddled beans with goats cheese, yup, from the book.

Green chicken meatballs

Most years, when the beans are glutting and the herbs need a daily picking, I make a version of this dish. This time courgettes feature as well, arriving as they in almost unmanageable quantities already. Serve it with linguine for those that want or just a hunk a bread for mopping up the sauce, which, by the way, is best made with fresh, concentrated chicken stock for most flavour.

Serves 6

• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 2-3 small courgettes, sliced