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Puls, a cereal porridge, was a staple food of ordinary Romans. Pliny the Elder (1st century AD), in his Natural History, describes a dish called “puls fabata“, fava bean puls, that must have been very popular. Ovid only a few decades earlier mentions a similar dish in his poem “Fasti“ as the dish of old times, before Roman cuisine became refined. There are plenty of fava bean porridge recipes, from antiquity until today, such as: - a number of Apicius' recipes with garum, with leeks, with mustard, with peas, with sausages... - a medieval version topped with caramelised onions - the modern Apulian version with potatoes added, lots of olive oil and topped with fried wild chicory and garlic - Sicilian maccu, a soup of fava beans and fennel that can be served with pasta and many more … But today I would like to prepare the good old-fashioned Roman puls fabata that seemed archaic already to Ovid. You need: 1 cup of pearl spelt, 1 cup of shelled, dry fava b
