Broad Beans with Cured Pork Cheek

You’ll often see this dish as an antipasto at an agriturismo (farm guesthouse) when broad beans are in season. When the first baby broad beans of the season (called fave novelle, literally ‘new beans’) appear they are the size of a green bean and you don’t peel them at all as the beans themselves are so tiny that you can cook the whole pod. In Padru, the town near my parents’ village, there’s a shop called frutta e verdure (‘fruit and vegetables’); you go into the shop,